Moonspear hopes and dreams, they will collide

A heavy bead of silence strung itself.

He did not expect her to relent, but she did. If not for the overwhelming grasp that he was treading a line better untoed, the surprise would have rippled through him. Had he truly wormed his way into her heart that way? Her words did suggest just as much and he knew that he would not open that particular box in Pandora's collection again. It wasn't worth the trouble. Nothing was worth the trouble of prying open anything that had to do with him.

She pressed in close to him, her voice hushed against his cheek, and his relaxing posture was more for show than he really felt. What a burdensome thing the past was.

"I know," he answered quietly. "Perhaps it's best saved for another time." Another time when he was better prepared to answer her questions with more concrete weaves than the filmsy paper ones he had thrown up hastily. She could have pushed them over easily, just as she could have pushed him for answers. But she did not; he was minutely grateful, but well harried beneath it.

"There are other things to worry ourselves with than that," he went on, finding confidence. "Wasn't there something you were going to tell me more about?" She had been busy, of that he was aware, and giving her the opportunity to fill him in seemed a distraction better than none. He knew she wouldn't waste the time spilling where diplomacy had led her next.