His voice. It's his voice she thought, her heart taut in her chest as she stepped forward to go after him. He turned back quicker though, vanishing for a moment, so short she didn't even have time to register much less react, before he was before her in a swirl of shadows and Mesec. She stopped, breathing in the space between them, eyes searching his as she struggled for words, feeling as heavy and tangled as she was, she supposed.

In the distance the ocean roared. It pulsed in tempo with her heart - strong.

A faint smile flicked to life, like an old light bulb remembering what the switch meant, as he struck up a conversation on the weather of all things. Still, his words were not so light as they seemed, and it suggested her maintained his own fears of the darkness, both past and the rising present, as she did.

Still, he was the moon shining bright through the storm and the passing clouds. He was like her, a streak of fire to drive away the night. Not so bright as the sun, at times they shrouded over or went quiet, but then they struck again, illuminating and brilliant, the moon and the lightning.

As he finished, or rather just before he did, she stumbled (fell almost) forward, her body closing the gap and folding into him like it was the most natural thing. Her neack swept out to embrace his, to hold him against her, black hide meshed with black hide. Her wings dropped forward, encasing them, holding them at least for a moment in serenity. She breathed warmth against him. She breathed him in. He was the night, the starlight, the moon that hides then returns. He was Mesec, and he was back.

"I thought you were dead," she said softly when the silence seemed to go on too long. To her knowledge they hadn't touched like this before, but she hadn't thought, only felt. For a year she had been absent of him (and my he had grown in that year!), and it wasn't until she had him again that she realized what a hole he had left in her.

Gingerly she stepped away, but was careful not to put more distance between them than was necessary. "You went out into the...the darkness and never came back. I searched, but you were... gone. I thought they had gotten you." It was not accusatory, only the outpouring of all the grief, confusion, and fear she had felt pent up since that disaster in the caves. Now though all she felt was, relief.

She ignored everything he said. None of it mattered. All that mattered was he was back, he was okay.
She smiled.