well someday soon when the spring brings the sun
i'll sleep, i'll finally
feel better when the winter's gone

Hobgoblin is desperate, and so is she. She is rolling her side in the husk of the tree, brushing bark against her burns and letting it dig into her frailty and cut away at it, coaxing free quiet tears that she feels like she doesn’t have the effort to push from her eyes. Death is welcomed with wide arms. She wants it, needs it, pleads with the Gods just to go ahead and get her away from how hard this life is because she feels as if she can’t do it anymore.
Hobgoblin pushes out the saddest song she’ll ever remember him making. Low notes hum out of his vocal cords as he sends her a wave, dipping his body into the lake deeper and twirling it so that the water ushers its way to her. He wants to comfort her and keep her safe, take the pain away and let her feel better, but Sikeax is stubborn in a lot of ways, definitely in the ways that she’ll never admit to her own defeat and how she won’t let many hold her when she obviously needs them most.
She needs to learn to trust, but that’s a difficult thing that she’s not ready for.
A sob chokes out of in the form of a long sigh. It hurts more than she lets him know. It touches everything in her that could feel a stitch of emotion: in the heart that weighs a million tons because it’s so full of love that she carelessly and willingly hands away to anyone that will take it(another thing that Sikeax is too stubborn to tell, but something Hobgoblin is willful to preach), in the burning of her throat where cries have cut microscopic wounds into, in the head that is heavy and sinking. She wants to die, and here before her is a means to do so, but life has a place for her, or maybe it’s picked a way to laugh at her. She can breathe in her death, and it’s what keeps her from it.
“Not yet. Please, not today little snow flower in the sea.” it tells her, begging with her to stay in this world so that it can admire what makes Sikeax a strong soul.
It sends her one last plea, shapes it into the form of a boy in a man’s body who is the light in her darkness and her happiness, the one who she’s sure she loves more than she loves anyone else. Cera.
Hobgoblin’s familiarity with him is blurred. He only knows him as a face that she sometimes thinks about, on some occasions has searched out, something that she tells him he should care about because he means the world to her in the same way that Sikeax means the world to to Monster.
He accepts just because it is her. She is pitiful, and he is not one to love and comfort, stone-souled and blackhearted, murder minded and scripted to be ruthless.
So this is how when the boy comes to greet her, opening wings and dipping to hold her, that Hobgoblin is not snarling, and is instead tucking chin to neck in a greeting, humming softly as his body turns, sloshing the lightest bit of water possibly as he goes. He sinks into the abyss as he feels the hints of her heart warming, smile gradually finding its way to back to her.
Her happiness is an upwelling, a light in the dark, a hand reaching for her that she takes with so much fierceness and a grip that tells ‘I’ll never let go if you please won’t leave me because I need you now.’
His wing is enough to pull her back. She sinks into his warmth, his sweet smell that breathes life back into her, pushing her wet body into his dry one as she silently begs for him to draw his wing in tight and hold her like he'll never let go. His voice, oh how much she loves it, is all that she is sure she needs now.
He tucks a smile across her features at last, rubbing the same chin she had once so freely pushed into him on their first encounter into him.
“I think maybe,” Happiness draws a weak warmth to her words as they flutter like butterfly wings, her heart doing the same at how nice and wonderful and reviving it is to have someone she loves and cares about so dearly to be holding her close, keeping her safe, taking away the pain. “we should meet more often. You’re always here exactly when I need you the most.”
She rises into his touch when it comes, shutting tired eyes away and simply melting into him. Bliss overcomes her. When was the last time that someone had so deeply cared for her and not scared her? When was it that she even felt that someone cared for her? Volterra was a being she was not completely close to, more bound to, but she could only guess he saw her as a woman who birthed his child and was raising more. Amara was a game of cat and mouse, one of wits and fear and taking risks and chances that kill her on the inside. Anyone else-  Well, there really wasn’t anyone else. Cera had taken her loneliness in her hand and cured it, her lonely true friend in this place.
It all comes crashing back down within short moments. He offers her the world, the damn world with a handful of words and a nickname that she’s never loved more till it comes from his lips. She’s never felt this important to anyone, yet here he is, proving her worth with small things. She guesses he probably doesn’t even know it.
She isn’t sure what he can do. She thinks about asking him to take her back in time to when he enticed her with a description of a thing that she can never achieve and now haunts her(another thing ruined by Amara, the faint notice of how much the mare has scorned her), to when she swore she was in love with him.
And maybe she was. Cera has made her so important in this life with everything he has done. He saved her from death and in turn, she worked feverishly to do the same for him. He gave her comfort that no one else gave, a friendship for life.
But now, she’s not in love with him. Not that way. She loves him like he’s the world, her friend, very best friend in the whole world.
“Would you stay with me? Talk to me? Tell me what I’ve missed in your life. We live so close to one another, but we never see each other enough. Just bring me back into your life and fill me in. You’re my best friend, and I love you so much.” Words she’s never said before. They feel like they weigh both the Sun and the Moon on her tongue and atop her lips when she says them.
“You make me feel safe and happy with all that you do, and that’s all I really need right now.”
What a perfect thing he is to her. A miracle in the works, her personal star to wish upon and the ocean current that helps her get to her destinations when she pushes herself too far out into the depth of the sea, her anchor to hold her into living on, and most importantly, her best friend.


"Talk."