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Molly is restless.
Thick clouds cover the already pitch black sky, shrouding the world in what must seem like an eternal darkness; the pure thought of light seeming far away and even unreal. The silence that fills the night is almost painful, as if the silence is too loud, not even a cricket in the grass, a hoot from an owl or a whisper of the wind audible.
It’s a quiet night, but Molly can’t sleep. Heavy clouds loom above, dark and grey. Not a single star in sight, not one.
No moon.
The vast empty space of sound and view is giving Molly a headache.
As someone who has a habit of avoiding silence, it is almost painful to be face to face with it like this, to feel so exposed and bare underneath it. Molly almost always has something to say; there’s always a witty remark or a sly comment, never an awkward pause. Never an empty space on the canvas that is his body, tattooed from head to toe in colours of the rainbow and dressed in fabric that shines, announcing his entrance whenever he walks into a room, and along with that brightening the atmosphere of it too.
But out here, on the side of the road, there’s nothing. He doesn’t even hear the faint jingle when he tilts his head, the jingle of the silver crescent moon that hangs from his horn - the only moon in sight tonight.
He looks up at the sky again, trying to find her, only to stare at darkness. Darkness stares back, and an unsettling feeling settles in his stomach.
So Molly wavers, unable to rest in the absence, unable to rest in the darkness. He’s never been particularly afraid of it, never had a phobia for it, but ever since he found himself surrounded by it and then dug his way out of it to find himself face to face with the moon, he’s been… Different. Attached, in a way.
Molly doesn’t like staying in one place for too long. He doesn’t like getting too attached. He is a star that shines bright and burns twice as fast - he wants to live, to experience and to see everything that he can, taking every opportunity to try everything at least once. If not, how will he know he didn’t like it? It has led to both success and anguish. But moving around the world so fast as he does, it doesn’t exactly leave much room for settling down, there’s not much room forgetting too fond of something or someone.
But the moon, she holds a special place in him.
She’s watched over him, she was there when he came back around. She makes him feel at ease, fills him with peace. A strangely reassuring feeling, like everything might just turn out okay in the end. He has managed to follow that same attachment to the Moonweaver as well, has managed to see the same light in her. Maybe a little of it is self-reflection, but that is a thought for another night. A night with more light, a night that is the exact opposite of this one.
Because without the light in the sky, he can’t find peace.
So on moonless nights, Molly doesn’t sleep.
It doesn’t feel right, not when there’s so much darkness. It makes his skin crawl in a strange way, a way that feels foreign and familiar at the same time. He can’t explain it, and neither can he understand it.
In the absence of the moon, he finds himself led to the only other source of light.
The campfire has long since burned out, hiding away their little alcove in the shadows of trees, bushes and grass. Still, a little piece of light emits from the circle of carts - three dancing balls of light in the hands of a familiar wizard.
Molly gets up from his small make-shift bed in the grass, no sound even as he moves to unfurl the colourful blanket from his bedroll. He stands and then stretches his arms above his head until he feels a satisfying pop in the lower part of his spins. His tail does a small flick in satisfaction.
He observes Caleb, who has his nose buried in a book that’s resting on one knee, legs crossed as he sits in the grass, no bedroll visible. Caleb had insisted on taking the first watch himself as soon as they settled in for the night, letting everyone else get some rest.
They definitely needed it too, Beau having passed out hard as soon as she got the opportunity to. Yasha is also asleep, resting comfortably with her back to a tree trunk and arms around herself. Next to her is Jester, wrapped in a blanket with a small smile on her face; most likely dreaming about the obscene book that’s resting neatly in her arms. Nott is curled up in a ball near the small of Jester’s back, having stolen some of the blanket. She doesn’t seem to mind much, though. Further away is Fjord, lying on his side - perhaps to prevent himself from choking on saltwater in his sleep - his chest falling and rising peacefully.
Molly turns back to Caleb, who has looked up in the meanwhile. He smiles - Caleb doesn’t return it, but he does raise an eyebrow.
“Why are you—“
“Can’t sleep.”
Molly beats him to it, because he knows exactly what Caleb was going to ask him in the first place. The quick response makes Caleb blink once, then twice, and then sigh, looking back to his book.
Molly’s tail flicks again, this time in disappointment.
“What’cha reading?”
Caleb doesn’t look up from his book, not until at least three whole seconds have passed. Three whole awkward seconds, but Molly doesn’t back down. When Caleb seems to realise this himself, he sighs again. He looks at Molly, perhaps squinting a little - even with the dancing lights he’s holding up with one hand, it’s difficult to see much.
“Ehh, it is a book that I picked up from— from that bookshop I told you about last week, ja? Do you remember?”
Molly does remember. He tries to remember everything Caleb tells him, really. A man like him, someone with so many secrets and shadows, his words tend to weigh a lot in the hands of a man like Molly - in the hands of anyone. When someone doesn’t necessarily speak unless asked or provoked, they deliver a lot of meaning with simply one sentence. So Molly does his best to remember what he says, does his best to find the meaning behind his words and keep it.
“Yeah, you went there while the rest of us went shopping, didn’t you? We asked if you wanted to come, but you declined...”
Caleb nods quickly, however not looking up from the pages that are thick with writing. It makes Molly squint; he was never one for books himself, especially not ones like these, ones that are thick and leatherbound with ink covering what seems to be every spot of. He’d never really gotten the hang of reading in the first place - it made his eyes and his head hurt, and if there were too many words on one page, they had an annoying tendency to get mixed up and that would just intensify the headache even more.
It’s safe to say that Molly has learned his lesson and has since then spent the better half of two years staying away from literature - even talking about it isn’t something he particularly enjoys either. He just doesn’t see the appeal in it, doesn’t find words on pages interesting when he can just speak words instead.
But Caleb — a man who usually keeps his eyes glued to the floor, a man who is rough around the edges but soft with his words, a man who has seemingly spent many years in the shadows. The same man who lights up at the mention of a library, the same man who can read an entire book in less than an hour and memorise the entire thing too, just because he wants to or thinks it could be useful for later, filing away the information in that big brain of his.
So sure, Molly doesn’t exactly see the appeal in books himself, but he sees the appeal in what they mean to Caleb. Imagine meaning that much to someone.
Molly shifts on his feet for a moment.
There’s some sort of tension there, and he can’t tell if it’s between him and Caleb or just between him and himself. So he bites down on his forked tongue for a split second before deciding what to do next, before taking the bait. He walks closer, taking it one foot at a time.
Caleb looks up in response, no raised eyebrow this time. Just blue eyes of curiosity, and an underlying tone of worry - worry for Molly, perhaps? The thought of it sends something down his spine, and his tail flicks again in response, just a bit.
He takes a seat next to the wizard that’s looking him in the eyes this time, not at the pages of his book, but directly at Molly.
“Must be interesting, huh? You spent a good thirty minutes tracking down the best library in the city for that book.”
Molly’s lips curl upward, and Caleb’s expression softens in return.
"Ja, ja — I suppose I did…”
He smiles a little in return, a brief second of warmth emitting, warmer than the lights that emit from his gloved hand, the hand that’s not holding the book. It sends another prickling feeling down Molly’s spine, and he bites his tongue to avoid his tail from flicking again and betraying him.
Caleb tilts his head to look back down at his book, which leads to Molly quickly intervening, somehow desperate to keep the conversation going. He just wants something to do, something other than simply lying awake and looking at the dark sky — and Caleb is right there, along with the light.
“Must be pretty important too, huh. So, what’s it about?”
“…What?” Caleb asks, looking up in surprise, as if he was expecting the conversation to have ended earlier, as if he was expecting Molly to have walked away by now. It doesn’t make Molly back down, though. He’s fairly sure that it isn’t because Caleb doesn’t want to talk to him, it’s just that he’s occupied with something else. Still, Molly takes it as a challenge, refusing to back down.
“What’s the book about, Mr. Caleb?”
Caleb pauses, and Molly can’t tell if it’s because of the nickname or because he needs to articulate a proper summary that is short enough to satisfy his antisocial needs and to make sure Molly will understand it with his limited knowledge of the arcane.
“…It is a book about the study of transmutation spells that alter the recipient physically in a more subtle way than what the usual spell does.”
Molly claps his hands together, wiggling in place on the grass a bit to get more comfortable. He even wiggles a bit closer to Caleb, but that’s not important. He’s not entirely sure Caleb realises it either, so it’s a win-win situation nevertheless.
“Perfect,” he offers a smile, sharp incisors poking out from behind his lips, “sounds just about boring enough to conk me out immediately.”
Caleb blinks, the hand of which he’s casting dancing lights wavering a bit, as if he’s unsure of what to do with himself. Then he clears his throat, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion at Molly’s statement.
“What— what is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that your book is perfect sleep material, Mr. Caleb.”
”Was?"
“Read it to me?”
Caleb pauses, looking at the pages for a moment. He rubs his face with his free hand, looking back up at Molly with something doubtful in those blue eyes of his.
“…It is in Zemnian, Mollymauk.”
Molly blinks. Then he smiles, forked tongue poking out from behind sharp teeth.
“Even better.”
He settles again, aiming for comfort this time. He scoots closer to Caleb, who simply blinks in response, making a small sound of confusion when Molly lies down on his back next to him, head coming to rest on the thigh of Caleb’s left leg - the leg that’s crossed over the other.
There’s silence for a bit. Molly tilts his head to look up at Caleb, to catch his eyes. Careful red meets watching blue.
“This is okay, right? I can easily stop if you want me to, just say the word—“
"Nein, it’s— it’s fine.”
Caleb cuts him off, shaking his head as he observes him. The dancing lights that emit from his hand dim in return, but Molly can still see Caleb clearly. Dark vision certainly helps with that - he actually wouldn’t need the lights to see anything at all, but Caleb does. So the lights stay. Molly can’t say that he minds. In fact, he prefers it.
So he smiles again, softer this time. No sharp teeth or forked tongue, just a gentle smile that’s returned by a hesitant one from Caleb. No words are needed to communicate, not in this moment. So Molly simply sighs, sinking deeper into the grass as he closes his eyes, arms folded comfortably around himself.
Caleb keeps his promise and reads the pages aloud.
Molly doesn’t understand any of it, but that somehow makes it nicer. If he understood, he’d be trying desperately hard to focus on the words themselves and their meaning, which would just make him stressed rather than relaxed. But with Caleb speaking gently, hushed, as if he’s trying not to wake everyone else, it feels calm.
Caleb’s voice is quieter, somehow softer. His voice is always relatively soft, unless he’s provoked by Beau, perhaps Jester or sometimes Fjord. Molly takes pride in not having been the one to make him switch to sharper words ever since they’ve met.
He speaks those words that he grew up with, a language that’s personal to him, and now somehow Molly is witness to it, a part of it. It feels special. And it doesn’t take long before Molly’s breathing becomes rhythmic, eyes closing shut, just for the night.
In absence of the moon, Molly finds peace in the light of Caleb.