Bearclaw Valley snake oil

Where Evien's had placed his thumb is cold in his absence. He brings his hand up to his face and touches the place it had been. You belong in the spring.
Only a blink in response, a wordless I'll try my best and something chasing that sentence looking like this: for you. It occurred to him again that he did everything in halves. Mmm. He looks to the side as if Evien can't already see him sliding back into the whirring and whining disk of constant thought and he takes a breath in and he takes a breath out until his throat feels clean enough to say it—
Kepler.
His throat constricts around the k and his lips grip the p but the rest comes in a formless syllable filled to bursting with a soft vowel buoyed by softer consonants. The vocal fry takes it away. The interference coming from an old radio, made sepia with time.
Like he felt with Merrick, that tight sense of being awake, some part of him exposed under a surgical bulb but this time warmer and electric, if electricity had any emotions to do with it at all. The weight of it off his chest. He can breathe again.