Wind by Naomi kritzer(9)

“What doesn’t?”
“You aren’t happy here. In fact, you’re clearly miserable. Your children are grown, or grown enough. And you’re wasted here—your gift is wasted here.”
Only one with eyes to see would even know about Dagmar’s gift. “You’re clearly a sorceress yourself,” Dagmar said.
“Of sorts,” Zimeya conceded.
“Can you see more than the gift? Can you see the damage as well?”
Zimeya looked for a long moment. Then: “Yes,” she said, quietly. “I see.”
“It was self-inflicted,” Dagmar said. “I believed—I thought—” She hesitated, not wanting to burst into tears in front of this near-stranger. “It was my own stupid choice.”

“So there must be another out there, similarly damaged.”
“I haven’t seen her in thirty-two years,” Dagmar said. She might have said, I haven’t seen her in thirty-two years, four months, and twenty-one days, because she always knew, even when she tried not to think about it, how long it had been since Gytha had left.
“Have you heard from her?”
“I try not to,” Dagmar said. “I leave when news of her arrives, though it always makes its way to me eventually.” Dagmar always felt a sharp pain in her heart at the sound of Gytha’s name. Most recently, the story had been about Gytha’s art rather than Gytha herself; one of the beautiful stone archways she’d created had shown cracks due to strain, and had been taken down lest it collapse on someone’s head. The night after Dagmar heard that story, she’d lain awake, wishing that she could feel some unkind satisfaction at that, but she felt the same lonely ache as always.