Instead, she draws the tarp closer, shoulders curling inward like she’s bracing against something colder than wind. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she says.
And it’s not a question. It’s not even a hope. It’s a quiet fact spoken into the dark.
I nod again.
Something loosens in her posture, like she’s been holding herself rigid since the moment she arrived on this planet and just now remembered how to breathe. Then—damn me—she smiles.
It’s faint. Fragile. But real. A sunrise breaking through the storm.
I look away.
Because I don’t know what to do with something that gentle. I’ve only ever known what to kill. What to endure.
She shifts, cradling the tarp in her lap like a comfort object, and sits cross-legged, her back straight but her limbs loose. No tension. No fear.
Just stillness.
The kind that wraps around your ribs and makes you ache without knowing why.
I sink lower into the shadows, the stone cool against my back. I keep her in my peripheral. I don’t need to stare. Her presence fills the space even without my gaze. Her breathing settles into a rhythm, slow and deliberate.
She doesn’t speak again. And neither do I.
But we sit. Side by side, divided by space but connected by something neither of us names.
The silence isn’t empty. It hums.
Like it has a pulse of its own.
Outside, the storm claws at the world, furious at our defiance. Inside, her heartbeat sings to me through the quiet. I feel it more than hear it, like drums in the distance calling me to something I don’t understand.
Her scent drifts on the still air—dust, sweat, and something sweeter beneath. Not perfume. Not anything artificial. Just her. Honest and wild.
My claws twitch.
I shouldn’t have revealed myself. Not even this much. But that look on her face when she found the pelt—that mix of awe and relief, like someone had left her a piece of meaning in a meaningless world—it broke something in me.
And now she’s here.
Because I brought her.
Because I couldn’t let the storm take her.
Because I couldn’t watch her die.
My instincts scream the word I’ve buried for years. Jalshagar.
But this isn’t about that. Not yet.
This isn’t about need.
It’s about responsibility.
And guilt.
And something colder: memory.
I’ve failed before.
