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Although she hadn’t said it, Emerie was enjoying the unimpeded sunshine. She often closed her eyes, stealing his ability to admire them, so she could bask in it with her face turned upwards.

At one point, he’d thought her hair reminded him of fire as much as it had the sun. Now, he no longer wished to associate it with her, not after how she had cried against him. Currently, it glowed and sparkled, like streaks of malleable crystal.

His gaze dipped to her freckled cheeks, nose, and forehead, noting a few new spots and none of the redness from days ago. Even after she’d rested the night she told him of her story, her cheeks and nose had been swollen, pink, and kind of cute. He knew it was terrible he felt that way about her teary face, but he thought he found it appealing because she’d been vulnerable with him.

She had willingly let him comfort her, and he was rewarded with a cuddle that had ached his chest while making it swell with tenderness.

Her tears had alarmed him, of course. They reminded him of the floating drops that hovered around his face whenever he deeply missed Aleron.

She shared with me. She also shares... my pain.Although their stories weren’t the same, the emotions that came from them were.

He hadn’t realised Emerie had faced a tragedy so horrid.

I always knew she had sadness inside her. Now I understand why.

Like he once told her, when she wasn’t focussed on him, her gaze was sombre as she looked off into the world. It’d taken him a while to realise what she was secretly expressing.

She looked... lost. It was the same hopelessness that had grown inside him from the moment his kindred was taken from him.

She even wore it now as she eyed those trees, then a disdainful expression flickered over her features.

She didn’t want to go into the forest, either.

“Hey,” she said, looking up at him. “Could you put me down? I’d like to stretch my legs for a few hours, and I think it would be better if you rest here in the daytime. It’ll be safer.”

I do not want to put her down,Ingram mentally grumbled, as he carefully lowered her to her feet. He knew she’d argue with him if he didn’t.

The grass only came to her knees, and he was glad he didn’t lose her.

Her pretty face grimaced as she took a step, but she made no noise of discomfort. She did, however, lift her arms above her head, go to the tips of her toes, and let out an awful, grating groan as she stretched.

His sight shifted to yellow at her doing this, at her.

She is a funny human.

“Alright, big bird. Time for you to have a nap.”

Ingram, glad to rest his legs, sat with his clawed feet inwards, his legs bent and falling slightly open. He didn’t want to straighten them, since he’d been walking on them, but he also didn’t wish to cross them.

“I will sleep soon.”

He would like to...decompressfirst, as she often said before she actually laid down.

Shrugging, she turned and limped over to the other side of the hilltop. With her hands on her flared hips, she stood, surveying the landscape before her, and he took the opportunity to look his fill.

There was barely a breeze, but it still played with the ends of her hair, making them sway just above her tightly clad arse. When she turned her head to the side to look somewhere else, his sight ran down the profile of her nose, noticing the slightest bump near the middle. Her lips were currently thinned in thought, but they were usually pink and plump.

He wasn’t sure if she realised, but she’d turned the scarred side of her face to him.

He had a new appreciation for it.

Despite her struggles, despite the pain she must have endured – as he himself had been burned many times by humans waving sticks of fire at him – her scars were the evidence of strength. Strength she shouldn’t have needed to wield, but had done so anyway and was alive, here with him now.

He touched a claw to his chest, remembering when it had been cracked open so someone could show him his own beating purple heart.

He did not bear scars like she did. His suffering had only lasted a day before it disappeared.

As his gaze dropped down to her still-injured leg after days of it happening, he wondered how his mind would have twisted had he been forced to live with his wounds. For days, weeks, months.