I shake my head. You don't need to apologize, that shake says. I'm the idiot who woke you up in the middle of the night, not realizing you intentionally left me behind. A smile - a pained one - parts my lips and I try to interrupt her, not wanting to hear her apologize. In my ears it sounds patronizing, now that it's all clear.

"No need to apologize. It's my fault. I should have realized.." Then I did laugh, a tortured and jaded sound. "I mean, you did say goodbye, didn't you? Father said you told me you were leaving." I left the rest unsaid. I didn't need to explain it to her - she was the one who chose who to say goodbye to, after all.

Suddenly she's stepping forward and I think that she means to give me a pity hug and send me on my way. But then her body is against mine - her chest against my own (I realized I lowered my head to accept her embrace without even thinking). I can feel her beginning to speak, and I wait to hear something like, Goodbye Rhoa, or perhaps optimistically Fine, stay here tonight and go back in the morning - and because I'm hearing these things in my head, I almost miss what it is that she is saying.

It takes my mind a few moments to catch up - to play back her words to make sure that I've heard them correctly and that I'm not just imposing my desires and needs onto her. Part of me wants to ask her why she left then? Why say she didn't want to say goodbye, and then just leave me? Why ask me to stay with her (for how long? where?), when we've only been a few hundred meters away from each other for the past few weeks. But of course that part is entirely annihilated the first time I feel her take a breath: I feel her body press against mine and then release, feel the warm puff of air against my skin, and suddenly I don't care.

I don't care why she left. I don't care whether she was telling the truth when she said she didn't think saying goodbye to me was important, didn't care how long this was to last for, what it meant, or what I did to deserve this.

"Always." I agree readily into her mane, wrapping my long neck around her own and inhaling her scent - already mingled with the scent of the earth for having been here. "I'll stay as long as you like." My wings spread forward, reaching around her shoulders and bathing her in the gently pulsing warm light of my feathers.