HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON'T;

Oh, my tongue's the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart She moved. His wary gaze snapped back to her. The predator in his brain had already measured the difference between them in size and probable ability. The difference in apparent physical condition. She could kill him if she wanted to (and does she want to?). He wanted to believe the gentle tone of her voice. The soft cant of her head. The serene blue of her eyes. But he didn't stand alive before her thanks to an overabundance of trust. And his only counsel was gone. Korri glanced up as the stranger did, and blinked at the large black and white bird in the branches above them. His heart twinged, a sharp stab through the biting reddish ache. A part of him flared briefly with anger, wanting to demand Why do you have him if I cannot have her? But he was too weary even to consider indulging it. The anger died. A shiver ran down his spine, water working its way through his coat and sucking the heat from his skin. His head hurt. His — everything hurt. And Auga was gone. Perhaps the stranger wouldn't notice the tears gathering in his eyes through all this rain. She kept approaching. Korri stepped back once, a silent warning against approaching him further. He could not, of course, take any action against her, but the quiet rebuke was also a test of her intentions. His ears came forward as she spoke again, and the gears wheeled in his head as he tried to understand it. She was offering to help him? Why? He bit back the urge to turn her down immediately. Swallowed it. Another word stuck in his mind — Portal. "Portal?" he said at last, echoing the name back at her. Trying to think, to find words, felt like the mental equivalent of wading through thick sludge. His head hurt. He shivered again, wings aching. Unwilling, unable to tell her Auga was gone, more gone than ever before. An awful blankness where before there had been safety. Wisdom. If he thought about it too much, he was certainly going to cry in earnest. "I did hit my head on the way down," Korri relented, finally, after a moment of consideration. He wondered if the wound bled — impossible to tell in all this rain. He was quite aware he bore a number of other more minor scratches and injuries, some only minor because they had begun to heal. Some inflicted by the unwelcoming trees on his descent. Eying her carefully, Korri took a step forward. The ends of his wings dragged on the ground to either side. "But I am more confused than I am injured." He cocked his head. "Are you a healer? Is this your home?" Am I intruding? Too many questions. Too many things to think about. Where the hell was he? And where was his bird?

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