"Daddy?...Daddy?"

Tear-filled eyes. Blood-spattered green dress. She's on her knees in the icy mud beside him and she's holding his hand but he can't feel it any more.

"Don't cry," he says. "Don't cry, Allie." That can't be his voice -- his voice isn't supposed to sound like that. His breath isn't supposed to rattle on the inhale. He isn't supposed to be dying.

"Go," he whispers as numbness creeps up his chest toward his neck so that he can't even feel himself breathing any more. "Allie..."

"No!" She insists, four years old, brown-eyed, three feet of terrified stubbornness. "I won't!"

"Run to the village, Allie. Please..."

She doesn't move. She sits in the mud holding his hand. He doesn't want her to die. He doesn't want her to see him die. She has to go.

"Allie, go to the village. Tell them to come back for me. They can help me get better."

Allie releases his hand and it drops to the mud with a soft thump. She starts to get up, then stops, confused, torn.

"Allie, go! Run!"

She's crying in earnest now, her tiny frame shuddering with sobs. "Daddy..." she says, and it seems that all the pain and loss and fear and confusion in the universe is wrapped up in that one word. His heart shatters.

"Run!" He says sharply, because he's so tired and if she doesn't leave now he's going to ask her to stay because he doesn't want to die alone. She can't stay. She'll die if she stays.

She obeys him, finally, and runs away toward the village without looking back. After she's out of sight he musters the strength for one weak, choking sob.

He will never see his daughter again.

The villagers won't come for him, and he doesn't blame them. They're good people, but they aren't stupid. They'll take care of Allie. They'll raise her and give her a home. That's all that matters now.

She'll hate him someday, probably, because he lied to her and told her to go and never gave her a chance to say goodbye. But some part of her will surely always love him. Some part of her will surely cling to the warmth and security he gave her. Some part of her will surely remember how he took her in after her mother died, and changed her diapers and tucked her in at night and sang to her.

"Don't forget me, Butterfly," he whispers with his dying breath.

Allie Sheppard will never see her father again.