once more into the dark

Hotaru

I miss the days when stars were saintly
They sang to me in ways innately

Her letter to Noah is nearly word-for-word as he’d written before, when he lost Cordelia. Please come.

She doesn’t have many people to reach out to anymore. Talyson and Alys, once, but no longer. All others already an absence she’s used to accounting for; Rexanna chief among them. How ironic, what they’d last discussed before Hotaru’s ill-fated journey. She’d been nervous to ask about the potential for children. Now she sits in an empty house.

Deimos would have come if she called. She knows it. But she’s scared - scared of him taking her side, because she knows she has one somewhere in this mess. Scared to repeat history somehow. Scared to prove him right after so much convincing and adamance over her and Sunjata reconnecting. Ru knows she’ll go to him regardless but right now she just wants Noah to do for her what she’d once done for him. Sad, how events of ruin define their friendship more than anything else. She would feel guiltier if they didn’t both accept it readily.

It takes time for Noah to arrive. Such is the unfortunate reality. Hotaru doesn’t measure the time - doesn’t care to, if she even had the ability. She sits on the couch and stares at the empty fireplace. Sleeps and wakes there. Drinks, when the dragon bids her aggressively enough, but does little else to continue natural life. Except breathe. She can’t choose to stop that one. Just another thing she can’t control.

She names the dragon on the day he arrives. Unwilling to say what they are to each other still, but tired of calling her creature. Andraste doesn’t seem to mind. Hotaru hates her for her patience.

She doesn’t turn her head when he comes in. Curled in a ball against the arm of the couch, the soft golden glow of her magic the only light in the room. Andraste prowls uncertainly along the back of the couch, eyeing Noah but otherwise refraining from inserting herself. Noah, warbles through the bond that rose the moment he was within distance.

But my ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
So I find my spirit in the bottle

It's too much to bear my darlin', the weight of the world

And I would carry it for you

The letter came for Noah on the very day he returned to the lodge from a hunt. The courier arrived scarcely minutes after he and his crew did, boots still crunching snow into the threshold, breath fogging the air. Noah had not yet shed his layers or unbuckled his weapons when the envelope was pressed into his hand. He knew the handwriting instantly—recognized it the way one recognized an old scar and every story it was tied to. Familiar, unmistakable, even after seasons of silence.

He broke the seal with numb fingers and read the single, devastating sentence. He caved inward. A glacier falling into the sea, sending shockwaves of frigid water and shattered ice. His hand fell automatically to his breast pocket, thumb brushing the worn edge of the compass.

His feet struck the ground in New Haven already running.

Two strides carried him forward before instinct overtook thought, and he shifted. Wings tore free of his back, vast and powerful, the sky opening to him and aiding the unspoken promise he could not afford to break. He cut through the air with ruthless focus, glacier eyes fixed ahead, nares flaring as his jaw parted. Her scent hit him all at once like a tidal wave crashing into a coastal town, rearranging everything it touched. He knew it as he knew his own heartbeat. Time and distance meant nothing to it. They never had.

His heart thundered as the trail drew him onward, down to the house in the meadow. He shifted again before the porch, boots slamming against the wood as if the earth itself had tried to stop him and failed. He did not hesitate. He did not knock. He did not care what awaited him on the other side of the door. She needed him. That was all that mattered. 

He would never forsake her.

The moment he crossed the threshold she hit him fully through the attuned bond. Her presence flooded him, overwhelming and unmistakable and so deeply familiar, filling every corner of his senses like fire rushing into dry kindling.

But what filled it sent his heart plummeting, shattering like a vase dropped from trembling hands.

Emptiness.

It was vast and cold and hollow, a cavern where warmth should have been. It fought viciously with the Frey-given light that pulsed golden through the room, the glow flickering like a candle in a gale.

"Ru," he murmured, the name breaking from him in a whisper. He crossed the room quickly, shedding fur and leather and weapons as he went, until nothing remained but his favorite green shirt and his ruddy brown pants. He circled the couch with caution, eyes cutting briefly toward the dragon with a hunter’s wariness before he knelt in front of her. Glacier met seaglass—searching, testing, reaching across the terrible distance between them.

His hands closed around her shoulders, grounding, desperate. "Ru," he said again, softer now, voice frayed at the edges as he worked to hold his resolve and stand for her the sentinel in the storm. "What happened?"

Hotaru

I miss the days when stars were saintly
They sang to me in ways innately

Surely she has been breathing while she waited for him, frozen and entombed in her own skin. She knows, because she has resented every one. But when he runs to her, when his hands touch her shoulders, when his eyes find hers - she inhales, and it’s different. A crack in the ice that surrounds her, light pouring through a crevice after endless hours clawing at darkened rock.

She doesn’t so much as blink but sudden heat on her cheeks makes her realize she’s crying all at once. “Noah,” she repeats aloud this time, voice cracking on each syllable from a throat ruined from crying and screaming and begging into nothingness. His hands are warm and heavy where she is cold and fragile. A vessel as thin as winter leaves that are left hollow between each vein.

Hotaru falls forward into him, a similar height now with how he kneels before her. She cries into his neck; agonized, hiccuping, heaving. Her hands clutch at his shirt as if terrified he’ll pull away and take the light he’s brought back with him. His scent in her nose when pressed this close finally drowns out Sunjata’s, which has haunted her cruelly and ubiquitously from every corner of the house. A house she can’t even call theirs anymore. It’s more than just comforting in its familiar notes, it’s a shield that envelopes her on all sides, allowing her to hide away for a moment.

It comes spilling out in waves on her torn vocals. Flying over the Draig, growing tired, stopping on a barren outcrop to rest, only to scare Andraste who had gone for her throat at the same time as Ru had. Waking in her verdant pod, Andraste on her chest, Frey’s smiling face beyond. Two seasons lost in the blink of an eye. The harder part is explaining Sunjata. She doubles back on her words repeatedly, giving allowances whenever her tone creeps towards frustration or blame, silencing and nullifying her own feelings because they don’t matter, his do.

“He wouldn’t tell me how to fix it, what to do,” she finally cries, hands aching from where she still clings fervently to him. “So I can’t. So it - it means -” Gods she can’t bear to say it despite how it’s been all she can think about while waiting for the courier to reach Noah. Hotaru had already been gone. She’d left a void in Sunjata’s life. But he has asked her not to fill it again, leaving her dangling. Awaiting a drop she can’t help but assume will come if she can’t step forward off the ledge without the Flood’s permission.

Pulling back, face red and inflamed, eyes glassy and dark, the Valkyrie stares into Noah’s eyes as if they might somehow miraculously hold the answer. “I missed my son being brought back. I bled out on that cliffside. And now I’m bonded to what caused it, when after Atlas I -” but does it even matter? She hasn’t had a chance to process any of that because - “And now I’m losing him. I’m losing him but I’m right here.” Her face crumples and she cries, voice small and brittle and childlike. “I’m right here, Noah. I’m here.” But he’s not.

But my ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
So I find my spirit in the bottle

It's too much to bear my darlin', the weight of the world

And I would carry it for you

She collapsed in on him and Noah felt it. He felt what it was before him, her brokenness and her truth, and he felt it in memroy. He felt it in her hand grasping his as they ran through the streets of Snowcloak to rid themselves of their home for the safety of others. He felt it in the way he had cradled her screeching, sobbing body as lamplighers waged war on her mind. Noah did not pull away when she collapsed into him. He felt it mirrored back at him, when he was the one broken and small and bleeding before her with his soul bare and nothing to lose, nothing to give.

He folded around her, arms coming up like Halo's gates closing against a whiteout blizzard, anchoring her shaking weight to something that would not move. Her sobs tore into his collarbone, hot and broken, and every sound was a blade he forced himself not to flinch from. He let her cry. He let her cling. He let her be small while he stayed unyielding. He listened as she spoke of blood and lost seasons, of gods and bonds and impossible choices, and of the one who promised against this. He was patient as she worked back over her words, letting her take all the time she needed to regain any ground. His jaw tightened once, just once, but his arms did not loosen. He absorbed it all, a breakwater against a sea that had already taken too much from her.

Inside him, the bond howled.

Rage surged like wildfire through dry brush, violent and consuming, visions flashing sharp and bloody and unforgiving. Sunjata’s name scraped raw across his thoughts, something feral rising with it—an instinct older than mercy, older than gods, that demanded retribution. Noah felt it coil tight in his chest, a predator pacing behind his ribs, teeth bared and ready.

He did not let it touch her.

With a practiced, silent brutality he closed off that part of the bond. Not severing it, never that, but shaping it down, narrowing it until only what she needed could pass through. He would never leave her without him, would not forsake what she had earned from him through running through hellfire together. But, he walled away the war inside him, the fury and the grief and the violent need to hunt, until all that remained was bedrock. Strength. Vigilance. The Sentinel. The quiet, relentless presence of someone who would stand watch through any night.

What reached her was steady as stone for her feet to stand firm, unshaken.

He breathed evenly, warm against her glowing hair. One hand slid across her back, broad and firm, fingers splayed as if to remind her that she was held, that she was not falling, to forbid her from jumping, from leaping into the darkness forever. “I’ve got you,” he said, his words both comofrt and oath. “You’re not alone in this. Not now. Not ever.” Because he knew what it was like to be alone. He knew what it was like to wake up from being dead -- or, from the death any other would hace succumb to. his awakening had left him without a wife, her's without a fiance. Grief pulsed and he swallowed the lump down in his throat.

When her voice broke again, Noah dipped his head, resting his forehead against hers. His presence pressed close through the bond, calm and immovable, a sentinel standing between her and everything that threatened to tear her apart. "Look at me, Ru," he said, glacier eyes softened, but not wavering, despite the tears that had clearly abandoned their post and made lines down his own face. “You’re here. I see you." No matter what war raged within him, that part of him -- this part -- did not bend. “Sometimes,” Noah said softly,“people don’t choose what’s right. They choose what hurts less in the moment.” He brought a hand up to her swlloen, red face and brushed the river cutting over the snowcapped mountain away. That doesn’t make it fair. And it doesn’t make it true. He finished over the bond.

A thin ribbon of smoke coils across the distant hills, drifting low to the ground where the air seems strangely still. At first it could be mistaken for mist or the aftermath of some long-extinguished fire, but the movement is too deliberate, too purposeful. An Enenra haunts the far edge of the land.

The smoke thickens and thins as it moves, curling around stones and dipping into shallow hollows as though searching, or perhaps simply lingering. No flames accompany it, yet the air carries a faint scent of ash, enough to set nerves on edge.

It keeps its distance for now, content to wander the outskirts and observe from afar. Still, the warning feels unmistakable: drawing its attention would be a mistake. Whatever purpose guides the Enenra, it is not something you would want turned in your direction.

---

Enenra Areas Found: King's End — Rare Cousins of the Banshee, Enenra are creatures of smoke and vapor who possess a shapeless form; when they attack they generate a physical body of any appearance they like. Challenge Rating: Difficult | Mythical | Admin approval needed HP: 1,365 | To Hit: +88 | Dmg: 141 Movement: Fly 40 ft.; Glide through mist and smoke without slowing SPECIAL SKILLS Misty Emergence: Instantly solidifies from surrounding smoke into a fully formed body upon hostile intent; Form of the Varying: May adopt the appearance and basic abilities of any beast or humanoid

TRAITS Incorporeal: Drifts through objects and creatures until it chooses to solidify; Smoke Camouflage: Nearly invisible in any vapor or shadow; Shapeshifting Manifestation: Can assume any corporeal form when attacking ACTIONS Smoke Lash: Whip-like tendrils of hardened smoke strike and can wrap around a target; Choking Smog: Exhales a suffocating cloud in a 15-ft. radius that obscures vision and forces targets to cough; Phantom Strike: Delivers a surprise attack from its manifested guise that ignores nonmagical armor

Hotaru

I miss the days when stars were saintly
They sang to me in ways innately

Through the open door the spectral entity haunts, but while Hotaru and Noah grasp each other like they’re the only ones left on a sinking ship, Andraste - young, untested, unfamiliar - rises. A specter in her own right. She glides to the door and shoulders it closed, prowling restlessly as her emotions tangle with and inevitably drown beneath June overwhelming weight of Hotaru’s.

Noah does not close himself off from her the way Sunjata often did. Controlled, but present. A hand on her back to hold her away from the edge, feet to the earth. Like a faint voice in a different room you hear as you drift off, familiar noise that reminds you of life beyond your closed door. Ready and waiting for you to open it.

His understanding is like a bass note in the thrum of his soul-song. Sunjata is not dead, but Hotaru’s heart is as shattered as if it were so. This sort of absence is one that can be far more final than death. Death can be crossed, and sometimes even miraculously reversed. But nothing can overcome the decision someone else makes and holds tight to.

She almost wishes he would have simply told her yes or no. Already, the uncertainty and absence of direction eats at her soul. He has gone and left her with loyalty that cannot follow him - nor leave her.

Noah’s calloused hands are the only warmth she can feel as they cradle her face, smoothing away tears from her tacky cheeks. He sees her, sees the broken heart that mirror the one still sitting in his chest. It’s a closeness that would be romantic in any other time, but instead is testament to the bond forged by clasped hands and snowburned cheeks what feels like a lifetime ago.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she bleats like a lost babe. Turned around and directionless but for the guiding light of the man holding her still and steady. “But I can’t fix it anyway. Because he’s…he’s not wrong either.” Even when her heart objects from its bitter and broken vessel, fierce in its adamant vow that she would have waited for him until immortality was stripped from her.

Exhausted in ways too numerous to name, she closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his. The pain hasn’t lessened but for now it has gone quiet. Retreating into her bones in reluctant acknowledgment of how hollow she is after pouring herself empty for days on end. He told me to stay. To figure it out for myself. I can’t stay here - I can’t, I can’t - it repeats in layers over itself, like a chanting crowd as her thoughts spin and tangle. But Halo is not home anymore. And the heart she had called home had been dead in her hands, as dead as her own feels in her chest. So where? To her children, so she can finally keep them in arms reach? Would it even matter if she would be a husk before them, smiling vacantly, miles away? Wherever she turns there is no light to follow. No path cut through the foliage.

Just Noah. Noah, and this dead feeling in her breast that turns sunlight to shadow.

But my ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
So I find my spirit in the bottle

It's too much to bear my darlin', the weight of the world

And I would carry it for you

Her words lodged deep. He felt the truth of the statement settle like a stone dropped into still water. “You didn’t.” he said quietly. “Not in any of this." He drew back just enough to look at her properly, glacier eyes searching her ruined expression. This was not a moment for sharpening truths into weapons. This was for holding them gently, even when they cut. This was not the time for his own thoughts, his own feelings, his own desires of her having never gone back to Sunjata. This was a time for him to be what she needed.

Noah shifted then, careful and unhurried, as if any sudden movement might send her scattering into the darkness like pearls from a broken necklace seeking solace beneath a dresser.  Firm but smooth, practiced and deliverate, he moved her to keep her spine from breaking under the weight of her grief as she clung to him. He did not ask permission. He did not need to. The bond carried his intent clearly enough. One of his arms tightened at her back while the other slid beneath her knees. He lifted her cleanly from the couch. For a moment her feet left the world entirely, and he held her there, close to his chest, anchoring her against the solid line of his body.

He turned and lowered himself onto the couch, guiding her with him in a way that kept all of her fragility and all of her vulnerability protected. The cushions dipped under their combined weight, the room settling around them again. Noah sat with one leg braced and the other angled so that she could settle into him until her head found the hollow beneath his collarbone.

He drew her in without pressure, an arm coming around her shoulders, the other settling over his knee. He rested his chin lightly against the crown of her golden head. Each inhale and exhale was deliberate, an offering of calm through repetition. The couch creaked faintly as he settled fully, making space for her weight but bearing it without effort. Noah stayed like that, unmoving save for the rise and fall of his chest. He let her hear his heartbeat, breathing slow and steady until the rhythm found her again. A measured rhythm, like a drum keeping time through a long night march. He would stay until the shaking eased from something violent into something survivable.

The bond was steady, carrying only his presence, his steadfast and unwavering resolve. No rage bled through. No storm followed, despite the way it crashed and surged and raged within the depths of his chest. Instead, she would only feel the solid assurance of someone who would not abandon the post simply because the night had grown long, hard, dark and deep. When she spoke of staying, of being told to figure it out alone, Noah felt something old and aching stir in his chest. He understood that particular cruelty. He had lived in that limbo once, waking into a world that had moved on without him, leaving him to make sense of loss with no one left to ask.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now.” he said gently. “You don’t have to know where you’re going tonight, or tomorrow.” He would stay with her until she made her choice. He would not leave her alone. There was nothing else in the world that needed his attention more than her right now. He kept his focus there, pouring all of that love over the bond even though his brain raced with thoughts and questions. Had she written to Deimos? Would the Sword step through that door at any moment, only the lack of a compass slowing him down?

Whether or not her heart could ever be tied back to the frozen landscape he couldn't cut from within himself, he would still be. Homes could change, could fracture, could become unrecognizable ruins. But people could still be anchors. He stayed with her there, unmoving, sentinel to her grief. He would not force her down any of the paths that lay ahead. This was not time for that kind of love. The love she needed now was what he was giving her -- to be held, seen, understood, comforted with warmth and stone and promises kept. He would stay where he was, a fixed point in the spinning world, until she was ready to take a step that was hers.

And until then, there was this: his strength, and the unbroken truth of his presence. His arms stayed wrapped around her, warm and unmoving, knowing she might drift if he let go, unmoored from his iron grip.

Hotaru

I miss the days when stars were saintly
They sang to me in ways innately

His assurance is another layer of stone beneath her feet even as doubt whispers in her ears where no earthborn stability can hope to reach. A long-held belief of inherent flaw, ruination, and inadequacy in her interpersonal life. She could scale mountains and topple rulers, bear a crown or a sword with equal grace, but power - for all its sweetness and appeal - could not replace the missteps she was ever doomed to make when it came to love of all kinds. So Noah could utter his steely assurances until his lungs withered away; a part of Hotaru will always deafen her ears to them.

Words aren't needed right now, blessedly. His intent is clear to her though it matters little given she'd trust him with most anything. It's merely her body anyway. Hardly anything of worth despite its resilience. Not that he holds her that way. No, he carries her as if she is a treasured thing, even in this cracked and empty state. Held close and secure as he does what she can't force herself to. Her eyes are swollen and raw from endless crying but still a few tears manage to slip out at the raw simplicity of Noah's careful, nearly reverent handling of her.

Allowance is an odd thing to consider, much less to be handed. As a woman of action, the Valkyrie can scarcely conceive of time spent just...what? Being? Existing? What she feels right now isn't exactly living except in the most literal sense. It's not like she has ever given herself time to rest or reflect in past periods of grief. Her mind is not a kind place without a purpose to distract it. Even now, Noah's heartbeat beneath her ear is noise and rhythm she can rely on to drown out the stream of panic in her head.

She sits there for what may well be an hour. Noah doesn't so much as twitch or show any indication of restlessness as time creeps onward. The only indication of it is the sliver of sunlight moving across the wood floors, stubbornly peeking past the curtains she'd drawn tightly that first morning without Sunjata.

"I've grieved in Halo too many times," she rasps from against his chest. After Sunjata and Nate, after Enzo's death, after Wessex's death. Deimos, Noah, Sah, Alys - they had all been there for her in their own way and time. But now there are only two. Hotaru knows she can withstand anything for better or worse but the idea of returning to her empty, boarded-up home in the back of the spa makes her stomach twist upon itself. Halo is a land predisposed to cold and quiet, isolation and introspection. Hotaru's chest is already so cold and still that she would surely cease to be a person if she tried to go back. "I don't want to be alone." Not tonight, in this empty house, but not ever either. "I just want my kids." Her voice wobbles pitifully as shame creeps up her neck to stain it pink. It's something a child should say about their parent, not the reverse. But Torchline is loud and sleepless, noise upon noise that can fill the empty parts inside her. "Will you...stay? Tonight? Or maybe even until I can pack enough to take with me?" She doesn't lift her head to look at him when she asks, a part of her fearful that this will be too much for even Noah's level of selflessness.

But my ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
So I find my spirit in the bottle

It's too much to bear my darlin', the weight of the world

And I would carry it for you

Noah wished he could reach into her, the way a healer reached into a wound, and draw the hurt out cleanly like poison drawn from a bite. The desire sat in his chest like pressure before a storm. If doubt were something with shape, he would have broken it between his hands. If it were a landscape, he would have walked it for her, mile by mile, until her feet never had to bleed.

But he couldn't.

Instead he held her and felt how fragile the human heart truly was, even after having as much loss in his life as he did. He would have rewritten the constellations for her if he could. Shifted fate like river stones. Built her a harbor ribbed from his own bones where no leaving could reach. But all he had was his arms, his presence, and a loyalty that stood like a lighthouse in violent seas. Even when he was kicked, abandoned, forgotten, he remained. 

He would remain, for her. His friend.

His arm tightened around her shoulders, protective as a shield drawn close. He bent his head, cheek resting against her hair, eyes closing for one brief, bracing breath. “You won’t be alone." He promised. It did not feel heavy like a burden, but it felt anchoring. He wasn't promising it for people he couldn't. He wasn't promising it for Flora, for Enzo, for Deimos, not for Kiada, not for anyone but him. His stance as bedrock was all that he could give.

“I know Halo is full of ghosts for you." He knew that's where she had seen Enzo, dead, cradled in Flora's arms as the youngling wailed into the sky. He knew that's where her crown had been ripped from her head, her escape motivated only by the selflessness she felt to keep her unborn children and the people of Halo safe. He knew he could not ask her to return, and he did not want her to call the place home again unless she truly felt it, truly felt safe. "Going to Flora's will be best." He hoped, at least. His breathing remained slow and deliberate beneath her ear, giving her that rhythm to hold onto. 

Practical thoughts lined up behind the feeling, ordered, useful. “I can send word. Help you gather what matters. I can fly with you when you decide to go, on skyship or on wing." His arms settled more securely around her, a fortress built of muscle and oath and history. “For now, rest,” Noah whispered, voice steady deespite its decible, “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

Hotaru

I miss the days when stars were saintly
They sang to me in ways innately

In the days and years to come she will remember this with the clarity of untouched glass; the way he holds her and how it makes her feel. A stillness amidst the storm. Noah's hold is firm and gentle, but the hands against her skin press much deeper to the fatal cut bleeding her out from within. Holding the edges together as he would a soldier on the battlefield to give them a few more moments, just enough time for help to come. For sutures and gauze and a different, longer sort of pain that in some ways seems crueler than death.

But when Frey made her immortal, they tied the thread of her life to something different, though Hotaru had confidently thought of Sunjata when imagining her weakness. Her Achilles heel. So even this - no matter how it feels - cannot kill her.

The rumble of Noah's voice is unlike Sunjata's. A blessed thing. It is the rumble of avalanches in the snowy north, the air in his lungs reminiscent of the wind through the skeleton trees of the Hollow Forest. Halo holds ghosts for her, he isn't wrong, but he brings the softer and less painful parts with him. Perhaps not for her sake, but certainly to her benefit.

Cradled in his arms, curled up like a child in stature and spirit, Ru finally chooses to close her eyes. From the doorway she feels in her soul as the dragon - still unnamed - turns attention back toward the Valkyrie, sensing the change.

"Thank you," she whispers, the sound nearly distorted by the accompanying, simultaneous Thank you, that is uttered through the bond. A sentiment deeper than breath. One spoken by both tongue and soul. Gratitude is not enough - not for this, nor what comes next - but it's all she has. Truly, what else is left? Her hand tightens back around Noah's shirt at the vague thought. This, she tells herself, though the light it casts against the shadows is pitifully small. Nevertheless it is light.

She falls asleep there in his arms. This time, blessedly, she does not dream. The nightmare is a waking one, but with Noah curled around her, it does not follow her into the dark.

- - -

The next morning - or at least she thinks it is - the Valkyrie blinks open tear-sore eyes and for a moment her heart leaps at the feeling of arms around her before memory has time to set in. Her hand is cramped from having seemingly held onto Noah's shirt all night; likely why they're still in a similar position, if he hadn't been able to remove her.

"I'd like to pack today," she murmurs, the idea of saying 'good morning' odd and misplaced here. Uncurling her fingers and flexing them with a tiny downward twist of her lips, Hotaru unfolds like a marionette to stand on her own two feet. The strength is temporary and largely imparted by the Sentinel, but that is what he had hoped for. "I don't need much. We could be gone by the afternoon." Her eyes go to Flora's letter on the coffee table. "If...if you'll still go with me." Just long enough to keep her standing, to hand her off into the care of her children, shameful as the idea sounds. Eyes turning to the dragon curled on the couch cushion that hadn't been occupied, Hotaru bites the inside of her cheek hard, the bond fritzing and leaping with a sudden riot of conflicted emotion. "I don't think she can fly that far. It will have to be unshifted." And unfortunately, Hotaru has to admit that she is going to need to give her a name. There's no denying what they are to each other any longer.

But my ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
So I find my spirit in the bottle

It's too much to bear my darlin', the weight of the world

And I would carry it for you

Noah had not slept.

Not truly.

He had drifted at the edges of it, body still and breathing even, but his mind had remained alert in the quiet way only hunters understood. Every shift of her weight, every uneven breath, every tightening of her hand in his shirt had kept him anchored to the present. He did not resent it. Not the ache in his back, the stiffness in his neck, the slow numbness creeping through his arm where she had been.

She had rested. That was enough.

When she stirred, his cheek lifted slightly from where it had rested against her hair, glacier eyes opening to the soft gray of morning filtering through the curtains hesitantly, as though unsure whether it was welcome. Her fingers loosened from his shirt, and he carefully flexed his arm once feeling returned with pins and needles. He never pulled away, though, and only shifted his body to a different position once she had decided what to do.

He watched her unfold with quiet attention, ready to catch her if the strength she borrowed from him faltered. It was there in the bond and he let it remain, a hand at her back even once he no longer physically touched her.

"I am happy to go with you." Noah said simply. There was no hesitation, no reconsidering. The decision had been made the moment she asked the night before, carved into him as cleanly as any oath. He pushed himself up from the couch, rolling his shoulders once to shake out the stiffness before stepping closer, just so. “We’ll take packing at your pace, and the travel. There’s no rush. Flora will be there." He said with the confidence as deep a the snow on the tundra.

His eyes moved from her's to the kitchen behind her, and he said, "I'll get you something to eat while you start, then I'll join you." Even if she didn't eat it now, Noah would be sure to bring them enough for her to eat on the skyship. That was a choice Hotaru didn't have -- eating -- only the timing of it.

Noah moved through the house with the quiet efficiency of someone who understood that noise could be a wound.

He began in the kitchen, not asking what she wanted, intending to give her only what she could manage. The rhythm of it grounded him. Small acts, steady acts. The kind that reminded the body it was still alive even when the heart lagged behind. When he had gathered enough for her to eat, small portions of a few different things that felt as neutral as he could make them, he watched the doorway to the bedroom where she had slipped through on own feet, slowly steadying.

When he brought the plate to her, he didn’t linger over it. He set it within reach, close enough to be effortless. Packing came next. He looked to see what she had gathered already. It wasn't much, as she had said, enough to fit in the bag she placed on the bench at the end of the bed. Noah's jaw feathered. He folded what she handed him, placing them in the bag, never questioning what she kept or what she left behind. The house felt different in daylight, grief no less present but softer at the edges, like fog lifting just enough to reveal the path without clearing it completely.

Silence settled between them, but it was not empty. It was breathable. He filled it only when he felt the tension crest in her, when the bond flickered with overwhelm or hesitation. Otherwise, he let the hush remain, his presence a stronghold across the bond.

At one point, as she paused too long over something small and insignificant, Noah stepped beside her and took the weight from her hands without comment, placing it carefully into the bag as though the choice had already been made.

Once they were finished, Noah closed the door of the house behind him and wondered -- hoped -- in the closed off part of the bond, if she would ever return to this doorstep.

FIN