Kaelish Brightsky

"Hira," I said, bewildered. "What…?"

"A new merchant showed up at the market today," she said, breathlessly excited. "He has so many flowers! He said he’d charge me less if I bought a lot of them at once so…um…" Hira looked down at the massive, riotous profusion of flowers she carried in her arms. 

"Ummmm…." I responded, rather coherently, I thought. 

"I got them for you!" She said, bulling ahead. "I was only going to buy one or two, but this other one sort of reminded me of you too," she said, waggling a fragrant, orange flower my way. "Then I saw this yellow one and I started thinking of you as well, along with this one and…well, they all made me think of you, for some reason? So I thought you’d like them too."

"What’s a lovely thought, Hira," I said carefully. "But where are we going to put them all?"

"You don’t like them…" She said, visibly wilting. Excitement left her like air escaping a balloon and I winced. 

"That’s not what I meant-" I began. 

"I’ll return them," she said, whirling around. Her tail hung limp against the floor, bereft of it’s usual energy. 

I took a couple quick steps forward and snagged her around the waist to stop her before she could get out the door, laying a light kiss along the back of her neck. She was stiff for a moment longer, but she soon melted into a soft and pliant warmth in my arms and I held her close for a moment. 

"I do like them," I said softly by her ear. "I’ve just never been given flowers before and didn’t know quite how to react."

"Really?" She asked, twisting around to glance at me out of the corner of her eye. 

"Yes, really," I said. 

"Oh…" 

"Enough of that," I said, voice bright. "Let’s have some fun. What do you say you drop off the flowers here and we stroll back out to the trade district and see if we can’t find some vases and pots for these, hmmm?"

"You mean it?" She asked, a little bit of her customary bounce coming back to her steps. 

As of recent this morning, I found out that a dear dear friend of mine, loserjellyfish, has been looking for a job. In this day and age that’s one of the hardest things in the world to find and we all have been there, some of us are still there. Their house have decided to be the opposite of helping to my friend’s job hunt and have cut their internet, cables and all, because they failed to find one within the week they were given. The scary thing is that this is not an unusual thing, this happens a lot to them and they need $4000 to move out of home and to a better place away from all this. I’m really concerned about their safety and their health, both physical and mental health, I don’t know about you but having your internet cut is a really horrifying thing to happen, especially when you’re looking for a job ON the internet. To make matters worse they do not have a car so they cannot drive anywhere and if this goes on they will have their phone taken away. To read more about this or donate to their really, really needed cause, you can find their situation here on their tumblr blog and also their donation address, because honestly speaking no body should live under those conditions. What I am offering to help out them is $15 portrait sketches, which look like these here

"Hira?" I asked as I walked in. "Are you home?"

"In here," she answered. Her voice had drifted up from the bedroom, soft and muffled. 

I closed the door behind me and made my way across the house, heading down the narrow tunnel that led to the bedroom. I’d been busy running a few errands throughout the day and had just gotten home. When I’d asked her earlier if she wanted to come with, she’d wanted to sleep in instead, so I’d let her be. 

I bent to pick at the scrap of tattered white cloth on the floor of the tunnel. 

Red? Was that blood? 

"Hira?" I asked, alarmed, as I picked up my pace. "Are you alright?"

"I’m fine," she said, her tone clearly indicating that she didn’t want to talk about it. 

I stepped into the room and hissed in a breath through my teeth. Hira lay on her stomach on the bed, her head facing away from me so that all I could see was her tumbled mass of silver white hair. 

She didn’t seem to be wearing much, as the blankets were tucked up over her legs. The strap of her bra stood out against her overly pale skin and a white bandage, spotted with red, lay pressed against her lower back. 

"God, Hira, what happened? Are you alright?" I asked as I moved next to the bed. 

"I don’t want to talk about it," she said, her tone flat. 

"Does it still hurt? Is it still bleeding?" I asked as I eased onto the bed next to her, eyes on the bandage. 

She continued facing away from me, stubborn. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” she repeated. 

I raised my hands in surrender, though she couldn’t see it. I’d learned enough about her stubborn pride to bother testing it over something as little as this. If she wanted to tell me at some point, I was sure that she would. 

"Can I at least heal you the rest of the way?"

She was quiet for a moment before nodding slightly. 

Reaching down gently, I peeled off the adhesive edges of the makeshift bandage she’d managed to slap over the wound. 

It wasn’t pretty. It was a thin, jagged cut. It started just around the edge of her side and slid all the way to the center of her back. The bleeding had mostly stopped but as I pulled the bandage away, it looked like it was ready to start oozing blood again. 

Wasting no time, I focused and extended my hands. Warm yellow light pooled along her wound, the edges visibly closing. I heard her let out a small hiss of pain as it healed, but couldn’t spare any attention for it. Her skin knit together, whole and seamless and I let the energy linger for a moment, doing what I could to ease the bruised muscles beneath the surface.

After a time, I let the energy lapse and sat back, releasing my pent up breath. 

She still hadn’t moved or said anything. 

I thought about admonishing her, telling her to be more careful. I thought about telling her that she should make sure that I was with her if she was venturing into something potentially dangerous. I thought about telling her how much I’d like to lock her up to make sure that nothing ever hurt her again. 

I did none of these things. 

Instead, I reached out, letting my fingertips glide gently up the now smooth skin along the center of her back. Leaning down, I dropped a light kiss just between her shoulder blades, smiling against her skin as I felt her shiver at the touch. 

"There," I said softly as I pulled away. "All better now." 

No response. 

"Alright," I said gently, easing up off the bed. "I’ll be upstairs if you need anything, Hira." 

Her hand caught mine as I got up and I looked down to see that she was still facing away from me. Her fingers squeezed tightly around mine for just a moment before letting go and dropping down to burrow beneath her pillow. 

A small smile tugged at my lips.