Sawtooth Spire a silver whisper, take flight and steal into my mouth

Esme kept a grave face, cold as as a subterranean cave.

Was it true -- had he disrespected her by pursuing his heart? In discomfort, Riley writhed like an earthworm underwater. It wasn't! No! He didn't mean --

She edged back, her words laying across him like the harsh nip of winter's wind. It wasn't that he didn't want her to say no -- it was that he didn't understand; why, why was she so beyond reproach when he was constantly reduced to frayed batwings beneath her feet? Why was it she got the high mantle while he got the dirt? And why, everloving why, was he not good enough for her?

She mocked him then, a grotesque display which possibly hurt the Redleaf more than any of her sharpened words ever could. He was reduced in that moment to a blithering child, an idiot -- and all because she couldn't handle the frightening way love -- or commitment -- encircled her like a noose.

For a long while there was silence while Esme peered down the darkening path, and while Riley nursed his wounds. She listed while Riley picked at mental scabs left at her behest; sure, let her plunge to her death, and end it all -- coward!

He didn't pretend to understand the meaning of her tone, but his eyes were imbued with fire and his fur flared to life when Esme claimed she felt nothing. "THAT'S A LIE!" Riley shouted, the stones clattering under his forceful baritone.

"A LIE! YOU --" Had he fingers to shake, he might have tremblingly pointed at her in choking fury: "You're afraid -- you --" His thoughts roared to life around him like a miasma of spinning sharks. For a moment, the boy struggled to pull the sentence he wished to the surface. "You tell yourself you feel nothing, because you are afraid of what you feel -- or you can't handle it. I don't know. I'm not a fucking expert. But I do know one thing, and that is you are lying to yourself as well as me. You feel nothing? What a joke -- you hide yourself from the world, because you're afraid of what you really feel -- BUT I AM NOT A PAWN TO BE THROWN AWAY!" Riley bleated, his heart beating in beautiful dissonance. "I'm not! You treat me like a child and only think about yourself and you hurt everyone around you because you can't face your reflection! I don't care about your mom, I don't care about what you've done in the past --" Here Riley's voice hitched from its deep timber, the foundation of his strength splintering into hissing rubble. "You treat me like I'm a phantom of your past. Like I'm beneath you. Why? I just --" He grasped for meaning, for a buoy in the stormy tempest that was their confusing meeting -- "I just want to be there for you, and you keep pushing me away."