"Not with magic. We'd tried healing her with magic, but nothing worked. The sickness--the wasting, people who had it just stopped eating or going to work or doing anything but drugging themselves with Berries and dreaming. They'd just fade away until they died... and there was nothing we could do about it. There were more and more cases of it every year."

He falls silent, staring intently down at his cup of tea. He'd lost both his parents that way, and it still hurts. It takes him a few moments to gather his thoughts again, and when he speaks, it is more quietly.

"Being with someone so different from herself, so full of life and feeling, brought her back from the edge of death. Just being together. They saved each other, and then they saved us all."