Moonspear by a route obscure and lonely

Empathy was the last thing Cypress expected from the girl, but, “Is there anything I can do?” she asked, the hope in her luminous blue eyes stabbing poignantly at his heart. His own eyes rounded briefly in surprise as he asked a little stupidly, “For me?” He cracked a bemused half-smile, his somber visage momentarily recapturing its youth as it shed the hard lines of pain he worked so hard to carve into something resembling strength. “Naw, darlin’,” he muttered, his mother’s rollicking manner of speech coming back to him in a rush as he scuffed a forepaw in the snow, feeling embarrassed and confused and hurt and happy all at once. “I’m all fixed up.” It was a phrase from his childhood — something he and Rannoch had learned from Eshe. “Mama’ll fix you right up, honey,” she’d say in her slow, honeyed way, tackling every injury, slight, or illness with a copious amount of grooming, fussing, and tickling. “Okay, I’m all fixed up, mama,” had become the signal for Eshe to stop — sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

As his mien gradually settled back into a collection of sinister lines and hard planes, “Thanks for helping me feel better,” Cypress tacked on, realizing that in some odd way it was true. Now that he’d adjusted his grip on his composure and released some of the pressure by confiding in the strange little darkling about his fears and hurts, he did feel better. He didn’t feel great, but he didn’t think he was going to cry anymore, at least. “What about you?” he questioned in his quiet baritenor. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. Is there something I can do to make you feel better for awhile? Are you cold? Hungry?”