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How long he remained as unmoving as stone, he didn’t know.

The tiniest hint of warmth bled into the bone of his skull, and Linh’s face flickered into view in the background. Her head tilted as she cupped both sides of his jaw. In the back of his mind, he registered that hours must have passed, and she was now awake.

He even caught a glimpse of a sun streak hitting her cheek.

A tingle over his body informed him he’d slipped away with his arm in the nest, his head tilted on its side against his biceps, and his throat on top of his hand. His back was still bent, most of his body straight besides the last half of his lengthy tail. Thankfully he was bendy, otherwise the prolonged position would have ached him.

She spoke to him, her voice inaudible, only to get up and leave.

White took over his senses once more. Minutes, hours, days could have passed before he sensed her return.

Once more, she cupped under his jaw. This time, she attempted to lift his limp head until it was straight.

Her voice was so quiet and distant. “Are you going to wake up for me?”

Nathair wished he could, but he hadn’t been this deeply impacted for weeks. He’d spent days trapped in fragments on Earth, and months in Tenebris when he’d first done this to himself. The heaviness in his body told him he likely wouldn’t be coming out of this for a long while.

He’d always been worried of this happening, and how she may take it.

Then a radiant sensation prickled over his snout. It tingled up the bone of his face, his horns, and slowly made its way down his neck and back.

Linhhummed,and it brought her to the forefront of his mind, his sight, his sense of smell. Her touch blasted him, and Nathair choked as he was shoved back into consciousness.

Her face, appearing with a bright smile as he held up the weight of his skull, was the first thing he saw with clarity. He managed to catch that she’d changed from her usual purple garment into the thigh-high pink dress with the leaves sewn in. She smelt clean, as if she’d gone to wash, which is where she may have left to.

“There you are,” she stated with a giggle.

The moment she stopped humming, he fucking slipped away again. His head thunked against his knuckles and tipped against his biceps once more. Nathair didn’t even have the strength tocursein annoyance within his mind, but he felt the irritation in his chest.

Linh hummed again, only to give him a fleeting moment of control until she ceased.

Her voice echoed in the background. “I guess humming isn’t going to cut it today.”

She stroked up his snout and between his empty eye sockets. He wanted to lean into that gentle touch with his sight closed to savour it.

“I don’t want to sing to you, though.” Instead of lifting his head, she tilted her own until their gazes were centred – hers bright and aware, his dazed and unfocused. “I’m feeling much better, and I want you to give me attention. I don’t want to put you to sleep.”

Please,his mind whispered. Perhaps some rest would aid him.

Soft lips pressed against the centre of his maw. He managed to take in the impression of her pretty brown eyes staring into him from just beyond his snout. When that didn’t work, she tried to coax him out with many more over the bone of his skull. Hewanted to lean into each press of her lips and feel them totally, rather than the sensations of his fragments.

He felt his body limping as pain radiated up aleghe didn’t have. A hand at his side kept him steady, while his arm was crossed over the shoulders of another.“Who the hell twists their ankle going shopping, Sarah?”

A sigh flittered over his skull.

“Fine. I’ll justplayaround you, then,” Linh grumbled, a pout obvious in her voice.

Fuck, he wanted to see her pout. She was cute when she did so, and it usually had a contented purr vibrating from him. She was such a soft creature against his overall hardness that he liked when her personality moulded against him like this.

“You did say I could touch youalways.” He noted the humour.

Something cold and hard thunked against the top of his skull between his horns. “There, now you’re king of the nest,” she stated, and he figured she’d put the only tiara he had on top of his head. It slipped right off and clinked against the coins around her knees. “Fine. I’ll wear it.”

The green gem caught a fraction of light before the silver ore reflected the pinstripe of sun. She placed something on his wrist, then a second, as her voice echoed, “You’re so big I have to put necklaces around your arm since they won’t fit around that thick neck of yours.”

Nathair was thankful for that, as he didn’t like anything hard against his gills. Even her flat teeth were too sharp.

Metal clanked and chimed in the background of his fragments as she placed more jewellery on him. A bracelet around his horn, a ring up to the first knuckle of his pinkie.