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Occtis can’t stop his eyes from wandering back up to peek at the faint, pixie-sized greenish gold speck of light in the tree every couple of minutes.
He’s glad to have reunited with everyone from the other group, truly. Well, glad that they didn’t all die on the mission to avenge Thjazi, at any rate. He’d be lying, though, if he said he’d prefer to spend time with any of them rather than with the only member of their little team that isn’t currently sitting around the fire with him. They’ve all been back together, his group and hers, for two whole days now, and it’s been…odd, to say the least. Thimble had been indescribably relieved to see him still (somewhat) alive, and she’d very patiently listened to his explanation and story, offering her own in return. But since then, she’s been almost manic, buzzing around faster than usual, talking either a mile a minute or not at all for hours on end, constantly making herself busy with one thing or another as they travel.
She hasn’t slept. And he knows, because he hasn’t either. The difference, though, is that he doesn’t need to now, and if she doesn’t start soon, things are going to get much more difficult for all of them.
And the thing is…he’s got so much more to tell her. So much more to say about how he feels and what she means to him. But he can’t. Not now, not as long as she’s in this state.
Occtis is jostled from the thought as Tyranny’s sharp elbow meets his ribcage. He pulls his eyes down from the tree to meet hers, except they’re not hers. They’re his. Or at least, how his used to look. She’s in the middle of telling a story about disguising herself as him to try to fool some of his family’s guards, but if the voice she’s using now is anything like what she used then, he’ll be even more surprised they all escaped that encounter with their lives. Not that he’s truly been listening. His mind is up in the tree, and even a demon’s beckoning gaze isn’t enough to bring it down.
“Are you listening, undead clone of myself?” Tyranny-Occtis asks, in an accent he’s most certainly never had.
“Sorry, I…” he stammers, then stands abruptly when he feels the eyes of the other three men on him. “I need to, uh…walk Pin.”
“Ah, just let him run off with Wulferic,” Kattigan suggests with a wave of his hand. Beside him, the wolf’s ears perk up in anticipation.
“No. I-I mean, it’s…I should probably…stretch my legs anyway.” That part of the excuse to leave is only half a lie. He’s come to realize how hard it becomes to make himself move at all if he doesn’t get some blood flowing in his dead limbs for too long.
He stands there for only a second longer before taking off without another word, Pin on his heels and Teor’s knowing gaze at his back. Trying to sell the lie to the rest of them – who have already stopped paying him any mind – he wanders for a while with his undead familiar, letting Pin lead him around the edges of the camp. Not too far away. Always keeping the tree with the pixie’s faint glow in his periphery.
The two of them stop when they reach Vaelus and Thaisha, who’ve posted up on the far end of their little campsite to keep watch while the others have a relaxing evening. Occtis indeed feels himself relax slightly in their presence, far more used to Thaisha’s energy after months on the road together and learning to appreciate Vaelus’s quiet intensity as well. Pin finds his way – as he always does now – over to the elf woman, who picks him up and scratches behind his ear just the way he likes.
“Too exciting over there?” Thaisha asks, nodding in the direction of the campfire and the other group.
“Yeah…only enough room for one Occtis in that conversation,” he muses. “And it was never gonna be me.”
Thaisha sputters a laugh behind her hand and Vaelus lets out a single “Ha!” But they both grow silent as Occtis’s gaze once again drifts from the group at the fire up to the tree. Thaisha’s follows, and she sighs in quiet resignation.
“We tried to tell her we didn’t need help on the watch, but she insisted on keeping an eye out,” she reports. “I can’t really blame her for wanting to, I mean, she missed two of her friends dying. But still. It’s been two days.”
“I know…” Occtis agrees softly.
“Will you just please make her go to sleep?” she implores him, and he scoffs.
“Trust me, I’d love it if she went to sleep. But this is Thimble we’re talking about,” he reminds her, with a helpless gesture toward the tree. “I can’t make her do anything. No one can.”
“Well she’s more likely to at least somewhat listen to you than anyone else, so…go try. Please.” Thaisha clasps her hands together and bats her eyelashes at him, and Occtis shakes his head, already knowing he can’t and won’t go against her wishes.
“I’ll try…”
“Good luck,” Vaelus offers, then starts to step away from the two of them. “I’m going to go do a perimeter check.”
Occtis watches her for a second, then locks his eyes with the purple buttons on Pin’s face as she carries him away on her shoulder.
“Wait,” he calls out, and Vaelus stops and turns around. “Sorry, but…I might need him.”
Vaelus frowns and takes Pin off her shoulder to look at him for a moment, seriously contemplating while he looks back at her with his tongue flopping idiotically out of his mouth. Then she sighs and hands him over to Occtis.
“Fine....”
Occtis and Thaisha watch her slink away in disappointment to make the rounds, and he knows he should go as well, but he finds himself so rooted to the spot that he has to look down to make sure the druid hasn’t used some kind of magic to make the ground keep him there. Eventually he accepts that it’s just his own anxiety and fear of not being able to help, but even that realization doesn’t get his feet moving.
He regrets that, as soon as Thaisha’s mouth opens again.
“Are you gonna tell her how you feel?”
“Who? Vaelus?” he asks, a poor attempt to deflect.
Thaisha only crosses her arms and stares at him, not buying it for a second.
Occtis deflates in resignation. There’s a part of him that also regrets confessing to her, late one night, maybe a week after he’d died. But in some way it had been a relief to get it off his chest, to share with at least one other person that when he thought he was leaving this world for good, his biggest regret was never telling that bright little pixie how much he’d loved her.
Not that there’s anything to be done about it right now.
“It’s not a good time…” Occtis mutters weakly, holding Pin closer and staring at his own feet, which shift beneath him in an awkward rhythm. “She’s been through a lot lately and I don’t wanna add to—”
“Right, because what we’ve learned from this adventure so far is that the future is definitely guaranteed and we should totally expect to be able to have all the conversations we need to have way down the line.”
“Thaisha…”
“Occtis…”
He lets out a long, uncomfortable sigh, not used to pushing so much air through his lungs anymore.
“Look, it’s not that I disagree with you. It’s just…all the disappointment she’s had lately…” He trails off, cringing at his insufficient choice of words for everything that’s happened over the past few weeks. He shakes his head. “I don’t want this to be another one, if she…doesn’t feel that way about me.”
For once, the witty orc doesn’t immediately refute him, and Occtis thinks maybe she knows, somehow, that he’s right to be hesitant. But then she reaches out and holds the back of his neck in her strong hand, looking down at him tenderly until his eyes meet hers.
“In my experience…it’s always better to know that you’re loved. Doesn’t matter if it’s the kind you’re expecting or not,” she tells him with a warm smile, which he’s almost able to return. “And, for the record, I don’t think you could disappoint her if you wanted to.”
A dozen refutations spring to his lips, but he refrains and smiles shyly back at her instead. Occtis doesn’t know what it’s like to have a caring mother, one that wants the best for him and will do anything to keep him safe, to help him be happy. He doesn’t know, but he thinks it would probably feel like being on the receiving end of Thaisha’s proud smile.
“Thanks, Thaisha,” he tells her. “For everything.”
She nods and stares into his eyes for a second longer, then winks as she lightly smacks him on the cheek. “Go get her, sport.”
Without any further excuse to delay it, Occtis steps away and begins to trudge off in the direction of the tree where Thimble sits watching over them. His mind is full of worry and self-doubt, but somehow his feet keep moving, keep propelling him closer. Even through his hesitation he’s drawn to her, his literal light in the darkness, the beacon for whatever soul he has left.
She’s lit the way for him for so long. It’s only right that he at least try to return the favor.
When he finally makes it to the base of the tree he realizes she’s too high up for him to really see her, and she doesn’t acknowledge his presence. If he had to guess, he’d say she’s been sitting there with her knees pulled up to her chest, a familiar pose from the few times he’d ever seen her truly sad before all this began. He tries to remember what he’d said and done on those occasions to cheer her up, but nothing even remotely sufficient comes to mind.
“Hey,” is all that makes it out of his mouth when he finally manages to speak.
“Hey,” is all she says in return.
If he still had a heart, it would be sinking at the heavy sound of exhaustion in her voice. He clears his throat and tries to squint to see her better, curled up in the crook of a branch well above his head.
“How’s…everything in the tree?”
“Fine.”
“Um…Vaelus and Thaisha have the watch covered. You should come down.” He stops himself before suggesting she get some rest, instead opting for a reason to come down that won’t make her immediately combative. “Pin misses you.”
He holds up the reanimated fox, and Pin lets out an adorable little squeak in agreement. But still she doesn’t move.
“He can come up,” she says, and Occtis mentally slaps himself in the face.
“Ah well, actually he’s, uhhh…he’s scared of heights, so…”
He lies, badly, and finally Thimble seems to unfold herself and look down at them.
“Is that true, Pin?”
Pin yips, and Occtis can tell he’s been betrayed, but he tries to lie again.
“That…that means yes,” he calls to her, only to immediately curse in pain as Pin’s teeth bite down on his finger. “Ow! Hey. Work with me, here.”
The faintest laugh from above might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard.
“Sure…I’ll come down,” Thimble says. “For Pin. Who misses me. And is scared of heights.”
Occtis knows she hasn’t believed a word he’s said, but he doesn’t care. Whatever’s left of his heart swells again when she flies down and lands on his right shoulder, opposite from Pin now perched on his left. He smiles at her, and she seems to try to smile back, but it certainly doesn’t reach her tired eyes.
He chooses not to press any more and instead just walks them over to the remaining unoccupied tent set up in their camp. Julien and Lady Aranessa took up residence in the other nearly as soon as it was pitched, but everyone had kept away from the second and no one speaks up in protest when he enters it now. There’s nothing inside but a couple of bedrolls and a lantern, which Occtis flicks on as Pin and Thimble both hop down from his shoulders and start what looks like either a wrestling match or a tickle fight. Maybe some mixture of the two. Either way, it’s amusing, and he sits and watches fondly as they play together.
It hits him suddenly, though, after a few minutes, just how small she seems in comparison even to Pin. She’s always been so small, of course. He knows that, has never needed to be reminded of her minuscule stature compared to his own, but there has always been something larger-than-life about her, and it seems to be missing now. That spark, that energy, that had always made her so big in his mind even as a four-inch tall pixie has dwindled with everything that’s happened to her. She’s been beaten down – reduced – by her grief and pain. He wants desperately to fix it, to build her back up again the way she’s done for him so many times, but he’s not sure how. He’s not sure he’s even capable of it.
Thimble must sense that he’s trying to work out how to say something to her, because after a while she slumps down against Pin’s side where he lies on his back and finally looks at Occtis.
“Just spit it out, Tachonis.”
He sputters for a moment, not sure where to begin.
“It’s just…they’re worried—I mean, I am also. I....Everybody’s worried about you,” he finally gets out, and she raises an offended eyebrow.
“Me?”
“Thimble, you haven’t slept since…we all got back together.”
She ponders that for a moment, as if she hasn’t realized, then goes on the offensive again.
“Well neither have you.”
Occtis sighs. “It’s different for me now. I told you that.”
She flies up suddenly and buzzes back and forth in front of his face.
“Well, maybe it’s different for me too. Maybe my…fairy…strength can keep me up for weeks, you don’t know,” she insists. “Maybe it’s almost just as good as Vaelus’s elf thing and your....dead…thing…”
Her argument loses steam at the end as she looks at him miserably, drooping in the air until she falls into his outstretched hands waiting below. Occtis smiles sadly at her and gently sets her down on the bedroll, then lies down on his side next to her, pillowing his arm under his head.
“Maybe…” he concedes. “Or maybe we just…aren’t trying hard enough.”
Thimble looks up at him with a speck of hope. “You said you couldn’t…”
“I know. But. I’m still new to the…dead thing, and I’ve been…scared. And confused. And worried…” He pauses, then softly pats the fabric below her, beckoning. “But now that I know you’re okay, maybe I could rest. Maybe now that you’re here, it’ll work.”
She looks like she’s on the verge of tears, but a smile peeks through instead as she lies down to mirror him.
“All we can do is try, I guess,” she says, and he nods. But then she frowns again as she looks him up and down. “Except....”
“What?”
She starts a few times to speak but fails, as if she’s not quite convinced herself to admit what she needs to say.
“I mean, the whole reason I’ve stayed up all this time, it’s just....” she finally begins, so softly he can hardly hear. “Now that we’re together again…I don’t really wanna let you out of my sight.”
Occtis can only smile sympathetically, because he knows the feeling.
“Me either,” he whispers. “What do we do about that?”
“Hmm…” She considers him thoughtfully, then stands and takes a few steps towards him. “Maybe if I just…”
She flutters up and pokes his shoulder until he gets the message and lies on his back instead. Occtis watches breathlessly as she settles down and curls up against his chest, then peeks up at him expectantly. He’s at a loss for only a moment before very gently reaching up and loosely covering her with his hand. Satisfied, she wraps her arms around his thumb and settles down again, and for the first time he’s completely glad for his new state of being, because it means he doesn’t have to look away from this picture for even a moment in order to rest.
He does try after a while, though, really. He lets the contentment wash over him and relaxes with her safely tucked into him, hoping it will be enough. But he still doesn’t feel tired, and he still can’t help but be aware of every movement of every sinew on the inside of his body, even as he lies perfectly, unnaturally still. It’s uncomfortable, and unsettling, even though he’s more at ease than he’s ever been.
Thimble must feel it too. She stirs, adjusts for a while, trying to get comfortable against the cold stillness of his breathless body, but it’s no use. She sits up and looks at him, tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I can’t…”
“It's okay. I know it’s d—I know I’m…different now,” he assures her.
“I’d be okay with that, it....it just feels like when I…” she trails off, but Occtis can fill in the blank easily enough.
“When you fell asleep on Thjazi,” he whispers. “At the funeral.”
“Yeah…” She sniffs, her tears falling harder as she starts to shake and sob a little. “And he didn’t wake up, so…”
Occtis’s eyes close slowly as a wave of despair hits him. He doesn’t have the heart – literally – to tell her that she doesn’t have to worry about that. That he won’t need to wake up, because he won’t fall asleep. He knows that won’t help anything.
Instead he cradles her to his chest as he sits up again, then lets her sit in his hand as it rests on his knee.
“Well…if we can’t sleep, maybe we can try to do the thing that Vaelus has been teaching me,” he suggests.
She doesn’t object, so he explains all about how he and the 800-year-old elf woman have bonded in recent weeks over not needing to sleep like the rest of their party. He tells her how Vaelus has tried to teach him her methods of meditation, one of which includes reliving memories from her past specifically saved through some old elven magic he hasn’t quite been able to master yet.
When a moment is perfect, Vaelus’s mother once told her, and she then told him, and he now tells Thimble, it’s important to Remember it. Since he’s learned about that ability, though, the moments have mostly been pretty far from perfect, he explains.
“But I’ve spent most nights just wishing I could have done it with old memories, you know?” he says. “Just thinking about those. Since…the ones I’ve been making lately haven’t exactly been worth saving.”
“What old ones would you want to keep?” Thimble asks, and Occtis dips his head shyly.
“Well. Pretty much all of them are with you,” he confesses.
Thimble takes a seat cross-legged in his palm, rests her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, clearly settling in to make him talk for a while.
“Like what?”
And so he talks, listing off early memories at first – the day they met, the first time she tried to teach him to fight – then eventually moving on to some smaller moments. Like the time she showed off her “specialty” of braiding hair by adding a dozen braids to his dark, wavy locks and then stuck as many bright, tiny flowers to it as she was capable of druidcrafting in one afternoon.
“You want to remember that?” she laughs. “But you were so embarrassed you wouldn’t even go outside.”
“Yeah, but you were so happy with your work,” he explains with a shrug. “I got over it.”
“I did make you very pretty…” she says, leaning back with her hands against his palm, looking up at him as if trying to paint the look onto his current self in her mind. “Even though the flowers clashed with your whole vibe.”
Occtis hums. “Maybe if you tried more purple and less like, bright orange and green…”
“Don’t tempt me, Occ,” she warns, then sits up and conjures a bright green carnation into her hand, nearly double the size of her own head. She stands and flies up in front of his face, holding the green flower up beside his cheek with a thoughtful look. “Hm. The green would really go with your eyes now, but…”
Thimble pulls away and the green flower shrinks in her hand under her fae magic. She tucks it behind her own ear, then crafts another. A purple camellia, perfectly matching the shade he wears everywhere. It’s bright, and beautiful, just like the one who made it.
“Yeah. Definitely more your color,” Thimble says quietly, placing the flower behind his ear to match her own.
If Occtis were still in the habit of breathing, the moment would have stolen his breath away. As it is, he just smiles, enamored once more by the four-inch tall woman in front of him who finally seems to take up his whole view again. She grins back at him with a familiar softness in her eyes, and Occtis thinks maybe Thaisha was right. Maybe he can’t disappoint her and all he needs to do is find a little courage and just say it. Just tell her that he—
The moment is broken when he suddenly feels tiny paws on his shoulder and then a nip at his ear, as Pin snatches his flower in his mouth and darts away out of the tent before either of them can react.
“What the—”
“Ugh. Pin!” Thimble shouts, but the fox is already gone, likely running off back to Vaelus or Wulferic. She puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head. “I don’t know why you named him after me.”
Occtis laughs. “Really? Cute little troublemaker who steals stuff? You can’t see that?”
She glares at him and it’s adorable.
“I’m gonna let that go because you called me cute, but watch it,” she says, pointing a threatening finger at him even as a smile slips onto her face. Then she sighs and takes a seat on his knee. “So, what else have you been remembering?”
Occtis pauses to reorient himself for a moment, not quite ready to move on from the previous one and back to the conversation they’d been having. He shakes his head and recalls some of the things he’s spent recent nights replaying in his mind while the others slept.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about when I came to the Penteveral and we got to do stuff together in the city,” he tells her. “Like that time you made me sneak you into the theatre to watch Hal’s play.”
Thimble scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Dumb idea. It was impossible to see anything from your pocket.”
“Yet you still had plenty of commentary…”
“The fairies were just played by kids! It’s no wonder Wick thinks I'm a child!” she shouts. Occtis cocks his head in confusion, and she waves her hand. “It’s okay, I think I've shamed him and made fun of him enough he’s starting to get better.” He frowns. “But don’t worry. You’re still my favorite outcast son of a Sundered House.”
“Um. Thank you…?” Occtis mutters, then shakes his head again. “Oddly enough, though, several of my memories are of you relentlessly making fun of me.”
Thimble gasps dramatically. “Whaaat? I would never—”
He cuts her off and begins ticking them off on his fingers. “The first whole year I knew you. Most of the times you tried to teach me to fight. When I got the holster for my book so I didn’t have to carry it all the time—”
“I’m just saying, if you’re gonna have a thigh holster you should at least have something cool in it. Like a dagger!”
“Maybe the book is concealing my dagger,” he posits.
She stares at him for a second. For five whole seconds.
“It’s not.”
“It could be.”
“Yeah but knowing you, it’s not,” she declares, and she’s not wrong, but he pouts anyway. “You’re a nerd, Occtis! And that is okay! It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
“You see what I’m talking about? Relentless!”
They go on that way for a while, bantering, chatting, sharing memories and stories of all the times they’ve shared, all the times they’ve promised to see each other later and never broken that promise. Occtis has no idea how long it goes on, and he doesn’t care, as long as she stays smiling.
Which is why he’s not quite ready when the memories start including Thjazi, and the mood begins to shift toward something more and more melancholy, until they’re right back where they started.
Thimble wilts again, folding back up with her knees to her chest, taking the flower from her ear and turning it over and over in her hands as he looks on helplessly once more.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “About what—I mean, I know it doesn’t help at all but…I wish he was still here.”
“Yeah…”
He can’t help but wonder, sitting there watching her drown in sorrow, what Thjazi would do if he was here. If it was Occtis that was still dead and not him. He’d probably offer some grand solution, some dangerous but thrilling adventure that would fix everything. He’d probably smile confidently and laugh in the face of all their fears. As much as Occtis admired Thjazi and tried to emulate him in any little way he could, he’d never managed to get either of those abilities mastered. He can’t help Thimble in that way, much as he’d like to.
But Thaisha’s advice echoes in his mind once again, reminding him that he won’t disappoint her just by being himself. By trying to help in his own way.
Not that he knows how to do that. The talking helped for a while, sure, but it only brought them right back here again. Back to a moment where she seems overwhelmed by grief. By guilt.
Guilt…
It strikes him, all of a sudden, why Thimble hadn’t wanted to let him out of her sight long enough to get some rest. For every big moment of his life since he met her, she’s been right there with him. Every time he was scared and unsure and needed a friend. Every time he learned something big or felt a new kind of happiness. She was there, always, for him.
Until she wasn’t. Until he needed her most.
There’s no part of him that blames her for what happened. He’d never even consider it. But he knows, suddenly, that she blames herself. That even though he’s mostly alive now, she’ll never forgive herself for not being there.
And Occtis can’t make her do that, but he can let her know it hasn’t changed the way he feels about her.
“Thimble…” he starts, carefully. “I know that I’m…not him…”
She sighs behind her knees. “I don’t need you to be him, Occ.”
“Okay. Good. I know, but…I just want you to know that…I’m here. For you. For anything you…for whatever you need. Always,” he says, annoyed at himself for the stilted manner of it all but trying to push on regardless. “Because....”
He pauses, the next three words – the most important three words – stuck in his throat and threatening to choke him.
Thimble sits up a bit and urges him on. “Because…?”
He works to take a breath, then another one, and tries again.
“Because I....I love you. I think.” And suddenly it’s out. He looks at her, and she stares at him blankly, almost…afraid. He’s made a mistake. Fuck. He starts to backtrack. “Y-you know, in-in like a—”
“Like I’m your little sister or something?” she cuts in sharply but quietly, retreating behind her knees again.
“Well. As you constantly like to emphasize, you are the older one,” he quips, but it falls flat. He’s fidgeting now, totally unable to sit still under her suddenly curious gaze.
“Is that…the only objectionable part of that to you?” she asks, softly, cautiously.
“I…uh,” he stammers, looking for a way to deflect. “I’m not sure what you—“
“Occtis. Three days ago I thought you were dead. I thought I’d never see you again. That I’d abandoned you to die and I’d never get to tell you…how much you meant to me…” she says, and Occtis knows that if he still had a heart it would have just stopped beating. She gets up and hovers in front of him for a second, then floats forward to rest her tiny forehead in the middle of his own. His eyes flutter closed. “If you’re worried about saying something that might upset me…don’t be....I want to know how you feel. I need to know.”
Occtis swears he can feel some warmth come back to his cold, dead body. He breathes in, and out, ever so slowly and carefully.
“All I know is…you were the last person I thought of when I died. And you were the person I thought of the most when I was alive, and…” One more breath. “And in none of those times was I thinking of you like a sister.”
Thimble pulls away slowly and he opens his eyes to find her smirking fondly at him.
“Knew it,” she says, then breaks into a wide, affectionate smile that tells him no, he hasn’t disappointed her at all.
His own smile grows so wide he thinks it might permanently alter his face.
“I honestly don’t…fully know what it means, really. I don’t think anybody’s even…ever said it to me before. In any kind of way,” he admits, noting the way her smile falters for an instant. “But I think…yeah. I love you. In…some kind of way.”
Her grin grows brighter again. “I don’t think the way needs a name right now. Do you?”
He shakes his head. “Probably not.”
For a moment she just hovers there as they smile at each other. Then she shakes her head a bit, almost in disbelief, before looking back in his eyes.
“I love you too, Occ,” she says, and he can’t help the soft laugh of relief that escapes him.
“Like a little brother?” he teases, and she rolls her eyes.
“Maybe at one point,” she admits. “But no, definitely not now.”
They laugh again, together, not even completely aware of why. Then he goes to offer her his hand to rest on but pauses when he sees it, suddenly reminded again of the fact that he’s different from how she’s always known him.
He curls his fingers into a fist and looks up at her, bracing for the answer to a question he doesn’t want to ask.
“You’re sure? Even now that I’m…” He trails off, but she understands.
Thimble flies up close to his face again and pats his cheek, the way she always used to when they said goodbye. He knows it’s different now, pale and gray and sunken, a sign that he’ll never be the same as he was. But somehow, despite that, she looks at him the same way she always has.
“Dying couldn’t change anything that I love about you, Occtis Tachonis,” she tells him, and he smiles wide again, leaning into her touch for a minute until she pulls back to look him up and down. “Besides…I think we’d have bigger hurdles, if we were worried about stuff like that.”
She gestures first at his long, lanky form, then to her much smaller self. He laughs, shakes his head.
“I’m not.”
“Nah. Me either.”
She winks at him, then floats up and gives him a kiss on the forehead that would’ve surely made him blush if there were enough blood in his face. Thimble then hovers a few inches away from his nose and extends her neck out toward him, clearly waiting for something. It takes him a few seconds – and a wiggle of her eyebrows – for him to get it. He leans in, so so so gently, and returns a kiss to the top of her head. They both giggle as she glows brighter than he’s ever seen her.
The exhaustion of the past days seems to hit her all at once then, finally at peace and happy. Finally relieved, at least somewhat, of the burden of her guilt. Occtis watches fondly as she lays back down on her side on the bedroll next to him, then reaches out for him.
“Come here,” she orders, and he obeys. He always will.
He lays beside her and rests his hand between them so she can hold onto him, the way she did two long, crazy years ago in his dorm room at the Penteveral. So much has changed since then, but certainly not the feeling of safety that came with it. Certainly not the feeling of home.
This must be it, he thinks. This must be how it feels when a moment is perfect.
A moment to Remember.
As he watches her fall soundly asleep, still smiling and holding onto him, he feels the ancient magic work for the first time.