Ocean's Breath Plateau [m] Tell me, when the party ends, will you still love who I am?

Chakliux found her then. She looked up, bleary-eyed and slow, and her lips parted for a moment as if she meant to speak. But then he was coming close, too close and her skin crawled with it, and she flinched from him with a soft cry.

The numbness broke at once into a thousand feelings. What has happened? The words would not come to her. I - Her voice cracked into a wrenching sob and she crumbled, half-falling into a sit as if the weight of it all had only just now struck her and she could not bear to stand beneath it. He - How could she tell him? How could she say the words?

She couldn't. She couldn't. Panic now; all pinprick pupils and hackles bristling and she couldn't breathe, and she felt his weight on her again, his breath at her neck. A deep shudder wracked her. She tried again to speak, but each time the words dissolved into another harrowed sob.