Carpe Noctem

The stairs seemed to be much longer than he remembered when he was trying to leave, Sam descending as fast as he could while staying steady, a hand on the wall hurting when he caught uneven spots in the stone but he couldn't care, not when he had to get away from Jigano's sharp tongue. He doesn't mean it, he assured himself, but it was easy enough to argue with that. What if the Blight, instead of making people irrationally angry, just let them express what they actually thought? The ideas had to come from somewhere, right? Perhaps Jigano had always thought those things, had told them to the other guildmembers in secret meetings with a laugh on his lips and a mocking eye. The cry stopped him just as he reached the door, hand on the edge of the exit. He stood still, unsure if this was some kind of trick. Often, his parents had given him a scrap of kindness just to snatch it away again and he had become wary of swift apologies. But despite that, and all his suspicions, he could not run away from his first and best friend on Caido, not when he sounded so desperate. Slowly, he turned and chewing on his lip, looked Jigano up and down. "...Truthfully? You didn't mean any of it? Not even the bit about Nate?" Samuel He took a step but then felt tired He said, I'll rest a little while But when he tried to walk again He wasn't a child