i wish you’d stay

Sohalia

Say my name
And every color illuminates

Sohalia stared as Harper came closer. She couldn't help it: his eyes were glassy and distant, faded hickeys trailed up his neck, and he sat beside her with a humph, hiding a bottle of something she couldn't identify between his knees. It was a side of him she'd never thought to see. He'd always been so strong, so solid, so stalwart in her mind that she couldn't reconcile the man she knew with the man before her. Even his voice, when he spoke, wasn't quite his, thick and foreign and wrong, and she eyed him with concern as he settled in next to her.

"Just visiting," she replied vaguely, her silver gaze fixed on his so that it didn't wander curiously over the hickeys peeking out along the side of his neck. "A friend thought I could use a break and brought me out here to fly kites, of all things," she added with a laugh. "And I thought I'd stay to see Jata and maybe check out the meteor crash site that everyone's been talking about." She hesitated. "What about you?" she asked, cocking her head to one side, studiously ignoring the obvious answer in the bruises on his neck. "You're a long way from Torchline. Is everything... okay?"

We are shining
And we will never be afraid again