RORY
He was not startled: there was no involuntary jerk of his heavy and cold muscles, no sudden shivers racing from his chest and out down his arms. There was merely...(Relief?)
—some strange feeling settling in his bones, a prickle just behind his breastbone, something coiling in his gut but he couldn't tell if it was fear or excitement or both or just resignation. "Ah," he breathed into the darkness, one hand tightening uselessly in Ella's fur. She was so soft and warm beneath it, precious and alive; had she been smaller he would've gathered her up against his chest and held her there, buried his face in the fur and cried.
He realized that he had expected the knock.
He realized that he had not expected her.
His name in her voice was his undoing; it found the fragile thread he was spun from and pulled it, and he felt himself fall apart. He became a million pieces on the floor of his own house, cold and brittle things that glittered like shard of glass and frost: for a year he had waited for her voice, to be called little brother again, and—now—here—his breath hitched in his throat.
She was gone. What other explanation was there?
Or had the night finally passed? He had forgotten all his usual timekeeping routines, had slept when he shouldn't, had let the fire go out, everything was all wrong; had dawn finally come?
If only he had been able to ask Ludo about her, before the darkness had settled over him again...
"You can't be real," he told her through the door, fingers tightening in the warm fur (—fingers tightening on the cold lock).
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
