Mirk watched his tankard of ale percolate to itself on the bar in front of him, brooding. He didn't quite understand how the bubbles got in the drink, nor if he should be worried about their quantity, but it didn't seem to be doing the rest of the patrons any harm.

He had stumbled into the first tavern he'd found upon returning to the City of Glass — he'd had to walk some distance, since the area nearest the gate that connected with the mage quarter of London was the preserve of the wealthier K'maneda, the disgraced nobles and former guildmasters. He’d found the usual merry crowd awaiting him inside, even if none of the men or working women looked familiar. The language in that particular tavern was mostly English, though of a dialect he didn't understand. The haunt of the low-born members of the Fifth and the Fourteenth, perhaps. Or maybe that of the Irish and Scottish members of the Seventh, with whom the Easterners had an odd, pitying camaraderie.

The not-quite-familiarity reminded Mirk of how fragile his position was. Everything at home had been about connections. Once he'd returned from the abbey, he'd been flung into his mother's complex web of friends and acquaintances, which seemed to skip over no region or city, no matter how provincial. She knew everyone; everyone knew her.

And if they somehow didn't know her, they'd heard of his grandfather, the lord of House d'Avignon. The man who'd once saved the entire country from ruin by renewing the grain harvest three years in a row against the sabotage of cunning Spanish mages. Who'd cured a distant dauphin of some terrible illness, who'd freed the French mages from being ground under the heel of the ancient Church mages, a bit of history Mirk had stumbled upon in the abbey's old chronicles. But Jean-Luc had also been no one, once upon a time, if Genesis's translation of his journal was correct. A peasant who'd lost his home and his family, who'd had to claw his way up from nothing with naught but the staff to help him on his way.

If Jean-Luc could rise up from nothing with only the staff to help him, then there was no reason he couldn't do the same. No reason beyond his own weakness of will.

Mirk looked over at the staff propped against the bar beside him, which he'd leaned hard on the whole way back to the City. Then his attention drifted out further, to the throngs of strangers cackling and cursing over a game of dice. Jean-Luc had known no one once. Mirk felt much better about his ability to make new friends among the K'maneda than he did about mastering whatever power was hidden within the staff. He'd been complacent thus far, sticking only to the familiar, the Easterners and the infirmary healers and the unfortunate frequent patients. Mirk still didn't even know what Ravensdale, the K'maneda's ostensible head, looked like.

He'd have to start putting in real effort if he ever wanted his family to prosper again. But he wasn't starting tonight.

The sound of a giant hand slapping down on the bar a few yards away jolted Mirk out of his woolgathering. He turned to look. What he saw made his shoulders, which had been drawn up high and tense ever since he'd first left the City hours ago, droop in relief. It was K'aekniv.

"Bar boy! Yes, you! Spirit! The good shit! You English bastards owe me!"

The half-angel was a wreck. His boots and trousers were caked up to the knees in muck, the burned away patches of his uniform revealing an assortment of bruises and scrapes, half of them still bleeding. And his leftmost wing was almost entirely red with blood, though Mirk doubted it was K'aekniv's. The only clean thing on him were three patches on his face, down his chin and beneath his eyes. K'aekniv had been crying.

And he was exhausted. K’aekniv must have burned through almost all his strength for whatever emotional turmoil he was caught in not to have alerted Mirk to his presence the instant he entered the tavern. Mirk lowered his mental shielding a little. The pain was there, albeit fainter than it usually was coming from K'aekniv. Not a physical injury, but a deep aching in K'aekniv's chest that was making it hard for the half-angel to keep upright. Though perhaps the extreme state of inebriation he was in contributed to that.

"Niv?" Mirk called out, hesitantly.

"Mirk! What are you doing in this shithole, eh? You like the English more than you like us now too?"

K'aekniv was trying to joke with him, Mirk knew. But there was a note of pain in the question that troubled Mirk, as he stood and shuffled down a half dozen stools to where K'aekniv was standing. The barman didn't seem to know what to do in response to K'aekniv's bellowed demand. Mirk fished his purse out of the pocket of his waistcoat and passed a generous sum to the skeptical man, cupping his hand so that K'aekniv wouldn't see the amount. Not that K’aekniv was paying much attention to anything beside his own heartache. The barman nodded and left without comment. "What happened to you, Niv? You feel...not yourself."

"It's over," K'aekniv said, collapsing onto the two stools nearest Mirk, burying his head in his hands. "She's done with me."

It didn't explain the mud and the blood, but it did clear up the reason why K'aekniv had been crying. Mirk propped the staff against the bar again and reached out to lay a hand on K'aekniv's arm for a moment. "Would you like to tell me about it? Methinks I can't change anything, but I can at least listen."

"It starts with me being an idiot," K'aekniv grumbled, leaning his head on one hand as he awaited the barman's return. "You see, we're hurting for work, yes? It's always some shit, someone pissing someone else off, I don't know. Politics. What do I care? I just go where I'm told. Anyway, this man from the Scots in the Seventh comes to me and says, we're in shit, the Fifth is in shit, I don't care what horse-fucker says, you need to go get the commanders and their officers out of it. I'll pay you whatever and smooth things over. You just get this contract done and make sure they don't get killed."

Mirk could only follow the vaguest contours of the politics involved, but what he'd woken up to at the infirmary once he’d finished making his personal rounds helped some. They had been taking a lot of casualties from the Fifth, men coated in a greenish-black mud much like the stuff on K'aekniv's lower half, all of them looking like they'd rolled around in bins full of the blades they used to do surgery. The mud caused horrible infections. Dozens had been sent to the basement. Mirk nodded, gesturing for K'aekniv to continue as the barman reappeared with a full bottle of spirit and two grimy glasses.

"It was a shit contract. They have weird bombs full of knives on that realm. Anyway, I go over and figure things out. Those men...not the best fighters, but they're poor like us, so they'll listen once they stop saying shit about angels. It wasn't terrible. But what was terrible was that horse-fucker's second and third got themselves captured along with Paul from the Fifth and some of his. Bitch officers will kill us all someday..." K'aekniv paused, considering the bottle that'd appeared at his elbow.

Mirk took it, scanning the label as he uncorked it. Gin. Not his favorite, but, from the smell of it, not the terrible bootleg kind that landed at least two men a week in the infirmary. He poured himself a glass, then offered the rest of the bottle to K'aekniv. "That sounds dangerous."

"Eh, it wouldn't have been so bad, but horse-fucker decided he had to come with me."

"Ah...I'm sorry, Niv, but I don't know who..."

"Dauid! The commander. Horse-fucker. Bastard cares more about his twenty horses than he does about his wife or any of his men. And he can't fight for shit himself, though he does know how to talk to Ravensdale and his people to get them to give us things. So, an officer. Anyway, I have to have him getting in the way all the time, but we make it through to this prison, yes? Terrible fight. More of those bombs and a lot of magic. But we made it through. The third, though, he didn't make it. Not a good man, but no one should get it like he did. Would have been able to save him if horse-fucker hadn't got in the way." K'aekniv glanced over at his left wing, flexing it, causing the dried blood stuck to its feathers to come off in flakes.

Mirk decided he'd be better off not knowing the specifics. "That's terrible, Niv. I'm sorry."

"It's whatever. Happens all the time. Two out of three's not bad, since I had to save horse-fucker's stupid ass too. And I got all the other little people out on the way, you know, the poor people that the big mages on that realm had decided to lock up for being poor. Anyway, horse-fucker, he's all happy, even though his third got it. You know, you get carried away and say weird things when you almost die. He says to me, you know, I should put you in Adie's — that was his third, Adie — place. You get things done. And I just shake my head and tell him, no, leave me with my men, I just want my money. I don't want to be some officer sitting around all day writing notes and yelling at people."

"I see..."

"I thought that was that. Over. Done. Enough gold to make up for horse-fucker not sending us out much, and a promise from him that he'll put us on the next good contract because I saved him and that piece of shit Poppy. But that wasn't it. It got worse."

K'aekniv paused to drink from the bottle. He drained a full third of it without batting an eye. He was approaching the crux of his story. The aching in K’aekniv’s chest had grown so intense that it felt like the half-angel was suffocating under it. "I get back here, I spread out the money, everything should be fine, yes? I go to tell Lina the good news. No. See, she hears from one of the other girls that that fucker Paul went talking about what happened at the prison. Because, you know, he always goes right to the women when he gets back, since it makes him feel more alive or some shit. I walk in the door, and she starts yelling at me right away! You could have been third! An officer! Good pay! Almost the head of everything! And you say no? That was too much for her. She says we're done. And here I am."

Slumping over the bar and sniffling, K'aekniv took another long draw from the bottle. The misery radiating from him at the memory of it was enough to make Mirk cringe. He dragged his stool closer, putting an arm around as much of K'aekniv's broad shoulders as he could embrace. "I'm sorry Niv. You didn't do anything wrong. Sometimes things just...don't work out."

K'aekniv scoffed. But he didn't attempt to throw off Mirk's arm either. Instead he leaned into it, burying his face in one arm. Mirk couldn't tell whether K'aekniv was crying again or not from his muffled voice. "She's right. I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot."

"What kind of idiot wouldn't take an extra fifty gold a contract? For sitting in the back where it's safe?"

"Someone who loves his men," Mirk said, giving K'aekniv's shoulders a squeeze. "I can feel how much you care about them. You don't want to abandon them."

K'aekniv didn't seem to hear him. "This is how it always is. I do something stupid, then this happens. I should have known, Lina, she's too smart and good for a bastard like me."

Mirk thought this over, making himself sit still and steep in K'aekniv's pain rather than pulling back to a safe distance. "I don't think anyone did anything wrong, Niv. Neither you nor her. Sometimes people just want different things from life. But methinks it's not such a bad thing that you got to be happy for a little while, at least."

The half-angel's voice broke when he next spoke, though it was hard to hear him over the din of laughter that filled the tavern. But even if he hadn't been able to hear his voice, Mirk still would have been able to feel the breaking of his heart, no matter how strong his shields were. "No one wants me."

"That's not true, Niv." Mirk paused. Trying to reason with something like that, he knew, was all but impossible, no matter how unfounded the idea was. Mirk had seen how devoted the Easterners were to K'aekniv. Even Genesis liked him, in his own, strange way. Mirk knew they'd all be lost without him. But that wasn't the kind of love that K'aekniv was mourning, not right then. The best he could do, Mirk thought, was try to cheer him some with a distraction. "Methinks you're lucky you get to be happy at all, even if you end up not being a good match. Things are the opposite where I grew up."

K'aekniv lifted his head, just far enough to peek one red eye out over the sleeve of his dingy overcoat. "What do you mean?"

"How did you decide to be with Lina, hmm?"

He shrugged his wings a little. "I liked her. She liked me. That's how it goes."

"Not with nobles."

"Huh?"

"Well. Let's say I wanted to start a family," Mirk said. It bothered him to think of it, but he buried his discomfort with the complications involved in such a scenario underneath K'aekniv's heartache. "I wouldn't be able to just walk around the City and talk to people until I found someone who I liked. There are rules. First, maman would have taken out her address book. And we'd go through it, looking for families with daughters who want to marry and talking about how our families could help each other. Then she'd write a letter to her mother, and I'd have to take the coach all the way across the country to have dinner with her family. Of course, that'd just be the beginning. The best ladies are wanted by the most gentlemen, you know. So there'd be at least three balls, and maybe we'd get to dance a few times, and then her father would have to meet with grand-père. And then I'm sure there'd have to be a ghost from the counting houses and a few guildmasters involved..."

K'aekniv lifted his head fully, only to drain the rest of the bottle and give Mirk a confused look. "What? You can't just...you know," he said, making a rather pointed hand gesture.

Mirk shook his head. "Men do, of course, but I was raised in the Church. It's not about what you want. It's for God and family," Mirk said, scrambling to think of some joke he could lighten the mood with, before he thought too hard about what he was saying. "You know, before everything happened, maman had her heart set on Lisle Chalon for me. She'd have never forced me, but still."

"Was she good looking, at least?" K'aekniv asked, skeptical.

"Oh, a very handsome woman, yes," Mirk nodded. "The gossip was that she could hurl a dish a full mile if her cook made the wrong entree for dinner, and she's not even an air mage. Maman always thought that someone more strong-willed would suit me best. She's gotten engaged to Hector Montfort since, methinks. And she's only broken his foot dancing twice."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The comment finally drew a chuckle out of K'aekniv, as he scrubbed his filthy coat sleeve across his equally filthy face. "That sounds like the kind of woman for me, not for you."

"What I mean to say, Niv, is that things always work out in the end. Hector does love her, methinks. And I'm here with you."

K'aekniv snorted, spinning the bottle on the top of the bar. Somehow, despite having drunk it all, his coordination wasn't failing nearly as bad as his own would have had he done the same. "What are you doing here, huh? This is an English bar. I just came because you people should be giving me free drinks for all the work I'm doing for you," K'aekniv said, raising his voice and giving the bartender a pointed look at the end. Which the bartender deliberately ignored.

"I, euh, have a little problem," Mirk said, as he set in on his own drink. Not very good, but decidedly better than the ale. And not enough to take the edge off things, considering how K'aekniv had polished off the bottle already. "I gave my room to a patient. You remember the angel boy and his sister, non? Samael and Sharael?"

"Like I'd forget that! My wings still hurt. How long?"

"For good," Mirk said with a sigh. "He's even more fragile than I was after everything. He wouldn't get any better in a normal room. And methinks his empathy is too strong for him to go without even after he's better."

K'aekniv shook his head, ruefully, jabbing at him with the bottom of the bottle. "Stop being so good. You make the rest of us look like bastards. So what will you do, huh?"

"I...well, I thought I'd try taking a room somewhere outside the City, but that didn't work out. I suppose I'll be staying back on the long-term ward until something opens up in the healers dormitory again."

"Those beds are shit," K'aekniv said with a grimace.

Mirk shrugged, helplessly. "There's nowhere else for me to go, really. At least for tonight. I wouldn't want to wake anyone up on my account."

K'aekniv turned the matter over in his head for a time, drumming his fingers on the bottle as he thought. "Listen. I've got no one. And you've got no place. My bed's shit too, but I'll give you the half that's less shit."

Straightening up on his stool in surprise, Mirk shook his head. "You don't have to do that. And, euh, I'm not sure how it'll work, really...there's always a lot happening in the infantry dorms, I've heard..." They usually got a handful of stabbed or beaten patients first thing in the morning to prove it.

"This, we can work with," K'aekniv said. "I know a trick. Come. Unless you want to stay here all night with the English?"

K'aekniv never would have said it. But Mirk could feel it, the loneliness stirring back up in his chest again, a feeling like the icy half of his magic was spiraling out of control and creeping across his entire body. It decided things for him. Mirk threw back the rest of his drink, cringing at its sour aftertaste. The amount of alcohol in it probably wouldn't help him much, considering how accustomed he was becoming to it due to the officers being stingy with the pain blockers, but it was better than nothing. And leaving it behind would have been a waste. Certain men scrimped and saved the whole week for a glass of comfort. Men like K'aekniv.

"I'll try. But if it causes you any trouble, you don't owe me anything."

A grin sprung to life on K'aekniv's face as he reached over and ruffled Mirk’s hair. "Owe you? No! You'll be saving me money! But you always do. Nu, davai. Before these English bastards decide to come steal some more."

- - -

"Euh...well, it's...ah..."

"Shit," K'aekniv deadpanned, from out in the hall behind Mirk.

Mirk knew he wouldn’t find luxury hidden within the infantry dormitory all the members of the Seventh lived in, but he hadn't expected it to be quite that miserable. The outside was a bit run down, but its facade was no worse than any of the other newer buildings on the fringes of the City of Glass. But the inside was a whole other mess.

If he was brutally honest, it may have been a step down from the mortal inn, the lack of insects aside. Mirk could sense the wards Genesis had left on the room from back when he'd shared the room with K'aekniv, still terribly strong despite Genesis not having tended to them in months. No insects, no rodents, no living thing or magic could slip past them once they were engaged. They were a small comfort. Even if they kept out the rats that'd fled before them as they'd descended into the basement, the wards would do nothing to keep out stray emotions.

Every other building he'd been in within the confines of the City of Glass, Mirk had noticed, was built to accommodate non-humans, people the same absurd size as K'aekniv and Genesis. The ceilings were higher, in any case, even if the doorways had been rebuilt over the years. Even though the healers dormitory was notoriously cramped, K'aekniv still had room in most places to stretch out his wings without doing more than brushing his primaries against the walls. The infantry dormitory felt less like a place to live in and more like the infirmary basement: a warehouse for bodies.

The building was made of sturdy enough stone, but the walls had no plaster over them, and the doors were all flimsy, offhand things. Several of the rooms they'd passed on their way down to the basement had been missing doors entirely or had holes punched clear through them, the evidence of past drunken brawls. And the general dimensions were terrible for a person of K'aekniv's stature. His head had skimmed the ceiling all the way down the long hall that ran through the middle of the narrow basement. He'd have to bend over to get through the doorway he was presently leaning by. K’aekniv had one arm braced against the wall above it, putting as much weight on it as he dared as he ducked his head down far enough to look inside and gauge Mirk's reaction.

"Why is everything so...euh...small?" Mirk asked.

"Ah. The other dormitories, they're not so bad. This is the new one they made for us and the other poor bastards from wherever. They got more poor English and Germans, so they decided to kick the rest of us out. A whole dormitory! Just for you! Bring more of your friends and be happy! They're just lucky we're used to getting the worst shit back at home. Anyone else would have turned around and left when they saw this shit."

"I suppose..." Mirk said, turning around a few times himself to fully take in the room, thinking.

It was bigger than his room in the healers dormitory had been. K’aekniv had claimed on the walk over that his room was the biggest in the whole building that wasn't meant for a half dozen men at once. But it really only was just big enough to cram a giant bed — a necessity, considering its present and past occupants — and a dresser inside.

K'aekniv could have gotten rid of it to free up more space. His uniforms, both worn and clean, were piled in heaps on the floor, along with a few dozen empty bottles he hadn't hauled back to the Supply Corps yet for the half-pennies they gave out to those generous enough to return them. The bed itself was as depressing as the rest of it; it only had three flattened pillows and a singed sheet for bedclothes. One side of the bed had clearly seen much more use than the other, though the crushed down section was spreading, now that there wasn't someone vicious enough to stab anyone who encroached on his personal space occupying the other half.

"Like I said, it's shit. But you get used to it," K'aekniv said. "Make yourself at home. I have to go fight the bastard who took the bath upstairs."

"Euh...do you have a blanket? It's a little cold for just a sheet..."

"Oh! Yes, of course. I don't need one, but you will, I think." K'aekniv crammed himself through the door and went to go paw through the dresser in search of it. Mirk had to press himself flat against the wall to give K'aekniv enough room to maneuver. "Let's see...ah! Here. Blanket."

The blanket K'aekniv passed to him was much finer than he'd been expecting: gray, thick, tightly woven. K'aekniv must have noticed his surprise. "It was Gen's. He said something got on it and he wanted to turn it into dust, but I told him it was stupid to waste something so nice."

"He can be particular about things," Mirk mumbled, running his hands over the blanket. He hated that the first thought that entered his mind was whether or not the blanket still smelled of Genesis's cleaning potion and soap. If it did, he might have an easier time getting to sleep.

K'aekniv laughed, shoving himself back out the door. "If anyone knocks, don't let them in," he warned, before shutting the door behind himself. The wards on the room engaged, cutting off the snoring and coughing coming from the dormitory's other residents. Mirk didn't know whether to be grateful or worried over the sudden silence. He didn't particularly want to spend the night listening to someone spitting up their insides, but the silence was also unsettling. He associated the unnatural stillness with Genesis just as much as he did the scent of oranges and lilies.

Mirk did his best to settle in. He cast a few rudimentary spells against emotions — he hoped that the pre-existing wards would help to strengthen them some, since he was too tried to cast his own with any accuracy or extra potential. Then he took off the clothes Mordecai had loaned him, folding them and placing them atop the dresser along with his cloak and traveling bag. K'aekniv had been right about him needing a blanket. In nothing but his braies and chemise, Mirk instantly began to shiver. He shook out the blanket and wrapped himself up in it, lying down on the less-flatted half of the bed with one of the sad, deflated pillows folded in half and tucked under his head.

The blanket did smell like Genesis. Mirk did his best to put it out of mind.

As soon as he'd closed his eyes, Mirk became more acutely aware of the emotions seeping past his shoddy spellcraft. It was mostly pain, both physical and mental, though he could also detect a hint of arousal from a thankfully further distance. They both nagged at him, keeping him from drifting off. Mirk knew that as soon as he lost consciousness, the emotions would become strong enough to keep him from staying asleep. And the damp and the chill in the basement of the Easterners dormitory was constant, no matter how tightly he curled in on himself.

He hadn't managed to fall asleep by the time K'aekniv returned. Mirk could tell the half-angel was doing his best to be quiet, but K'aekniv couldn't avoid bumping into things. Or keep from humming to himself, low under his breath. Mirk smiled. All the sounds were just like K'aekniv's emotions, just like his size. Everything was exaggerated.

Even if K'aekniv had managed to enter the room silently, the riot of creaks and snaps the bed made when he thudded down onto it would have woken Mirk up. Though Mirk had kept to the edge of the bed, K'aekniv still took up over three-quarters of it, especially once he shook out his wings and resettled them. His leftmost one ended up draped partway over Mirk. The feathers were warm enough, and mostly clean now from the bath. Sighing, Mirk gave up on trying to feign sleep and opened his eyes, turning to look over at K'aekniv. He moved just in time to see K'aekniv make a vague gesture that extinguished the room's sole, yellowy magelight.

Yet the room didn't go dark. It surprised Mirk for a moment, before he remembered that K'aekniv's wings threw off winglight like those of a full-blooded angel's, despite K'aekniv's lack of light magic. It comforted Mirk, somewhat. It reminded him of home. Though neither Kae nor his father would have tolerated sleeping in such a dismal and damp place, especially not without a blanket and wearing only a garment that was vaguely like braies, though rougher and shorter and black, like everything in the K'maneda. Mirk suspected that K'aekniv was only bothering with them out of consideration for him, the same as the bath he’d taken before collapsing into bed.

"Thank you, Niv. Again," Mirk said, softly.

"It's not so bad, yes?" K'aekniv asked, turning his head to look at him. Like most winged people, K'aekniv slept on his stomach, so as not to accidentally bend or pinch his wings in his sleep, his chin propped up on his folded arms.

"Well...at least no one is going to try to rob or kill me here, methinks."

K'aekniv snorted, burying his head back in his arms and worn-out pillow. "That happens here too. But they know better than to try with me."

Mirk closed his eyes and tried to sleep again. K'aekniv's presence helped. The feeling of K'aekniv's weariness against his shields was strong enough to drown out the emotions of the other infantrymen stuffed in the basement, so pervasive that Mirk was finally starting to feel drowsy himself. But it didn't last.

The first time, it was a sudden spike of terror that roused Mirk from a doze. Someone down the hall having a nightmare, Mirk realized, once he came fully awake again and searched out the source of the feeling. The second time, Mirk felt like he'd managed a half hour or so of sleep before he was roused by a heady mix of desire and pleasure. Mutual, but still something Mirk would have rather not been privy to.

The cold didn't help things either. Mirk had begun to shake from it. As he shifted position and drew the blanket tight around himself at the level of his ears, Mirk lifted his hands to his mouth and tried to warm them with his breath. His fingers felt like ice.

"Ah, Mirgosha. You're not right for a place like this. Here. Let's try this."

Mirk assumed K'aekniv had fallen asleep. But he hadn't. The half-angel heaved himself up onto his elbows, then further up onto his knees, the bed groaning under his weight. Then K'aekniv reached over to Mirk, taking hold of his shoulder and dragging him over to the other side of the bed before flopping back down onto his stomach. Mirk was certain that would have finally broken something important in the bed, but it held up. K'aekniv threw both an arm and a wing over Mirk that time, pressing him close against his side.

"Ah...euh..."

"You were on the cold side."

"Oh. Right." He'd been to K'aekniv's left before. Now that he was to the right of him, pressed against his side, the inhuman heat generated by K'aekniv's fire magic stirring restlessly within him was impossible to ignore. Even the pervasive chill of the dormitory, that Mirk thought had settled into his bones for good, didn't stand a chance against it. "What does Mirgosha mean?" Mirk asked.

"Ah! Yes. You know, I told you I'd find a little name for you sometime. But it's hard with your kind of name. Everyone from home, there's the usual...Pavel to Pasha, Ilya to Iliusha, and so on...your kind of name doesn't make them easy. But this new mage from back home who came and joined us last week, he was bitching the other day about how sad he was to leave his Margosha at home. That one, I'd never heard. It's for Margarita, he said."

"It's the same in French. Well, a little. Marguerite. Does it mean daisy for you too?"

Mirk felt K'aekniv nod. "So, I think to myself, it's close, yes? And you have that kind of feeling to you, a sunny happy flower. It'd work, but it still needed a little something. So Mirgosha instead of Margosha. And mir is a happy word for us."

"I like it," Mirk said, after he'd thought it over for a time, tugging K'aekniv's wing a little higher, so that his face was hidden in it as well. His other wing hadn't been cold, exactly, but his right wing radiated heat like a magicked blanket.

"Good. Because it took real thinking to come up with that one. I'm not...what do you say...making things up out of nothing..."

"Creative?"

"Yes! That."

"I don't know about that," Mirk said, as he began to relax further against K'aekniv's side. "Methinks you're as good as anyone else. You tell the best stories, too."

"Ah, you're too nice for all us bastards," K'aekniv said, a touch of ruefulness in both his tone and emotions. "Now, let's see if I can think of something good..."

After flipping through a few half-formed impressions, things K'aekniv remembered, then tossed away, he began to project. A feeling of contentment and fullness and warmth, a faint impression of being bundled up in furs beside a bonfire that leaped high up into the air and illuminated the whole of a clearing in the midst of a darkened pine forest. It was a homey feeling, somehow, despite the wildness of the setting. And thinking of it seemed to help ease K'aekniv's residual weariness and sadness over everything he'd been through recently. Mirk closed his eyes again, smiling.

His own relief was twofold. First, there was the reassurance that he could let his shields fall away and sleep, knowing that as long as K'aekniv kept projecting, his emotions would be strong enough to drown out the rest of the world. The second part, Mirk was less certain of. He had been worried about it in a distant, off-hand way ever since he'd fallen ill. That he'd begin to have the same strange thoughts about every man he came close to, that he'd never again have access to the comfort of touch without the thoughts that he tried so hard to push from his mind ruining everything. He hadn't felt them toward anyone else yet, but he also hadn't been this close to anyone since it had all begun.

But there he was, pressed up tight against K'aekniv's half-naked body, and the thoughts hadn't come slinking out of the dark recesses of his mind. There was only comfort, comfort and warmth and safety, untainted by the rest. Which didn't make things entirely better — why was it that Genesis awakened those thoughts in him? And what did that mean? — but it was a small blessing nevertheless.

It was pointless to speculate. Better to savor what he could before anything else went wrong. Mirk opened his mind to K'aekniv's projections, to the tiredness lurking behind them, and let himself spiral downward into sleep.