Griffith drifts in and out of sleep. His nerves are soothed by the weight and warmth of Guts pressing into the mattress beside him, and it's a yearned-for comfort after the past nights of Guts in the chair or upon the cot, the careful and agonizing distance between them.

But Griffith's sleep is rarely easy, and his thoughts wake him, revisiting the points Guts brought up but to no satisfactory conclusion. He sleeps again, dreams, wakes again, considers.

Guts stands beside him in a meadow, sun on his shoulders and a grin on his lips, boyish, a different Guts who knew less pain or who has somehow healed, a dream Guts who basks in the freedom of the road. "You ever feel watched here?" the sunlit Guts asks.

Griffith blinks, and he's back in his castle, laying on his bed, and the warmth isn't sunlight after all, only Guts. He looks as though he's expecting some response, so Griffith responds to the dream Gut's question.

"I always feel watched." He has, ever since he received the Behelit. Part of his destiny, he thinks. Watched by the gods, or by the Behelit itself, or by the creatures that lately he has seen in every shadow.

Leaning over, he takes a light kiss from Guts' lips, then sits up to scan the room. Nothing. A lingering warmth like sunlight. "What do you see?"