I can't have a moment where you leave me with my mind

Got the windows down and my fingers crossed

The days had passed faster than they seemed they should. Each rise and fall of the sun entirely unbothered by the meaning she's placed inside them, and it's an envious thing she feels as she watches the dawnlight creep over the world, weightless in a way she can't imagine.

The decision had been made in the saddle, but she's let it temper each day since until it no longer risks bending. She tucks it into her pocket same as her matches, then pulls her jeans on with a jump afterwards and steps into each boot. One of them gets fitted with her pack of cigarettes, the bundle nestling between leg and leather before she rises into the fit of a shirt and jacket. Pulling her hair to one side over the collar, she picks up her hat, hesitating only as her gaze snags on the pale feather stuck in the band. Gently a thumb and finger coax the loose edges back into a neat line, and where there hadn't been one yet today, a smile appears. The moment is brief, and motion soon calls her back into the rhythm of things as she tilts her hat onto her head, ducking out of the room she'd been using.

A cup of coffee paired with a smoke and a visit to the market later, she's making her way to the designated meeting spot. By now the morning has lost all its gold, but the shadows are still long, and the chill lingers like it means to stay all day. A cloth bundle is transferred to her teeth as she uses her hands to haul herself up onto her favorite sunning rock, settling on the stone with her legs sprawling out in a flat V over the hide of it. She unwraps her purchase and pops a cherry in her mouth, one boot wiggling at the crisp and tart delight of the early season fruit. She waits, pretending she's done anything less than that for the past year, attempting a casual ease that like the sun this season, doesn't have the strength to pass all the way into her.

---

Colt

Just lookin' for a brand new way to get lost

I know you wanna save me but it's better if you don't

If Colt had thought him tense the last time she saw him, it’s nothing compared to the man making his way toward her now. The Refuge has taken something from him that no one else can see, and Vesper wears the absence like an injury he hasn’t yet figured out how to favour. His telepathy has gone quiet before, but only while shifted, when the world has rushed in to replace it through sharper hearing, richer scents, the tremble of the ground beneath hooves or paws. Here, there’s nothing waiting to fill the space. No minds brushing against his awareness, no emotions bleeding colour around words, no hidden current beneath the visible world.

He feels naked without it, though that word isn’t quite severe enough. Hobbled, perhaps, or shorn of something as precious and instinctive as sight. Every person he passes is suddenly a closed door, and every silence has become an uncertainty he can’t reach through. He hadn’t realized how much of himself lived in that extra sense until the Refuge cut it away, leaving him to navigate by expression and tone like everyone else. The effort has his shoulders held rigid beneath a dusty chambray shirt, while the muscle in his jaw feathers almost constantly around the sprig of peppermint bark caught between his teeth.

Only Colt could have gotten him to agree to this, but gods only know how long he’ll be able to bear it.

A coin moves restlessly through the fingers of one hand as he nears her rock, slipping over his knuckles and back into his palm before beginning again. He can see the cherries and the arrangement of her limbs, the hat and the feather tucked into its band, but none of it tells him what she’s thinking or how she feels about seeing him. Without the answer already waiting inside his skull, even the simple act of greeting her feels strangely precarious. Slowing a few paces away, he lifts his free hand with something almost wary in the motion. "Hey," he calls, the peppermint sharpening the drawl of it as the coin turns once more between his fingers.

Vesper

'cause a heavy heart is hard to keep afloat

Table ofc made by the talented Sky!