He didn't know what he expected, honestly—he just knew that what he hadn't expected was Amalia sitting on the floor, dark, unreadable. She seemed feline in her human body, something that was potentially dangerous: not in this moment, but in a similar moment in the future, perhaps.
"Amalia," he responded, something dark pricking his heart. Change, how it was being forced upon them... Less than a year, and everything he had ever known, and taken for granted as absolute truth, had been turned upside down. The arrival of the Outlanders, the fall of the Spire, and now, this. And there they were: two children of a snow-globe world, but the world wasn't a snow-globe anymore.
He crossed the space to her, sinking down on the floor; cross-legged and dark, a shadow there next to her. "I'm alright. You?" Because there was something in her face, in her eyes, something he noticed but couldn't place: he leaned against her shoulder, thinking of the world above and beyond—of his wide-eyed wonder each time he entered the bakery as a child.
Of all his longing for the world beyond, for something more, when all he needed was right there.
He sighed, softly.
"Amalia," he responded, something dark pricking his heart. Change, how it was being forced upon them... Less than a year, and everything he had ever known, and taken for granted as absolute truth, had been turned upside down. The arrival of the Outlanders, the fall of the Spire, and now, this. And there they were: two children of a snow-globe world, but the world wasn't a snow-globe anymore.
He crossed the space to her, sinking down on the floor; cross-legged and dark, a shadow there next to her. "I'm alright. You?" Because there was something in her face, in her eyes, something he noticed but couldn't place: he leaned against her shoulder, thinking of the world above and beyond—of his wide-eyed wonder each time he entered the bakery as a child.
Of all his longing for the world beyond, for something more, when all he needed was right there.
He sighed, softly.
