She keeps spouting foolishness, still not understanding. Sometimes she's so quick, her skill at word play usually allowing them to lose hours in conversation, something that few can claim. She holds his attention, more than anyone. For all the times she's found emptiness in his gaze, there have been even more moments where his midnight passions and ever-lurking possession could more than make up for it.

Now it's no different, suddenly in the door she was earlier seeking, and now the horns are visible but so are the veins, as jagged as the scratches he makes while digging behind his ears and out, then back. Back and forth.

"Do you think that it matters where your feet carry you, when I want silence? It has nothing to do with the noise of your voice, princess, and you're smart enough to know better. I wouldn't have wanted it if you hadn't left. It was Paradisa that would have been silent; would have been stopped.

Would that have been better? You, too..."

If nothing else, she would have been frozen in time with her brother. Everything would be nothing. She doesn't know. None of them know. Someone should know.

"And me."