I want to answer.
Not with a ritual word. Not with something old and sacred.
Just withmy name.
My self.
My presence.
My choice.
But I remain quiet.
Not because I’ve forgotten how.
Not because I’m afraid.
But because I want her tochoose it.
To chooseme.
To choose this bond — this impossible, forbidden, untranslatable thing that crawls along my spine and roots itself deep in my bones.
I watch her sleep. Her chest rises once, twice, slow and sure.
Her breath.
Her warmth.
Her scent.
And somewhere beneath muscle memory and old vows and tempest-scarred instincts, I feel the first faint echo of a word I’ve buried for so long I thought it dead:
Jalshagar.
The bond is already there.
And for the first time since my exile, I’m not sure I want it to break.
My anxiety bleeds into the physical realm. I accidentally slice my own thumb trying to sharpen my blade. My use of human curse words is apparently quite amusing.
“Son of a?—!”
She laughs.
A real one this time, not the nervous titter she gave when she first landed on this cursed world. It’s low and throaty, unguarded—her head tipped back, red hair spilling like flame over her shoulders, catching in the bioluminescent light bleeding off the ridge.
I feel it in my ribs.
Like a punch. Or a prayer.
That sound wasn’t meant for me. She’s laughing at something she just said—a joke about Earth coffee and how she’d sell a kidney for a cup right now. But gods, the way it hits me. I want to hoard the sound. Trap it in a cave and guard it like it’s mine. Because for the first time in too many cycles, I’m not thinking about how to survive the next hour.
I’m thinking about her.
And that terrifies me.
She doesn’t flinch when I sit beside her. Doesn’t edge away. Just… shifts slightly so our shoulders brush, and lets her head fall soft against my arm like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
