Work Text:
I.
She hadn’t stopped pacing.
Round in circles in her bedroom, paws placed with care between the furniture, her tail curling and uncurling in tight loops behind her. Every few passes she’d pause at the bed, crane over it towards the window and press her face to the gap in the curtains, then turn and pace back the other way. The floorboards didn’t creak under her. She was too light relative to her size, thankfully for the floor, but the faint vibration of her movement hummed through the floor and up through his legs where he sat cross-legged on her bed.
She was buzzing. He could feel it from here, a restless, itchy energy prickling against his skin like static before a storm. It reminded him of the first few weeks of getting used to Turbo Granny’s curse, that crawling feeling under his skin when the energy had nowhere to go. Like being plugged into a socket with no off switch.
“Have you tried running?” he asked.
She stopped mid-pace. Her head swung toward him, all three eyes blinking.
Running?
It was still a bit odd, hearing her voice in his head. Everywhere and nowhere at once, resonant, almost.
“When I first got, um, cursed, I used to run until I was too tired to feel weird about it.” He shrugged, tugging at a loose thread on her duvet. “It helped. Kind of burns off the extra energy, gives your body something to do with it.”
Her gaze was intense, enough that he ducked his head away, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“Or... maybe that was because it was Turbo Granny’s power... sorry. It was just a suggestion.”
She seemed to consider it. He could tell from the way her wisps shifted from their tight, fidgety circles into something slower, more thoughtful. Her tail settled against the floor.
...Maybe.
“I could come with you,” he said, before the offer had fully formed in his head. “If you want. So you’re not just... running around by yourself.”
Like he had been.
She brightened. Her eyes went wide, wisps lifting, and she lowered herself in one fluid motion, her front legs folding beneath her until her back dropped to the height of the bed.
Yeah! Let’s do it! Get on.
He stared at her. At the broad curve of her back, the teal fluff shifting gently with the slow pulse of her form. She was looking at him expectantly, the way someone holds open a door.
Huh. She thought he meant come along... on her back.
He had meant run alongside her. On his own legs. Maybe in his yokai form, keeping pace the way he did when they trained. That was what he’d pictured. Two people running, side by side.
She was waiting.
He could correct her. He could say, actually, I meant I’d run next to you, and she’d say oh and they’d both pretend the misunderstanding hadn’t happened and it would be fine.
But... was it any different from her getting a ride on his back?
He climbed off the bed.
The distance between the mattress and her back was barely a step. She was right there, filling most of the room, all teal light and soft fur, rising and falling with that slow pulse. His hand found her side to steady himself and the heat hit immediately, soaking through his palm, tingling up his wrist. Her fur gave under his fingers, then met resistance, like pressing into something solid wrapped in silk.
He swung a leg over.
It was nothing like sitting on a horse or a bike or anything with a defined shape. She was too wide, for one thing. His legs couldn’t grip properly, just sort of draped over the curve of her, and the surface beneath him was soft and yielding and heated in a way that made it hard to find an edge. He shifted his weight, trying to settle, and his hips slid an inch to the left. He corrected. Overcompensated. Slid back the other way.
“Where do I...”
Just hold on to something.
Easy for her to say. Hold on to what? There was nothing to grip. Just an expanse of glowing fur that stretched in every direction, punctuated by the slow drift of wisps and the distant curve of her horns.
The horns.
They swept backward from the top of her head, smooth and solid-looking, tapering to dark points. Good grip. Obvious handhold. He was already leaning forward, fingers reaching, before it occurred to him to wonder whether he should.
His fingers closed around the base of one—
—and she flinched. Full body, every nonexistent muscle locking at once beneath him.
Every wisp in the room stuttered. The vibration beneath him hitched, and a rush of—he lost the words. A flood through the contact point, sharp and startling, like every thought in his head had suddenly been turned up to full volume and broadcast outward. Not pain. The opposite, almost—an openness, a closeness, her presence rushing into him and his rushing into her until he couldn’t tell where the edge was. He felt her recoil from it, the raw unfiltered him of it, and snatched his hand back on reflex.
The aura beneath him was still buzzing where he’d touched the horn, little aftershocks of teal pulsing outward from the base like ripples in still water.
Don’t—not those.
“What... what was—”
I could feel your—it’s like you were right inside my—She fumbled for the words, her wisps circling in tight, flustered loops. The glow along her back was flickering unevenly, brighter where his hand had been. I dunno. It was just really intense. Just don’t, please?
“Right. Yeah. Sorry.” His face was burning. “I’ll find somewhere else.”
A beat of silence. Then a wisp drifted over and flicked him on the knee, and the faintest edge of amusement coloured her next thought.
You can breathe, Okarun.
He didn’t even realise he’d been holding it.
His hands found the fluff at the base of her neck instead, where the fur was thicker and denser and humming with a heat that made his fingers tingle. He sank them in, past the first layer of silk-and-static wispiness, into something more solid beneath. It held. An anchor, his fingers buried in the glow of her with just enough resistance to feel secure.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I think I’m—”
She stood up.
His stomach lurched. The ground dropped away as she rose to her full height, and suddenly he was high, higher than standing on her bed, higher than the top of the wardrobe. Her head was near the ceiling, horns almost brushing the scarred wood, and he was on her back with nothing between him and the floor but a lot of teal light and the vague hope that friction still applied to aura, somehow.
His grip tightened. Little trails of glow wisped loose between his fingers and scattered into the air like sparks off a flint, only to drift back a moment later and settle against her again.
Too tight.
He loosened. “Sorry.”
Stop apologising! But the thought was gentle. Ready?
“Um, maybe?” he hedged. “But maybe if we take it slow—”
She went anyway.
She hit her bedroom door shoulder-first, the frame groaning as she squeezed through, and then she was in the hallway and the floorboards were screaming under her. Every step down the stairs was a controlled disaster, her body folding and compressing, claws scraping against wood, the walls close enough on both sides that her fur brushed plaster loose in little white showers. He pressed himself flat against her back and held on. Behind them, the psychic hand at the end of her tail hooked the sliding front door open in one smooth motion, and then the night air hit him all at once, cold and sharp and full of stars.
Then they were outside, and she ran.
The first stride knocked the breath out of him. She moved nothing like she looked, all that bulk and presence translating into something fast and startlingly light, her paws barely touching the ground before pushing off again.
The world smeared. Streetlights became streaks, fences blurred into lines, and the wind tore at his hair and his shirt and every part of him that wasn’t pressed against her. Wisps streamed behind them, trailing from her body in ribbons of teal that whipped past his face and left tiny pinpricks of heat on his skin wherever they touched.
He held on. Thighs squeezed, fingers dug into the dense fluff at her neck, and his body slowly, clumsily, began to figure out the rhythm. She didn’t bounce. She surged. Each stride was a smooth forward push, a wave that rolled through her body from shoulders to haunches, and if he stopped fighting it and let his weight follow the motion instead of bracing against it, the ride smoothed out.
She banked off the main path without warning, cutting through a gap between fences and out into the paddy fields beyond. Wide, sweeping, her whole body tilting into the turn like a boat changing course. His weight shifted with it. Knees pressing into her side, leaning without thinking, and the turn carried him instead of throwing him.
The nervousness was still there. Pulse hammering, fingers locked in her fur, and every few seconds a fresh spike of anxiety jolted through him, sharp and electric.
Except...
He frowned. The spikes weren’t matching up. They hit at odd moments, not when she turned or accelerated but at random intervals, and they had a texture that didn’t feel like his usual panic. His panic was tight and breathless and centred in his throat. This was lower, broader, a whole-body hum of uncertainty that sat in his stomach and vibrated.
It wasn't just his anxiety. It was hers.
He understood. She was nervous, of course she was. This was new for her too, someone on her back, pressed against her, close enough to feel everything she felt. The spikes were her worry. Is he comfortable? Is this too fast? Am I doing this right?
Loosening his grip, he let his weight settle more loosely. Pressed his palms flat against her back instead of clutching, fingers spread wide in the glow.
The next spike was softer. Then softer still.
The paddy fields gave way to scrub and long grass at the river’s edge. A footpath, unlit, overgrown, the kind of place no one went at night. She slowed to a lope, then a walk, and the world came back in pieces. Cicadas. The sound of water. The smell of wet grass cutting through the static-sweet scent of her fur.
A long, slow breath left him.
She was warm beneath him. Warm and vast and strange and entirely unlike anything he’d ever experienced, and his heart was still going too fast and his legs were shaking from gripping and he had no idea what to do with his hands.
But the nervousness that wasn’t his had faded to a faint hum in the background, like a TV playing in another room. And in its place, rising slowly, a different feeling. He only noticed it because it sat differently from his own, the way a voice in a crowd stands out for being unfamiliar.
Calm. The antsy, buzzing energy that had been driving her in circles around her bedroom was quieter now, smoothed down by the run, and what was left underneath was simpler. Just the night, and the river, and someone on her back who wasn’t going anywhere.
He leaned into her as she padded up to the bank.
The river was slow here, wide and dark and barely moving, the surface so still it held the sky like glass. She stood at the very edge, paws sinking into soft ground, and looked down.
He felt it before he understood it. A shift beneath him. Careful and uncertain, rising through her. Like reaching for a light switch in an unfamiliar room.
She was looking at herself.
There weren’t any mirrors at Seiko-san’s house big enough. He’d never thought about that before, but of course there weren’t. She filled bedrooms. The biggest mirror in the house was the one above the bathroom sink, and she could barely fit a single paw through that door. She’d been in this form for days and he wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it. Fully, at least.
The river gave it back to her in dark water and teal light. The whole shape of her reflected on the surface, glowing faintly against the black, every curve and edge and wisp laid out in a way the cramped bedroom never allowed. Her horns. Her eyes. The soft, formless slope of her face. The sheer size of her, rendered in still water, undeniable.
He held very still. The feelings coming off her were layered, hard to pick apart. Curiosity, mostly. And underneath that, more fragile. A feeling that might have been is this really me? if it had been a thought instead of a feeling.
She tilted her head. The reflection tilted with her.
He craned forward without thinking. Just a little, rising up from the fluff at the base of her neck to peer over the top of her head, curious to see what she was seeing.
His reflection stared back at him. Small and rumpled and distinctly human, poking up between her horns like a bird perched in the wrong nest. His hair was a wreck. His glasses were crooked. He was wedged into the glowing fur of an enormous teal beast and he looked, frankly, ridiculous.
She saw it at the same time he did.
What came off her wasn’t a thought. A feeling, bright and startled, and the surface of the river shattered as laughter shook through her body and into the water. His reflection broke into ripples. Hers too. The two of them dissolving together into teal-tinged rings that spread outward and lapped against the far bank.
He grinned, chin resting on the top of her head between the horns he definitely wasn’t touching, and watched the ripples carry them both outward until the river smoothed over and gave them back.
II.
His fingers were numb by the third street.
He’d forgotten his hat. Stupid. He’d known he was going to forget it the moment he decided to stay an extra hour, sitting on the floor of Ayase-san’s bedroom with his back against her side while she dozed, the slow pulse of her body rocking him gently with each not-breath. She hadn’t asked him to stay. She never did. But she’d been stuck in monster form for three days straight and going stir crazy, pacing grooves into the floorboards, and he’d wanted to keep her company while Seiko-san got dinner ready.
So he’d stayed. And then he’d barely slept. And now he was pedalling through empty streets at two in the morning with frozen ears and a bag of newspapers and the particular brand of regret that came from knowing he’d do the exact same thing again.
The route was muscle memory by now. Left on Hachiman, right on the hill, down past the shrine, loop back through the residential blocks. His bike rattled over a crack in the pavement and the stack in his front basket shifted. He reached forward to steady it, one hand on the handlebars, breath fogging in front of him.
Cold. Really cold. The kind that crept in through collar and cuffs and settled in the joints of his fingers until they felt like someone else’s. He flexed them on the grips, trying to work some feeling back, and couldn’t help but think about the dense heat of Ayase-san’s side where he’d been leaning just hours ago.
It only made things worse.
He rounded the corner onto Kita-dori and saw the glow.
Faint, at first. A wash of teal between the houses two streets over, painting the underside of the power lines and turning the low clouds a colour they had no business being at two in the morning. It moved. Shifted left, then right, then left again, drifting between the rooftops like a searchlight with no particular destination.
He knew that colour.
His heart dropped into his stomach.
Something was wrong. Something had happened while he was gone, she’d lost control or something had found her or she was hurting and he’d left, he’d left her alone because he had a paper round and—
He was off the bike before he’d consciously decided to stop, the frame clattering against a fence as he vaulted over it and cut through someone’s garden, trainers skidding on wet grass. The glow was closer now, brighter, washing over him in pulses that made the garden fence cast long teal shadows. He could feel her, too. That ambient pressure he’d learned to recognise, the weight of her aura in the air, getting heavier with every step.
He burst through a hedge and onto the next street.
And there she was.
Enormous. Teal and glowing and taking up most of the road, her paws placed carefully between parked cars, her tail swaying behind her in a slow arc that sent wisps drifting into the night air. She was mid-stride, one paw raised, her head low and swinging as she walked. Not running. Not panicking. Just... walking. Ambling through the neighbourhood like a teal mountain on a midnight stroll.
She spotted him at the same time he spotted her. Her head swung toward him, all three eyes brightening, and a thought hit him so hard it practically had an exclamation mark.
Okarun!
The delight in it was a bright burst against his ribs. Genuine, startled, disproportionate. Like she’d found a surprise gift, not a sweaty teenager standing in a hedge with leaves in his hair.
He stood there, chest heaving, hands braced on his knees. Leaves were falling off him. He could feel one stuck to his ear.
“Are you okay?” he managed between breaths. “What happened? Is something wrong? Did someone—”
Huh?
She tilted her head. The motion was slow and deliberate, the way a cat turns to look at something that confuses it, and the confusion washing off her was so genuine that his panic stalled mid-spiral.
I’m fine? I was just... walking.
He stared at her.
She stared back. All three eyes blinked at him, slow and owlish.
The adrenaline drained out of him so fast his knees went wobbly. He straightened up, pulled the leaf off his ear, and pushed his glasses up his nose with fingers that were shaking for entirely the wrong reason.
“You were just walking,” he repeated.
I couldn’t sleep. Her tail curled absently around a lamppost, then uncurled. Granny got called out for a job, and after that I just... couldn’t settle. I was feeling antsy. You said running helps when you’re like that. So I tried it.
The memory surfaced before she even finished the thought. Him saying it just last week, sitting cross-legged on her bed while she paced, restless energy prickling off her like static. When I first got, um, cursed, I used to run until I was too tired to feel weird about it. Maybe that’d work for you?
He hadn’t been sure she’d actually try it.
“Did it help?”
A pause. Her wisps circled each other in slow, uncertain loops.
...A bit.
Which meant not really. He could read that in the way her eyes dimmed, the way her tail settled against the road instead of swaying. She’d run herself through empty roads in the middle of the night because the alternative was sitting in a dark house feeling wrong, and the running had helped a bit, and she was trying to make that sound like enough.
He looked at her. She was so big she was blocking the streetlight, though given the light she was giving off herself, it didn’t much matter. It may as well have been daytime for him.
“I don’t know how much good it’d do,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But if you want, you could hang out with me while I deliver? We can talk and stuff. Keep your mind off things.”
He’d barely finished the sentence.
She surged forward, all four paws, and the thought that arrived was so loud and eager it practically bowled him over.
Yes! I’ll help!
“You don’t have to he—” Her face was suddenly right there, all three eyes bright and close, and he rocked back on his heels out of sheer surprise.
I’m helping.
She was already moving back toward the street where he’d left his bike, her stride loose and quick with a new energy that sent wisps spiralling into the air behind her. He watched her go, teal light flooding the road, and the ache in his chest was entirely his own.
He jogged after her.
It worked, at first. She walked alongside him while he pedalled, keeping pace easily, her gait that strange half-float that made her seem lighter than anything that size had any right to be. The roads were empty and dark and the only sounds were his tyres on tarmac and the soft pad of her paws and the occasional distant hum of cars on a far-off road.
He talked. About the route, about the houses, about the old woman on Minami-dori who left him a can of coffee by her letterbox every Tuesday and the guy on the corner who had three letterboxes for some reason and wanted a paper in each one.
She listened. He could feel her attention like a hand resting on his shoulder, and every now and then a thought drifted over that was less a word and more a feeling. Amusement at the three-letterbox man. Curiosity about whether the coffee lady knew what he looked like. A quiet, settling calm that grew steadier the longer they walked.
It was nice. Really nice.
Then, four stops in, he came back from a front door blowing into his cupped hands, his fingers stiff and aching, and she turned all three eyes on him at once.
You’re cold.
“I’m fine.”
Your hands are purple.
He looked down. They were, in fact, a bit purple. He shoved them in his pockets.
“It’s fine. A few more streets and they’ll warm u—”
Get on.
He blinked.
She had already lowered herself, her front legs folding beneath her the way a cat settles, her back dropping to the height of his chest. The heat pouring off her was obvious now, radiating from her body in waves he could feel from two metres away. Her tail swung around behind her, the psychic hand open and waiting, as if to offer him a step up.
“I can’t ride you and deliver pap—”
You’re already riding your bike, aren’t you! Her eyes narrowed, the determined set he’d learned meant arguing was optional. What’s the difference? Except this way you’ll be warm.
Being warm did sound nice. It wasn’t just his fingers now; the cold was seeping in through his jacket and trousers too. It really was a bitter night.
He really would prefer if she didn’t liken herself to his bike, though.
But she was looking up at him with those big eyes, all wide and pleading and...
He closed his eyes and sighed.
“Yeah, alright then.”
Her delight hit him before the tail did. A bright, wordless squeal of triumph flooded through his head and then the psychic hand closed around his waist and hoisted him clean off the ground, his legs swinging, the newspaper bag bumping against his hip.
“Wait—put me—” He squirmed, twisting in the tail’s grip, feet pedalling uselessly at the air. “Let me lock up my bike first!”
She set him down. Reluctantly. He could feel the reluctance radiating off her like a second aura.
He took his time walking back to the bike. Found the lock. Fumbled with the combination. Checked it was secure. Checked it again. Behind him, a low, impatient hum vibrated through the ground, and her wisps were circling in tight, fidgety loops that reminded him of someone tapping their foot.
He approached her again, ducked under a paw that was definitely positioned lower than it needed to be, and clambered up on his own. Awkwardly. One knee in the wrong place, a graceless scramble for purchase, the newspaper bag catching on something before he yanked it free and settled into the familiar dip between her shoulders.
“There,” he muttered. “Happy?”
She was already standing before he’d finished the word.
The cold vanished. Just like that. Her aura soaked into him through his legs, his palms, every point of contact, a tingling heat that spread through his core and down to his frozen fingertips in seconds. He sank his hands into the fur at the base of her neck and his shoulders dropped. He hadn’t realised how hunched up he’d been against the cold until the cold wasn’t there anymore.
The height was the other thing. He was used to seeing the neighbourhood from his bike, eye-level with fences and hedges. From her back he could see over rooftops. Dark houses and orange streetlights stretching out in every direction, the distant grey band of the coast just visible beyond the last row of houses.
“Okay,” he admitted, flexing his thawed fingers in her fluff. “This is better.”
He caught himself grinning before he realised the feeling wasn’t his. She was radiating smugness so thick he could practically taste it.
“Right, um—next one’s the blue house on the left. After that it’s three in a row on Minami-dori.”
On it.
The first few stops, he slid off her back, jogged to the door, posted the paper, jogged back, and climbed up again. It worked, but it was slow. She had to crouch each time, he had to find his footing each time, and by the sixth house the rhythm of it was starting to drag.
By the seventh, she was getting impatient.
He’d just pulled a newspaper from his bag and was shifting his weight to slide off when her tail swung around. The psychic hand plucked the paper clean out of his grip, pinched it between two clawed fingertips, and whipped it at the house.
The letterbox slot clanged open from the force of it. The newspaper vanished inside. The slot swung shut with a tinny rattle that echoed down the empty street.
He stared at the letterbox. Then at her. Then at the letterbox again.
See? Easy.
The smugness coming off her was practically visible.
“That’s...” He twisted around on her back to gape at the letterbox, then back at her. “You can’t just...”
It went in.
“That’s not the point!” His hands were moving on their own now, gesturing at the letterbox, at her, at the empty street.
It went in perfectly.
“You threw it from the street!” His voice came out as a hiss, hands cupped around his mouth like that would somehow help. “What if someone heard that? The whole slot nearly came off!”
Who’s going to hear? Her eyes swept the empty road. It’s two in the morning.
She’d already grabbed the next paper. It flew. It landed. Another perfect shot, the newspaper vanishing into the slot with barely a sound this time—she’d adjusted the force.
“Stop that!” He was twisting on her back, one hand in her fluff and the other reaching uselessly for the tail. “That’s not how you deliver newspapers!”
Why not? They’re getting delivered.
“Because you’re supposed to—you walk up to the door and you—it’s a service—and you’re going to crumple them throwing them like that—”
A service that’s getting done. She grabbed another paper. Twice as fast. And it’ll be fiiiiine.
“Those ones weren’t even on the route!”
That seemed to catch her off-guard. Her tail froze mid-wind-up, the paper pinched between two claws, and her central eye swivelled back to look at him.
...That was, um. Advertising.
“Advert—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s not a thing. You can’t just throw random papers at houses and call it advertising.”
Sure you can. She was already reaching for the next one, but the tip of her tail was curling inward the way it did when she knew she’d been caught. It’s... outreach.
He lunged for her tail with an incoherent sound. She held it out of reach, the psychic hand dangling the newspaper above him with the same casual ease she used to hold snacks away from Turbo Granny. He made another grab. She lifted it higher. He was practically standing on her back now, one foot braced against the ridge of her shoulder, arm outstretched, and she wasn’t even looking at him. Her central eye was fixed ahead on the next house, already plotting the trajectory.
“Ayase-san, I swear—”
You’re being ridiculous. But the fondness in it took the edge off. Fine, fine. I won’t throw them.
She dropped the paper back into his lap. He clutched it to his chest, breathing hard, and smoothed the creases out with more care than was strictly necessary.
He let out a breath. Good. That was settled. He’d put his foot down and she’d listened and everything was going to be done properly from now on.
They did the next two houses the normal way. He slid off her back, jogged to the door, posted the paper, jogged back, climbed up. The correct way to do it. She crouched and rose each time without complaint, though her tail was doing a slow, restless figure-eight that he was choosing to ignore.
The third time he went to slide off, the tail came around again. But instead of grabbing a paper, the psychic hand grabbed his jacket and simply lifted him off her back.
He yelped, legs swinging, as she carried him through the air to the front door and held him there, suspended at letterbox height, his feet dangling a good foot off the step.
He was holding a paper. Several, in fact. He didn’t remember taking them out of the bag.
He shoved one through the slot. A little aggressively.
The tail swung him back and deposited him on her back.
“...Did you just—”
Faster. Her thought was breezy. And you’re the one putting them in the slot. Everybody wins.
He didn’t have a good argument for that. She was right, it was faster. And being ferried around by a giant psychic tail wasn’t actually uncomfortable, just... undignified.
But it wasn’t like there was anyone around to see it so...
They did three more houses that way. Pluck. Dangle. Post. The rhythm smoothed out fast. She got better at the placement, holding him level with each letterbox without him even having to ask. He got better at having the paper ready, pulling it from the bag mid-swing so he could shove it through the slot the instant he was in range. The whole thing took seconds.
It was, and he’d die before admitting this to her, a little bit fun.
He felt her laugh before he heard it. A low vibration rolling through her body and into his, starting in his legs and climbing up through his chest. Round and full, settling in his ribs, and the grin that spread across his face was wider than the exchange had warranted.
They finished the route in record time.
At 3:17 AM, she crouched low behind the depot wall while he ducked inside.
His manager, Kawaguchi-san, was standing by the loading bay with a clipboard and a confused expression.
“Takakura.” Kawaguchi-san looked at him, then at his clipboard, then back at him. “You were on the Kita route this morning?”
“Yes, sir.” He was very aware of the faint teal glow leaking over the top of the depot wall behind him.
“The whole route?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kawaguchi-san tapped his pen against the clipboard. “Because nobody saw you. The Sato family has a camera and you’re not on it. The Endos were up with a sick kid and they said the paper was just... in the slot when they checked. But they never heard you.”
He pushed his glasses up with a slightly shaking finger. “I was... quick this morning.”
“You were more than quick. You were forty minutes ahead of schedule.” Kawaguchi-san leaned forward, squinting at him like he was trying to read fine print. “You feeling okay, kid?”
“Fine!” A crack in his voice. He coughed to cover it. “Just... motivated. Cold morning. Wanted to get it done.”
Kawaguchi-san studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment. Behind him, through the depot’s back window, a wisp drifted lazily past the glass. He resisted the urge to look.
“Well.” Kawaguchi-san marked something on his clipboard. “Keep it up, I guess.”
He nodded, already backing toward the door, and didn’t stop until he was outside and the cold air hit his face.
She was where he’d left her, hunched behind the building with her tail curled around her paws, her glow dimmed to a faint pulse. The sky was beginning to lighten at the edges, grey bleeding into pale blue, and against it she looked softer. Settled. Less like a beast and more like she belonged there, tucked into the early morning quiet. He yawned so wide his jaw cracked.
“Thanks, Ayase-san.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “But um... we should both get some rest before school now.”
She didn’t respond right away. Her wisps, which had been circling in lazy, contented loops since the last delivery, slowed. They drifted lower, settling against her body like they were trying to tuck themselves in.
Yeah. A pause. Probably.
Her tone was off. Not as vibrant or resonant as it should have been. The glow around her was still there, but it had pulled inward, dimmer at the edges.
He turned to her. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were fixed somewhere down the road, in the direction of Seiko-san’s house, and the set of her body had changed. Smaller, somehow, even though she hadn’t moved.
Okarun?
“Yeah?”
Another pause. Longer this time. Her tail tapped the ground once, twice, and he caught the edge of a feeling she was trying not to project. He couldn’t read it, not clearly, just the weight of it pressing against him.
Would you... come back with me?
The words came careful. Measured. Like she’d rehearsed them on the walk here.
The guest futon is ready. Granny always keeps it out when she’s away, in case... Her tail tapped again. I just... the house gets quiet. When it’s just me. Especially when I’m like this.
She still wasn’t looking at him.
You don’t have to. I know you need to sleep before—
“Of course I will.” It came out steady. Sure. The kind of voice he didn’t hear from himself very often.
Then his brain caught up to his mouth.
“I mean—” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, ears burning despite the cold. “Yeah. If the futon’s already out, sure...”
She turned. Every eye fixed on him, wide and startled.
The delight that hit him was so immediate and so bright it nearly knocked him sideways. She surged to her feet, tail swinging, wisps scattering into the air in giddy spirals, and the feeling that poured off her was less a word and more a flood: relief and gratitude tangled together into something that made his chest ache in a good way.
She crouched for him before he could ask. He climbed on, settling into the familiar dip of her back, and his body decided the argument about staying awake was over. His hands sank into the fluff at the base of her neck, fingers curling into the dense warmth, and his eyes were heavy before she’d even taken her first step.
She walked slowly. He could feel the deliberateness of it, each paw placed with care, her gait smoothed to barely above a drift. No bouncing. No sudden turns. Just a low, steady sway.
The neighbourhood slid past in a blur of dark houses and streetlights. He was dimly aware of the sky getting lighter. Of her heat seeping into him. Of the low, constant hum of her aura, steady as a heartbeat.
His eyes closed.
He didn’t mean them to. But the fluff was soft and the sky was pale and the vibration of her was so even, so constant, that staying awake felt like arguing with gravity. His fingers loosened in her fur. His head tipped forward, cheek pressing into the glow at the base of her neck, and the last thing he registered was the faint tingle of wisps drifting over his shoulders like a blanket being pulled up.
He woke to the sensation of being moved.
Lifted. Gently, carefully, the psychic hand cradling his torso while the clawed fingers supported his legs, easing him up and away from the surface he’d been pressed against. Cool air hit his back where her heat had been and he shivered, blinking, the world swimming into focus in fragments. Ceiling. Wooden beams. The familiar walls of her room, washed in low teal light.
He was in the air. Suspended. Halfway between her back and the guest futon laid out on the floor beside her.
“Wha—”
A grumble. Low, vibrating through the floor, distinctly annoyed.
I almost had it. Her thought was sulky, edged with frustration. Two more seconds and you’d have been in the futon. You were supposed to stay asleep.
He blinked at her, still foggy, dangling in her tail’s grip. “...Were you trying to put me to bed?”
I was succeeding at putting you to bed. You ruined it.
She lowered him the rest of the way, the psychic hand depositing him onto the futon with the same careful precision she’d used to set him on doorsteps an hour ago. The futon was soft, already warm from proximity to her body. A pillow materialised under his head, nudged into place by the tip of her tail.
His glasses came off. He rubbed his eyes. The room was dim, curtains drawn, teal light playing softly across the ceiling. She was folded into herself around the futon, her body curving along two walls, chin resting on her paws near the foot of it. Her eyes were half-lidded, blinking slow.
He pulled the blanket up and sank into the pillow. It smelled like her room, laundry detergent and something faintly sweet. The futon was already warm from being next to her all night.
His eyes were closing when the thought hit him.
His bike.
His bike was still on Hachiman-dori. Propped against a green fence, next to someone’s recycling bins, completely forgotten the moment he’d climbed onto her back. He’d have to go back for it before school, which meant getting up early, which meant—
It’s outside.
He blinked.
Your bike. Her thought was drowsy, barely formed. She didn’t open her eyes. I grabbed it. On the way back. It’s by the front door.
“You...” He stared at her. “When did you—I was on your back the whole—”
Mm. Already half-asleep.
He lay there for a moment, processing. She’d doubled back for his bike. Picked it up with her tail, probably, the psychic hand gripping the frame while the rest of her carried him without breaking stride. Without waking him.
“You’re a genius,” he said.
One eye cracked open. The wisp nearest to him did a single, pleased loop.
The eye closed again. Her body settled, her tail coming to rest in a loose curl around the edge of the futon. Close enough that he could feel the heat of it along his side.
The teal glow on the ceiling was dimming as she drifted off. He watched it for a while, the slow fade of it, the way the room got smaller and quieter as her light pulled inward.
He closed his eyes.
III.
He didn’t remember shifting.
That was the thing. He’d come over with his school bag and his notes and every intention of helping her catch up on the maths she’d missed. They’d started, too. He’d sat cross-legged on the floor with the textbook open, talking her through quadratic equations while she squinted down at the page from above, her tail carefully underlining each line he pointed to. It had lasted maybe twenty minutes before she’d declared, with the weary conviction of someone who has seen enough, that maths could wait, and produced a stack of manga from somewhere behind her with her tail.
He’d argued, briefly, but then she’d dropped a copy of this month’s Mystery Mu onto his chest from above, one he hadn’t even had a chance to pick up yet, and that had been the end of the discussion.
That was an hour ago. Maybe longer. His notes were still spread out on the floor near the door, a few sheets pinned under the corner of a textbook, already forgotten.
He was stretched out on her back, magazine held above his face, reading about a supposed sighting in Aomori that was almost certainly a gas leak. She was below him and around him and beneath him all at once, her body filling the bedroom, hunched low with her chin near the floor and the manga open in front of her. Her tail turned pages. Slowly. Each one a careful operation, the clawed fingertips pinching the corner and peeling it over with the ginger precision of someone defusing a bomb.
Every few pages, a tiny ripping sound. Then a pulse of irritation so sharp it prickled against his skin.
He didn’t look up from his magazine. She didn’t comment. The page turned. They kept reading.
His fingers were longer than they’d been when he arrived.
He noticed it the way he noticed the sun had moved. Not a sudden thing, just a quiet awareness that settled over him when he turned a page and saw grey skin where pale skin should have been. His nails were darker, thicker, tapering to blunt points. His knuckles had a heaviness to them. He flexed his hand and watched the tendons shift under skin that wasn’t usually pulled so taut, and thought, huh.
No decision to shift. No moment of intent, no reaching for Momo-chan’s aura, no conscious choice. It had just happened. Crept in while he wasn’t paying attention, the way sleep does when you stop trying to fall asleep.
He could feel the rest of it now that he was looking for it. The slight elongation of his jaw. The weight of his teeth sitting differently in his mouth. His spine curved forward, just a fraction, settling into something hunched and compact that should have been uncomfortable but wasn’t.
He was comfortable. Genuinely, thoroughly comfortable, in a way that had nothing to do with the heat soaking into his back or the softness of her fur under his shoulders. The yokai form felt like an old jumper he’d forgotten he owned. Worn in. Easy. No sharp edges, no buzzing energy, none of the crackling pressure that used to come with Turbo Granny’s curse. Just his body, a little different, a little more.
A little more honest. That was the part he couldn’t quite look at straight.
His yokai form peeled something back. Some layer of careful, rehearsed normalcy that he spent most of his waking life maintaining, and what was underneath was... just him. The version that said things without running them through three filters first. The version that didn’t flinch away from his own feelings before they’d finished forming.
It should have been terrifying. It was terrifying, usually. The idea that someone might see the unfiltered version, the one who cared too much and spoke too plainly and couldn’t hide behind politeness or self-deprecation, and decide it was too much. That they’d see what he really was and still turn away.
But Momo-chan was reading manga three feet below him and absently adjusting around him whenever he shifted position, and she hadn’t reacted to the change at all. Hadn’t commented on the grey skin or the claws or the slight reshaping of his face. Probably hadn’t even noticed, or if she had, it hadn’t registered as anything worth noticing.
Because it wasn’t. To her, it wasn’t.
Momo-chan.
He really was more honest like this.
Another page ripped. The irritation that pulsed off her was stronger this time, edged with genuine frustration. Her tail pinched the torn corner between two claws and attempted to smooth it back into place, pressing it flat with a delicacy that was undermined by the fact that each fingertip was the size of his fist.
“You could use a ruler,” he offered, not looking up from his magazine.
I don’t need a ruler.
“You’ve torn four pages.”
Three. A beat. The first one was already ripped.
He let that go. A wisp drifted past his face, trailing heat across his cheek, and he batted it away absently. It circled back and settled on his shoulder like a cat that had been mildly inconvenienced.
Quiet resettled. The room was dim, curtains drawn against the afternoon, the only light the soft teal glow she cast on every surface. His magazine. Her manga. The low, even rhythm of her body beneath him, that not-breathing cadence that seemed to match his own exactly.
A shift in his weight, adjusting position, and for a moment his shoulder lifted away from her back. The contact thinned. The warmth dipped, and with it a low, steady hum of contentment that had been seeping into him so steadily he’d mistaken it for his own mood.
He settled back. The hum returned, filling the space he’d left.
He turned a page. She turned a page. Nothing tore.
The afternoon went on like that.
IV.
Everything hurt.
Not the sharp, specific hurt of a single wound but the deep, full-body kind that sat in every muscle and radiated outward with each heartbeat. His ribs ached when he breathed. His shoulders throbbed where they’d hit the ground, or a wall, or whatever it had been. He couldn’t remember the specifics. The fight had blurred together at some point, the way they always did when things got bad enough, and what was left was just the aftermath. Bruises layering over bruises. That old, familiar feeling of his whole body ringing like a struck bell, vibrating at a frequency that made his teeth itch.
He hadn’t felt this in a while. He’d forgotten how much it sucked.
His yokai form helped. Momo-chan’s aura soaking into him through every point of contact, dulling the edges, wrapping the pain in dense heat until it felt like it was happening to someone a few feet away instead of to him. His fingers were grey where they rested in her fluff. His jaw sat heavier, his teeth larger, his spine curved into that hunched shape that should have been wrong but felt more natural by the day. The form only held because she held it, he knew. Every inch of him that was touching her was another inch that didn’t hurt as much, and he was touching a lot of her right now. Sprawled across her back on his stomach, legs hanging, one arm buried in the fur at her shoulder, cheek pressed into the dense heat at the base of her neck.
Her tail was the only thing keeping him from sliding off. The palm splayed across his back, fingers spread wide, holding him in place with a steadiness that didn’t waver even when she turned corners. She was walking slowly. Each paw placed with deliberate care, the usual floatiness of her gait smoothed out into a careful, measured pace, like she was carrying glass.
It certainly felt like she was, he supposed.
—and Granny said she’d fix the fence, but honestly I think she’s just going to yell at it until it fixes itself, you know how she is with DIY, she once tried to fix the kitchen tap with a sutra and it actually worked for like two days but then—
The chatter hadn’t stopped since they’d left the clearing.
It poured into his head in a bright, continuous stream, jumping from topic to topic with a relentless energy that didn’t match anything else about her right now. Her voice in his mind was pitched too high. The cadence was off, the pauses in the wrong places, and every few sentences she’d loop back to something she’d already said and cover it again from a slightly different angle, like a presenter who’d lost their cue cards and was improvising past the gap.
She was trying so hard.
—oh, and I saw this thing online about a café that lets you eat with capybaras? We should go! When you’re feeling better, obviously, not that you’re—I mean you’re fine, you’re totally fine, I just mean—
The thought stumbled. Recovered. Kept going.
—when we both have a free day! It’d be fun! Jiji went and he said the capybaras just sit there and judge you—
His eyes closed. Her thoughts said one thing. Her body and her emotions said another.
The vibration beneath him was wrong. Not the usual low, steady hum he’d grown used to, the one that felt like sitting on something with a motor running deep inside. This was thinner. Faster. A tight, rapid flutter that lived just under the surface and pulsed unevenly against his chest. Her aura rippled where he lay on it, tiny waves spreading outward from some centre point he couldn’t see, and the heat of her wasn’t steady either. It spiked and dipped, spiked and dipped, in a rhythm that had nothing to do with calm.
She was scared.
Not of anything coming. Not of a threat. Just scared. The low, grinding kind that comes after the danger has passed and your body finally catches up to what almost happened. He could feel it bleeding into him through every point of contact, a cold undertow beneath the glow, threading through his ribs alongside the ache that was already there.
—and THEN she said the capybara tried to eat her phone case, which, okay, that’s kind of on her for having a phone case that looks like—
“Momo-chan.”
The chatter stopped.
The silence in his head was sudden and total, like a radio clicking off. Beneath him, the rapid flutter of her aura held for a moment, then slowed. Marginally.
“I know.” His voice came out rough. Low. The yokai form made his words sit deeper in his chest, and right now they barely had the energy to climb out. “I can feel it.”
She didn’t respond. The psychic hand on his back shifted, the fingers curling inward a fraction, and a thought arrived that was nothing like the chatter. Small and careful, as if intruding in his mind.
...Feel what?
He pressed his cheek harder into the glow at her neck. The fur that wasn’t quite fur gave under him, soft and tingling, and somewhere beneath it the flutter was still going. Still fast. Still scared.
“You don’t have to do the voice,” he murmured against her. “The everything’s-fine voice. I know you’re worried.”
The silence stretched. Her paws kept moving, steady and careful, but the set of her body changed. A tension he hadn’t consciously registered eased, and the next breath she took—or the motion that looked like a breath—came out uneven. Shaky.
You got hurt.
“Yeah.”
You got hurt because you—The thought cut off. Started again. You didn’t need to do that. I’m strong enough. I would have been fine, Okarun. You know that.
He did know that. She was right. She was stronger than him, tougher than him, built for the kind of fight that would break him in half. She would have been fine. She would have taken the hit and shaken it off and ended the thing without him throwing himself in the way like an idiot.
He knew all of that.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
It does matter! You’re—look at you, you can barely—
“I wanted to protect you.”
No choice but to be honest, like this.
The thought that had been building behind it collapsed. He felt it go, the sharp edge of her frustration falling away, and the flutter beneath him hitched. Skipped a beat. Then settled into something slower.
She didn’t say anything for a while. The street was quiet around them, empty houses and dark windows, the only light the glow she cast on the pavement. His eyes were closed and the world was reduced to the hum of her beneath him, the ache in his ribs, and the slow settling of her aura as the fear bled out of it, degree by degree.
Her tail adjusted. The hand shifted on his back, repositioning its grip, and for a moment the fingers tightened. Held.
A thought arrived. Quieter than anything she’d projected all night. No bravado. No pitch. Just her.
...Thank you.
He smiled into her fur.
“Any time, Momo-chan.”
Her aura rippled once beneath him, unsteady, and the feeling that bled through wasn’t one he had to wonder about. He knew whose it was.
He closed his eyes and let her carry him home.
V.
“We’re late.”
We’re not late.
“We said we’d be there at two. It’s ten past.”
That’s fashionably late. It’s different.
She was stretched out in front of the house, taking up most of the path and a fair amount of the garden on either side, chin resting on her paws. He was in the genkan, one foot up on the step, pulling his laces tight. Through the open front door he could see her tail swaying in slow, idle arcs, and the patient set of her eyes watching him with the lazy calm of someone who had never once in her life been stressed about being ten minutes late to anything.
He finished the knot, checked his bag, patted his pockets. Wallet. Keys. The usual inventory, performed with the usual urgency that came from knowing Jiji would give him that sad pout if they were more than fifteen minutes late. Which was somehow worse than an actual complaint.
He stepped out, crossed the path, and climbed on. His hands found the fluff at her neck without looking, fingers sinking into the dense heat there.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
So demanding. But she was already rising, her body unfolding with that fluid, unhurried grace, and the amusement rolling off her was fond and easy. Hold on.
“I’m holding.”
She’d taken one step when the phone rang.
The house phone. The old one in the hallway, shrill and tinny, cutting through the quiet with the particular insistence of a sound that refused to be ignored.
He paused. Looked back toward the open front door.
“I’ll get it.”
He slid off her back and jogged inside, the phone already on its fourth ring. Behind him he heard her turn, paws careful on the path, and then the creak of the front door frame as she pushed her head through. Her body filled the entryway, paws braced on the step, her head pushing past the frame until all three eyes were angled down at the phone in his hand. He could feel the glow of her chin inches from the top of his head, her curiosity pressing against him in a gentle wave.
“Hello? Ayase residence.”
A voice on the other end. Rushed. Tight.
He listened.
The curiosity vanished.
It went like a light being switched off, replaced so fast and so completely that for a moment there was nothing at all, just a hollow absence where her presence had been. Then it hit him.
Terror. White and absolute, filling his entire body in a single pulse, drowning out the voice on the phone, drowning out everything except the roar of her panic crashing through him. His knees nearly buckled. His hand clenched around the receiver hard enough to hear the plastic creak.
She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t made a sound. But every wisp in the hallway had gone still, hanging frozen in the air, and the glow of her body was brightening, surging, teal light flooding the walls until his shadow stood sharp and black against the plaster.
The receiver clattered against the wall.
She was already gone.
Wind tore through the hallway, papers scattering, the shoe rack toppling. He was on her back. He didn’t remember climbing on. His fingers were locked in her fur and his heart was slamming against his ribs and she was running, faster than he’d ever felt her move, and he pressed himself flat against her and held on because that was all he knew how to do.
Her terror poured through him and his poured through her and there was no difference between them.
They ran.
+I.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
Not the visible kind. She was too exhausted for that, too wrung out, every muscle in her body spent down to nothing. The shaking was deeper, somewhere behind her ribs, a fine tremor that wouldn’t stop no matter how many times she told herself the fight was over.
The fight was over. They’d won. She was human again, or human enough, her body small and aching and entirely her own for the first time in hours. Blood on her hands. Dirt in her hair. A cut above her eye that stung when she blinked. Small things. Manageable things. The kind of damage that healed in a week and left nothing behind.
But he was still... he was still...
He stood a few metres away, a dark silhouette against the treeline, all angles and dense shadow where the moonlight couldn’t reach. His horns caught the light, though. Two dark curves sweeping back from where his eyes used to be, and between them, drifting in slow orbits, the wisps. Her wisps. Teal so bright they were white against his dark form, small and bright and borrowed.
He was panting. Aura coiling and tearing from his open jaw with each breath, dense and dark, dissolving into nothing a few inches from his muzzle. His legs were trembling. His weight kept shifting like he was fighting to stay upright.
Her legs wobbled when she pushed herself up, but held. The distance between them was only a few steps and she crossed it on autopilot, one hand reaching for him, for the dark aura that hid him from her.
“C-come here, I’ll fix—”
The word caught in her throat and became a cough, then another, and she doubled over with her hand pressed against her mouth until it passed. When she looked up, her fingers were inches from his chest.
He stepped back.
The motion was slow, deliberate. His head, that long angular muzzle, swung side to side. No. The rumble in his chest shifted, and she caught the edge of a sound that might have been a word if his jaw could close long enough to form one.
Shaking his head. He didn’t want her to pull it back?
“Okarun, you can barely stand. Let me—”
The sound he made was not a word. Low and grinding, dragged out of a throat that wasn’t built for speech. But she knew what it meant.
No.
“Why?” Her voice cracked. She hated that it cracked. “You’re exhausted. You’re hurt. Just let me pull it back and we can—”
He lowered himself. Slowly. His front legs folded, then his back, his body settling against the ground with a heaviness that she felt through the soles of her feet. His back was level with her chest. His mane, dark and bristling, lay flat along his spine.
He turned his head toward her. No eyes. Just the horns and the wisps and the long line of his jaw, and somewhere underneath all of it, Okarun.
She understood.
She had to look away, pressing the heel of her hand against her good eye because both of them were burning now and she was not going to cry about this. She was not going to cry about him kneeling in the dirt so he could carry her home because he was too stubborn and too good and too—
A frustrated noise burst out of her, twisting into a choked sob and a groan all at once, before she faced him again.
“How can you still want to protect me after—”
She couldn’t finish it. After what she’d done to him. After her power had eaten through him and reshaped him into something that couldn’t see, could barely speak, and couldn’t be undone. Not yet. Not by anything they’d found so far. After she’d done this to Okarun, and he was kneeling in front of her offering his back like it was nothing.
His voice came low. Lower than his human voice, halting, each word costing him visible effort. And she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or if she could hear a faint echo of herself layered underneath it.
I’ll... always... protect you.
She pressed both hands over her face.
Some stuff happened... and it sucks... but I... A pause. A breath that shuddered through his whole frame. I don’t regret that. I don’t... regret trying to protect you.
Hands over her face, shoulders shaking, the tremor in her ribs climbing up into her throat. The fight was over. They’d won. She was human and he was a monster and the distance between those two things was her fault, entirely and completely her fault, and he was asking her to climb on.
She climbed on.
The solidity of him was the first thing. Where she’d expected give, there was none. His dark aura sat over muscle and bone like armour plating, dense and angular, every edge of him pressing into her thighs and her palms where she braced herself. No fluff to sink her fingers into. Just him, unyielding, the faint vibration of his aura humming against her skin wherever she touched. Cooler than she expected, and steadier than anything that exhausted had any right to be.
Her arms found his neck, wrapping around the broad column of it, and her head settled behind his horns. They curved up on either side of her, dark and solid, and for a moment she felt absurdly sheltered. Bracketed. The horns blocked the wind and the wisps drifted close, brushing her face and her hair and the cut above her eye with tiny points of heat that she recognised, distantly, as her own power filtered through him and returned changed.
When he stood, his legs straightened one at a time, mechanical, deliberate. She tightened her grip and felt his muscles shift under the aura, working hard, holding steady.
Then he walked.
Each step was planted and purposeful, his paws hitting the ground with a weight that travelled up through his body and into hers.
And she could feel him.
His emotions bled into her the way hers bled into him. She’d suspected it would happen. But suspecting it and feeling it were different things.
Determination. That was the loudest one. A low, steady burn that refused to flicker, so constant she almost mistook it for her own pulse. Stubbornness laced through it, woven so tightly she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. He was going to carry her home. He was going to walk every step of the way. This form was not a punishment and he would not treat it as one.
Her face pressed into the back of his neck.
Underneath the determination, quieter, almost hidden: exhaustion. Bone-deep and dragging. He was running on will alone. She could feel each step cost him, the small tremor of effort that bled through before he smothered it with another wave of stubborn resolve.
Maybe he didn’t know she could feel it. Maybe he did and didn’t care. Either way, he kept walking.
A wisp brushed her cheek. Then another. They circled her head in slow, gentle loops, familiar, checking. Just checking. The way his hand used to check, back when he had hands, reaching over in the dark to make sure she was still there.
Her throat closed up.
“Okarun—”
You know... we never did... His voice was slow, each word a struggle. ...go to the capybara café.
Every muscle in her body locked.
Jiji... mentioned it again. A pause. A rumbling exhale. Said we should go.
...She hadn’t realised he was talking to Jiji again.
“That’s—” Her voice splintered. She pressed her face harder into his neck, feeling the hard edge of his aura against her forehead, the steady pulse of him beneath it. “That sounds really nice, Okarun. We should... we should get round to that.”
He kept going. Slow and halting, each word costing him effort he pretended wasn’t there.
She recognised what he was doing: filling the silence with something that wasn’t the silence, giving her something to hold on to that wasn’t grief. She’d done the same thing for him, once. Walking through dark streets with him draped across her back, chattering about nothing because the alternative was the sound of her own fear.
But he wasn’t doing what she’d done. Not exactly.
She’d talked to fill the gap. He was talking about things they were going to do.
The sob that escaped was half a laugh. Or the laugh was half a sob. She couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter because he kept talking, slow and halting and ridiculous, and she kept responding, her voice cracking and mending and cracking again, her fingers tight on the hard angles of his shoulders, her body shaking with something that had stopped being grief somewhere along the way.
The wisps circled them both. Teal against dark. Hers through him, his around her.
He carried her home.