Numair supposed he should have expected Hawk's friends to be as intense as he was, in their own ways. The chill in his teeth remained, stubborn and steady. It was just as distracting as the heat on the side of his face, and just as uncomfortable as the flashing, insistent sun.

He tried again to return his focus to the broadcast. This was an important cultural milestone, after all. He would have to get used to Hawk's friends, and they to him, if this relationship was going to work...

He froze. A deep anxiety that had been building under his heart found its way into his mind just then, and occupied everything.

Of course this relationship isn't going to work! What am I doing?! It's always going to be like this, isn't it, treading carefully around people who only see the Cynn where I'm standing--but Hawk isn't like that--but then, he knew me before he knew me as the Cynn--what chance do I have otherwise? Lilya does not trust my motives and who can blame her, when I'm putting her brother in danger simply by fancying him too much. This is all going to fall apart and it's going to take him down with me when it does...

And on, and on, and on the thoughts went, down into an incoherent darkness.

He forgot himself just then, and flinched when a spot of sunlight caught him in the eye. No one saw, luckily, except for Hawk, who reached over wordlessly and closed his hand over Numair's.

As he squeezed Numair's hand gently, the sun and molten metal and firelight and chill all dropped away, superceded by Hawk's own landscape:

A summer afternoon at the end of a long, trying, hot day; dark clouds heavy with the promise of rain, thunder murmuring quietly in the distance and golden-brown grass whispering in return, almost luminous by contrast.

And with it, Numair's head finally went quiet.

The broadcast came back to him as if from far away; the narrator had begun the story's prologue.

"...Though all things thus may at any moment come to a brutal end, wrought by grasping hand and flashing teeth, such thoughts could not be allowed to trespass. They did not contemplate the end of their time, any more than a star contemplates burning out. Instead each holding their time together in one perfect abstract instant, eternal and simultaneous."

Yes, he'd heard this story before, but it sounded rather different now.

[Hi all--that ends this short! Next week you can expect a little bit of a buffer update; the week after will be the title page for the next short comic, and then business as usual following that. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this little experiment!]