fall, only to rise higher still

Hattori offered Audra a side glance as she approached, her steps hesitant and slow as though she feared the stones would slip beneath her paws. He had not seen her in quite some time and yet remembered her well enough, as her face skirted around the gaps in his memory. It was hard to outright describe it, but it was as though a void of darkness resided where weeks of thoughts and actions should be. As though he'd simply ceased to exist for a time, before returning to his senses as mostly himself. Mostly. For a moment he wondered whether she'd been affected by the sickness, only for the pale of his gaze to narrow in on her black eye.

His son's eyes were just as dark so the colour itself was not of concern, rather it was how lifeless it was. A sightless sheen, as though the very colour had been drained from the eye, till it was a mere husk of what it used to be before.

"What happened to your eye?" Hattori asked, rather than addressing her attempts at small talk. Did it matter why he was here? Hattori didn't really think so, he simply was.