Shura's eyes blinked wearily. The light from the sky was a dark, heavy blue, scarcely light enough to see the contours of his face. Zoya lay beside her fully clothed, wrapped tightly in a scarf held in place by an unfamiliar fitted overcoat. Propped upon his arm he gazed down upon her, the familiar sad smile spread across his beautiful face.
“Another trick, my Ochi Chornya,” he whispered, brushing hair from her face and kissing her forehead. He moved to the corner where his packed magician’s trunk was resting upright and taking it up, he moved it across the room and nestled it inside the now vacated wardrobe.
Stepping inside the wardrobe himself Zoya turned toward her. He smiled gazing at her from inside, his eyes flickering. “Now you see him…” His nimble hands tossed her a small purple parcel which she caught and instantly examined. Velvet and tied with a small red ribbon, she swiftly pulled and emptied it’s contents into the palm of her hand. Inside was a card. It read, simply, ‘…now you don’t…’
Confused and bleary, Shura looked up to him for his explanation. But when she glanced upon the wardrobe he, and indeed any trace of him ever having been there, had vanished. Gathered in sheets she shot up from the bed and searched frantically around the room. Then she saw it.
There, upon the floor of the starkly empty wardrobe was another card. She stooped to pick it up and read the words scratched in Zoya’s child-like scrawl:
‘Farewell, Shura.’
Just like that, he disappeared.
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