Heron Lake Plateau your shadow weighs a ton

The more they spoke, the more heated things became. To the stranger, the words meant next to nothing. They were just sounds - inflections without meaning - and for the first few seconds, it all sounded like it was white noise anyways. The tension was what he picked up on. The bristling of the bright girl standing guard beside him, and then the defensiveness in the tone of the striped girl. The boy's reaction remained wordless, but he adjusted again, lifting himself to a precarious seated position for a moment, and the body's limbs trembled with the effort, limited though it was.

Maybe he had picked up on their dislike of one another — perhaps it was so obvious that even the mentally stunted boy had managed to take notice — but he lurched, and seemed to place himself between them both, like a barrier; to protect Niamh or Fire — either way, he was suddenly there, and that's when his weakened limbs gave out again. Whether it had been an effort to dissuade further argument or, quite possibly, the stranger's desire to escape the confining situation that he'd found himself in, remained obscure.