Hiding in Plain Sight

[Thalia]

Miraseia

She only laughed at the comment, a little river of a giggle as she continued to make some passable attempt at sorting through the old sketches that mostly only achieved a swarm of dust and very little actual progress. Her eyes were burning tired, hysteria a bubbling companion alongside her resolve to stay awake. At some point defeat would coddle her senses, and she’d go under, but she’d planned to be alone when it happened. Or, more importantly, alone when she woke.

When he grabbed her hand, Mira's immediate impulse was to shy back. Not to wriggle free, but to halt his progress like a boulder tied on a drowning man. Valtin was always a force you swam with, not against, but usually he avoided her when the insomnia was gnawing her eyeballs into oblivion. Unless she sought him out first anyway. But she had scars from the forge, when her addled waking mind reached for whatever madness told her was the easiest thing to draw with. It was astounding she had any skin left on her fingers actually. Not that Valtin had ever let any true harm befall her in that state, but she hated it being seen.

Mira's pulse surged shallow and fast in her head at that prospect. She stumbled a few steps after him before acceptance won the moment of fear, and her fingers fell willing into the grooves of his. Probably he only intended to haul her into movement, but she had no intention of letting go. Her stride quickened to keep pace with the tornado of his pace. After a decade of stagnation, the world was rushing again, and maybe it would all go by too quickly -- she knew too much of where it ended for Valtin. “Better move all the sharp things,” she said, yawning, and scratching a tease into the crook of his elbow with a fingernail. “In case you wake up as a canvas.”