Need drinks it in. It's pain and unhappiness, but it's something. A fire to warm her hands at and remind herself of when she too gave off heat. Both generally, and also he's calling forth the shadow of memories she can no longer consciously grasp. She had been like this poor lonely child once, spiny around an abyss of grief, functioning but inconsolable even by a touch like this.
She can understand why Companions embrace their Chosen so intensely. They pierce right through the barriers around the human heart and make their Chosen unable to deny the truth of being understood and deemed worthy of love. Of being loved, truly, deeply, by a friend of the soul, with the promise of it stretching on for their entire lives. It's life-changing. Chosen will uproot themselves entirely to keep that love. It would wound them, and the Companion giving it to them, to lose it.
Need doesn't do that.
Ethereal as the hallucination of her touch is, it feels rather tangibly like she ends this approximation of a one-armed hug by squeezing his shoulder with a large hand and pulling back, leaving a fading warmth. :There,: she says, with a deliberate wryness. :Was that so bad? Dignity intact?:
no subject
She can understand why Companions embrace their Chosen so intensely. They pierce right through the barriers around the human heart and make their Chosen unable to deny the truth of being understood and deemed worthy of love. Of being loved, truly, deeply, by a friend of the soul, with the promise of it stretching on for their entire lives. It's life-changing. Chosen will uproot themselves entirely to keep that love. It would wound them, and the Companion giving it to them, to lose it.
Need doesn't do that.
Ethereal as the hallucination of her touch is, it feels rather tangibly like she ends this approximation of a one-armed hug by squeezing his shoulder with a large hand and pulling back, leaving a fading warmth. :There,: she says, with a deliberate wryness. :Was that so bad? Dignity intact?: