Wheeling Gull Isle And basically I've gotta know

She is hurting him - all she seems to do is hurt him - and guilt snakes through her venomously. Turning to him, she shakes her head vehemently. 

"No," she protests confidently, the truth of it in the scrape of her timbres - in a tongue her people were rumored to be unable to deceive. "You're nothing like him," she promised gently. "You could never be."

Her head fell forward then, her temple nestled against the sweep of his broad chest - a place that felt familiar, even with the years between them. 

"I'm just.." Petrified.

"I lost you once. And it was my fault." It's easier to say, somehow, whispering as she does curled beneath his chin. "The only thing that kept me going in the beginning was knowing that surrender meant it was all for naught - everything I suffered, all that you lost, your death," the noxborne wisps, voice cracking on the end. 

"Now that you're back...I can't help but think, what if I lose you again?" 

There it was - every little fear that plagued her mind both in daylight and in the pitch of night. What they had was real but mayhaps it was safer to shield herself from it; the nitewisp was not certain she could shoulder that grief again. 

With another, it might not be as fulfilling. But, then, she was less likely to be hurt.