I came up with this one at about 4:00 in the morning. I couldn't get it out of my head, so I ended up just writing it. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise belongs to Tamora Pierce. I own nothing.

On the journey home from Gyongxe, Briar would lie awake and stare at the stars because really, he was afraid to fall asleep and enter the nightmares again. He was afraid that he'd wake Evvy and Rosethorn up again, and then they'd try to coddle him and comfort him like he was a blithering baby.

(why did girls insist on doing that)

So he'd watch the stars, watch how that one there stayed in one place the whole night, but this one here would slowly make its way across the horizon. And on some nights, when he was lucky, he'd watch a star fall right out of the sky

(Tris calls those ones comets)

and he'd make a wish like in those silly fairy tales and hope that the wish would come true. Because he really just wanted to sleep without the constant nightmares.

But most nights, after he'd comforted Evvy into a dreamless sleep, Luvo would come and sit down next to him, and they'd watch the stars together. And even though Luvo wasn't really human

(a pile of rocks)

and didn't really have much of a presence, he gave off warmth like a furnace, and that's always what put him to sleep in the end.

Sometimes, when Briar woke up from nightmares, he didn't scream. Luvo would be sitting next to him, still gazing wistfully at the stars

(maybe not, I mean, who really knows what a rock thinks)

and then a small, warm hand that felt like his old worry-stone would touch his arm, and he'd hear the soothing sound of small valley stones shifting in a brook, and he'd fall back asleep without a dream to plague his thoughts.

And sometimes, when Evvy got hurt and his medicines could help her no further,

(gods curse Lakik and his stupid tricks)

Luvo would touch his arm again, and underneath the babbling brook, he'd hear the echo of century old boulders crashing into each other and smashing to pieces, and he'd know that Luvo was angry too, and they'd better find a healer soon.

So even if Briar couldn't really talk to him, couldn't really understand him, he knew that Luvo would do anything to help his new family, to protect them, just as Briar himself would.

(heart of a mountain)

Review?