You are the night-time fear
She has no answers for him, and The Order remains more than a nightmare. He had thought the world seemed unnaturally calm and peaceful, with so many of the races mingling at the Festival of Lights in Halo, and here in the Grounds...For a moment he had thought they were gone, that these were better, brighter times. Realizing that they are not is hard. Heavy.
"It's alright," he reassures her, fleeing back to safer places, where he is not the one falling apart, but the one supposed to prevent it. She doesn't need to know, or have the answers. He doesn't know how old she is but she feels like a child, not much older than she looks, and it makes his heart ache.
"Don't," he murmurs before she rises, don't apologize, and Aamu easily lets her stand. His hands are tangled in loose strands of hair and stained with salt, but he folds them over his towel-covered thighs anyway. The dark hairs stand out against his pale skin. "Alright," he says again, feeling something he's not sure what it is. Desolate, because her slight and barely perceivable warmth is gone; proud, because she is trying to move on. "I'm just out here, if you need me."
He watches her go to face her fears, then deals with the mess left on the floor. Hair, seaweed, he collects it all carefully in his hands, leaving no trace of her first death on the floorboards. Into the fire it goes, spreading a smell he's glad he can't discern anymore.
Then he resumes his hunt for fat, to take care of the forgotten boots. He tends the fire, listening, always listening, ready to rescue her from the void and the water.
You are the morning when it's clear
AAMU
