"The sun is almost setting. Let us make a camp," he told her.

The high rocks provided a degree of shield from the wind. The rocks were solid on either side and sloped outward so that the centre of it was conveniently positioned to provide the most shelter from the wind. Sarek dug a hollow of snow in the corner of the rocks, bearing in mind to stay away from the entrance of the cave where they could fall into the crevice. He then deposited Amanda inside, seeing as she could not walk on her own yet. Sarek took some big leaves, and for the next twenty minutes, Amanda busied herself with arranging it on the floor and the side of the rock to provide some form of insulation. About the only thing she could do since she could not even get up.

After laying her on one corner of the rocks, Sarek immediately set to work. Amanda watched him as he methodically set about his tasks for the night. Dusk was setting and it was imperative they had a fire going when they were in the open. Amanda twirled around her torso to get the twigs she could reach. The twigs were covered in powdery snow so she did her best to shake it off clean before tossing it into the rocks that Sarek prepared for the fire. Before long, a fire was crackling faintly in front of her. She stretched her hands to heat it then put it in her armpits to transfer the heat.

"Aren't we going back to the cave?" asked Amanda.

"There is little point in going back to the other side of the cave when this corner is sheltered enough," replied Sarek. Amanda looked up to the way Sarek came from to cross the other entrance of the cave. It was a steep climb with unstable rocks. Sarek saw where she was looking at and seem to have sensed what she was thinking. "You cannot climb that with an injured leg after nightfall. We will have to find a longer route in the morning." But there was no hurry to go to the other side. There was no danger of starving here. What with all the nuts on the trees.

With the fire attended to, he grabbed the medical kit and proceeded to go to her side.

"Hold still, I will assess the extent of your injuries."

Amanda complied.

She had scratches that ran to her legs and arms. He folded up her cargo pants up, to reveal an ugly gash on her thigh. But the wound ran higher, and his pants needed to be more hiked up. When he came over her thigh, his hand hesitated. His gaze went upwards from the wounds into her eyes. "May I?" he asked.

Amanda blinked. "Oh, yeah, right. Sure."

He folded her pants higher. Then he wiped it with a damp cloth, with soap and water. Sarek fought the urge to remember their tryst two months ago during his Ponn Far, as his hands perilously came close to her undergarments. Even so, he could still touch her sweet skin, and that was a concern on its own. Her wounds had small rocks and dust contaminated in it, and she was herself covered in dust and ash, which in turn made Sarek dirty also.

He took out small pebbles with tweezers, which was also included in the medical kit. After their run-in with different injuries, it was no longer an option to travel without them. He ran the dermal generator up and down it. Until it was pinkish and closed up. Her hand was also injured from gripping too much of the rope. For days it would have to have a gauze to cover it.

When they were finally settled down, a pile of nuts gathered and happily boiling atop their fire, The pile of cracked nuts on Amanda's corner grew higher. Sarek could only stare at her with his mouth slightly open.

"One more please," she pleaded.

Sarek resisted the normal urge to tell her to preserve the rations. He looked around him to see that the forest of trees was unlikely to run out even if she had her fill for the night. They were not going to run out of nuts.

The wind howled above them, but they were clearly out of the action of it. It also helped that there were two people to keep the heat level warm and the hollow was only small. They huddled closer together to preserve the heat.

.oOo.

"Can you put pressure on your injured leg?" said Sarek the next day when the wind had subsided and everything around them was glittering glass of snow.

Amanda got up gingerly and started to flex her muscles. As she did so, a sharp pain struck her. She uttered a small yelp. She was also running a small fever from the injury. But there was no need to tell Sarek that.

What he did next was both endearing and mortifying. He put his hand on her knees and her shoulders then proceeded to carry her as if she only weighted like a child.

"Put me down, I can walk," said Amanda lamely. She was too tired and in too much pain to make a proper case.

"If you consent, I would prefer to carry you much longer."

That comment made Amanda pause. Did he just admit to wanting to hold her? Or was she just reading too much into things?

"I really can pull my own weight."

"You cannot walk in your leg's compromised condition. You must be carried. Furthermore, there is nothing shameful about receiving help," he further admonished. "Your temperature is also running higher than that of an average human."

His altruism was only because of his concern for the survival of their group. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. He wanted Amanda well for both of them to survive. It did not mean any more than that. He reminded himself over and over again.

Sarek sensed her finally relaxing in his arms. Finally, she was too tired to argue further.

She was too mortified to speak and she avoided meeting his eyes. When Amanda chanced to look up, he was intently gazing straight ahead. They took the longer route, but it was now away from the jagged rocks of the perilous crossing.

The rock crossing was steep when Amanda saw it from below. But Sarek progressed towards it and he made it look so easy. His steps were surefooted and the rocks that he chose did not crumble beneath him. Perhaps Vulcans have a sixth sense of finding rocks that won't break. Even though most of it was covered in snow. Surefooted, resilient, wise, and long-lived. It reminded her of Tolkien's elves.

When they finally got back to their cave, the immediate feeling of being dirty came to her. She was so covered in dust and soot that she needed nothing short of a bath to clean her up.

"Can you attend to your hygiene without assistance?"

Amanda made a move to sit up straighter. There was so much pain in her left thigh, but she managed to nudge her body with the support of her hands. "Yes, I think so."

Amanda could see he was torn between staying to assist her, and going outside to respect her privacy. In the end, he stood up, "Very well, I shall leave you."

"Sarek!"

"Yes?"

"I don't have any water."

"I shall boil your water and leave you to attend to your hygiene."

"Thank you."

He nodded, then proceeded to put in some snow in his big clay bowl. It simmered heat delightfully that reached Amanda's skin. Snow slowly melted to become precious water.

So much have changed since she was last here. Sarek made bricks to barricade the cave's opening. Then he positioned their fireplace to be part of that barricading wall.

After heating the snow in his relatively big bowl, he let it cool for a while placed it near where Amanda was sitting. He came back again to give her some fresh change of clothes from their extra sleigh supply that they dragged behind them, then finally left for good outside the cave.

She quickly found out standing would be impossible. With great care and a considerable amount of pain, she was able to peel back her pants along with the rest of her clothes to run a damp towel through her body. She was glad she could clean away the dark dust that covered it, along with her bad body-odour smell.

"Amanda," she heard him call after a while. His voice came from behind the rock wall outside. She could see the shadow of his body just behind the wall "Are you finished?"

Amanda fumbled to wipe her body with the towel. She quickly put on her underwear and bra to accommodate his entry.

"It's fine. You can come in now," shouted Amanda.

She heard him shuffle and emerge slowly from the rock.

Her hands were still too tender to be used for picking up food. What followed was the most awkward meal that had happened to them yet. Sarek fed her soup from the rations, his face as placid as ever.

"I am so sorry you have to do this," said Amanda.

"There is no need for an apology for something which you had no jurisdiction or control. Furthermore, shame is an unnecessary emotion from our current situation over trivial things such as these."

When he took another spoonful of the soup, but before he could raise the spoon, she pushed the meal towards him with her injured hand.

"Eat the rest." It was not a request.

After a moment's hesitation and deliberation, he took a seat beside her and ate the rest of the soup. Amanda stared at him as he ate without even realizing that the pack was already empty. He was more hungry than he let on. He proceeded to lick the top and then the insides.

Amanda froze.

"You licked it clean," she said incredulously as if he was committing a crime.

"I have observed that you have done the same for the past occasions. Furthermore, it would be illogical to waste food no matter how small the amount for the sake of propriety. Is there a problem?"

She shook her head. "No. Not at all."

.oOo.

Amanda glanced wistfully at the comfortable corner of the cave where they made their bed. She chose that corner because it was such a perfect space to lay their beds. And it was a little hidden from the cave opening. She was almost sorry to take the bed out of its corner to fold it and bring it with them. It felt like it belonged there. When she folded it up, the place somehow looked different, like she was no longer welcome there. A tinge of sadness hit her. Amanda was sorry to leave their cave, which primitive as it is, began to feel safe as home. The moment she took out the mattress, it ceased to be their home and became just another cave just like the rest. They had to leave some of their things here. Like the big clay pot Sarek made, and the different items Sarek carved to serve as their utensil. From the wood outside. Sarek said he could just make those things back in the pod.

Sarek was already waiting outside when he went back inside the cave. He stooped down on the entrance in order to enter. He was so tall. He was carrying a heavy bag on his own. "Are you ready to leave?"

"Just a moment. I'm finishing this up," replied Amanda.

She gave one last sigh, tightened her bag and met Sarek on the entrance.

After a day's trek, they arrived at the big pod. She collapsed to the cushions like a log and slept the rest of the day. When she woke up, there was that thwacking sound again of Sarek's axe as he made the firewood. She rubbed her eyes to rub off the sleep, immediately feeling guilty for waking up late while Sarek already had so much done. She went out to help with the fire.

"I'm sorry for waking up late," said Amanda.

"Humans need an abundant amount of sleep in order to be functional. Do not apologize for your physiology which you cannot help," said Sarek, in between his axe-cutting.

Amanda noticed that the breeze was a little less sharp than the shard of frost that usually hit her, even though they still woke up to mornings with the ground covered in frosty eggshells that cracked whenever they walked. A first, she thought she was just imagining the lesser cold. But then they started to bear the cold even with using less and less firewood. The sun went to give off a little more warmth albeit still pale.

It was getting warmer. They started wearing less and less layers. Snow began to melt. One morning, Amanda awoke from her good sleep. When she glanced over to Sarek's side of the bed, he was already gone. At first, she thought there was something different. Then she later realized it was because she could no longer hear the steady thwack of Sarek's axe splitting the logs as part of his daily chore. She started to remember that they weren't using the fireplace altogether anymore.

A day came when she finally saw a bit of green on the ground. The wildflowers began to grow. Insects started to fill the empty silence of nighttime. Soon, the grass started sprouting up again until they were as tall as if winter never came.

Amanda got out of the pod one day, and there was no longer a trace of snow. There were small patches of grasses that seemed to have suddenly sprung overnight. But in reality, it has come to grow so gradually, only Amanda noticed them now. She sucked in air. The strong pleasant smell of greenery assaulted her nose. Spring has finally come.

She found Sarek already busy, hunched over a pile of equipment on the ground.

"Hi," she greeted.

Sarek looked up to her from what he was tinkering on the floor, but had to squint his eyes from the direct sun.

"What are you doing?" she went down beside him. Hugging her knees, she looked over them to see the pieces he was currently tweaking on.

"I am attempting to devise a way to collect electricity from the solar panels at the top of the pod," replied Sarek.

"We need that? I hardly noticed. I feel like a cavewoman."

"May I point out that we in fact did live on a cave in an occasion. Your sentence is no longer an analogy. It is the truth," replied Sarek.

"I know. I suppose I am a cavewoman now. I've forgotten what it feels like to use electricity."

"You would be pleased to know your workload for fetching water will be reduced by one-fifth. When this is done, we can utilize the sonic shower for at most once a week."

She was quite surprised and in awe of how he managed to make tangible electricity from those black objects. When Sarek tried to explain it to her, she began to understand that it was actually quite simple. She knew how it worked by principle, but had she been alone, she would not have managed to do it.

"The principle is quite elementary. The main power's charging unit is through this input area. After that, it is only a matter of letting the electrons travel through ideal mediums, to another medium that can store such electrons," said Sarek. Noticing Amanda's raised spirits, he added. "It is illogical for you to have your hopes up over an increase of probability by the measure of 0.74%. There are other factors that could impede our escape such as system malfunction before it charges enough to give us power. Accounting to factors such as our current food supply and resources, the final probability of us escaping orbit would only be 24.7 percent."

When Sarek did come back inside, he began to tell her about his plans for more work. There was much to be done. There was the food supply to gather, sheets to wash, and new outhouse to rebuild since the last one was ruined by the blizzard. Amanda's heart sank. She had thought the arrival of spring would mean she can finally have a bit of rest from the harsh cold. But it seemed to have heralded just another set of work to do.

Sarek started his task in making clay bowls for cooking. Amanda gathered grass then dried them in the sun to make a softer cushion for their bed. Then she put some sheets on top of it. She made two beds, one for Sarek, and one for her.

Then there was a lot of washing up and cleaning. When she was not wiping every inch of their pod glassy clean after it was swaddled in mud and dirt from all the storms, she was down on the river to wash their clothes. She hauled their sheets and clothes through the creek. Then washed them and put them on top of the grass to dry. And that was only when she could catch a break from foraging more food.

One day, she returned to the camp carrying something in her loot basket. She smiled as if she just found gold. It was better.

"I found wild berries!" she exclaimed. "Are you hungry?"

Yes. He was hungry. They have been extending their food supplies once the winter had set in. Fortunately for them, they found a box of wild wheat they managed to look over during winter. They had eaten those for days. But now they had wild berries.

Sarek helped her wash it with their water and they sat at once to eat it. The outside of the berries looked normal. But when they took a bite, the stain flowed so freely and abundant they could probably use it as a dye. Amanda did not expect the stain to be strong. After just a few of it, their hands were already sticky and purple with stain. She was so engrossed in eating this little treat that she forgot to be careful. Some of the stains got in her clothes.

"Listen, don't throw away the seeds. I've this crazy idea of planting plenty of it near our pod," said Amanda. She suggested they cultivate the ground. It might yield crops after just two months. Then they could stock it to provide food for weeks. They never have to have problems with food for a good long while anymore. Just thinking about producing a huge supply of surplus made Amanda overwhelmingly happy.

"You will need a fence to protect it from the local fauna. I will see to it at once," he stood up and went inside the pod to get the laser-cutter. He must have liked the berries more than he cared to admit. Amanda followed closely behind him.

After a short walk, they both stood facing a piece of land wide enough to be planted on. It was a little bit away from their home-pod, but relatively near the river. The ground had to be cultivated to prepare the seeds. The perimeter had to be fenced to stop the local fauna from devouring it. In the end they decided to plant both the wild wheat and the berries. For the next days, Sarek was then busy cultivating it to prepare for the soft kernels they would deposit for harvest. While Amanda dug for the irrigation.

Walking a bit further away from their pod, Amanda found more wild wheat growing in the fields. For several days, she was busy cutting it up with her machete and laying it in the sun to dry, all the time looking forward to the end of the wheat's preparation when she can finally bake it into a cake. They had wild berries. And wild berries with grounded wheat would make a good cake. It would be as if they were back on civilization again. She began grounding the wild wheat into fine pieces. Next, she mixed it with the white root until it was dough-like, then put it in the fire to bake.

The resulting cake had cracks, but it still held relatively structurally solid. Much like their survival on this planet and their food supply, she mused with a laugh. She put a generous amount of berries on top of it. The smoke from the wood coal made her hands ashy, and she accidentally wiped her forehead with it. This simple meal was hard gruelling work. But she can't deny there was a certain satisfaction in producing her own cake from her own labour.

For the first time in their stay at Arg-117P, she felt that she was thriving instead of just surviving. It was no longer winter with the blunt cold knives assaulting her skin. The sun was soft and warm, and the plains were grassy enough. It's amazing how adequate food made the difference between Arg-117p being idyllic instead of it being a murder rock.

She put pulps of the sweet fruit in a pitcher, then wrapped her wheat-cake in cloth to keep it clean. Carrying her simple treats, she strode over to where Sarek who was busy tilling the land.

"I have our food. Are you hungry?" she said.

Sarek nodded and put down the shovel he'd been using to cultivate the small piece of land. She laid a big cloth on the ground and sat on it, inviting him to do the same.

"Here, let's eat," she poured him a glass and opened the cloth to reveal her makeshift wild wheat cake. "Here's your knife and fork. And I've wrapped the cake in cloth for you. I know you don't care about touching your food with your bare hands."

He looked at her offered food for a while.

"Is something wrong?"

"In our home planet, only an Aduna is allowed to serve a mate."

Amanda gasped and made to withdraw the offer in order to put it on the ground. "I'm sorry. I should be sensitive to your culture enough to see you weren't comfortable."

But Sarek extended his hands to accept the food. He tilted his head for a fraction in acknowledgement. He told her, "I am obliged to you," then started eating his share.

"What do you think about making new traditions?"

He tilted the canteen to his mouth and drank. "Perhaps it's time to build our own culture."

The early spring sun was a soft friend so they were able to partake their meal in the field. They ate in companionable silence. They went under a tree with a generous cool shade. Amanda laid a cloth over the thick blade of grass. The grass was thick and soft. They sat comfortably above it.

Amanda observed Sarek out of the corner of her eye and noticed he ate slightly faster than he normally would. Not the person he once observed tying his best to eat with decorum when he was hungry, but as a person who derived satisfaction from eating his meal with ease on a cool midday sun. She suppressed the feeling of triumph on her face at her successful meal.

.oOo.

Their little garden kept Amanda busy. While he built the encompassing fence around it. They worked each to their own. Oftentimes he would call to her for help in holding the piece of wood. She held one end of the wood so he could drive perfect holes into it with the laser-cutter. Every time he turned it on, there was that gnawing fear that it wouldn't work anymore and they reached the end of its juice.

He took a thin long wood and hammered it into the holes, firmly keeping the two planks in place. It fit perfectly like a puzzle. That had Amanda wondering once again what other kinds of buildings could be built without nails.

When the first sign of roots shot up, she smiled at them and elected to call them "darlings". Treating inanimate objects as beings were, of course, illogical, but Sarek held his tongue to not risk of offending her emotional sensibilities.

That night, Amanda took a soup ration pack from their store and tossed wild grains as it heated up. Nowadays they were only taking the last of the rations once in a while as a form of delicacy. She also added a bit of the leftover white roots that started to appear again on the ground. The result was amazing. The white root that was otherwise unpalatable on its own because of its blandness, blended well with the taste of the soup. Furthermore, the wild wheat seems to have starch-like qualities that made the soup thicker. She divided it in half and offered it to Sarek in a wooden bowl he carved out of a tree log. After the first spoon, Sarek suddenly paused. Alarmed, Amanda inquired again what was wrong.

"The taste of this soup has a small degree of resemblance to the Plomeek served at my home planet," he replied.

"Is it good?" said Amanda, not sure if she was inquiring of the taste of Plomeek soup or her own that she made.

"Yes."

They ate in silence for a while. The fire crackled through their tensioned space.

"What other food have you eaten? I hope I'm not being too impertinent," said Amanda cautiously.

"Your questions have ceased to be impertinent. I have learned to manage," Sarek didn't know it yet, but when he gets back to Vulcan, he would seek it like a human in cold winter longing for the warmth of Spring.

"You mean to endure," retorted Amanda.

Sarek laid his empty bowl to the side and spoke again. "My profession being an Ambassador required that I travel to different sectors. I have tasted a variety of local cuisines in the duration of these travels," Sarek finally said.

Amanda looked up at the sky. The night was clear and the stars in Arg-117p were much bigger and clearer than they were on earth. "My father once told me, all the stars that I see in the sky are all big and separate star systems. He said he wanted to visit each one of them to see the new surprises each star contained."

"Your father is a pioneering man."

Sarek told her to pick a star. Then he tweaked the tricorder, pushing it to unconventional use, he would coordinate the location point and tell her the name of that star system. For every single light that she saw in the night sky was a star system, although some of them may not support life. She hoped that the star system she picked would be a lucky pick. Although there was no way of knowing if it held life. Long-range sensors were not that powerful enough to scan for life-forms. That was what exploration vessels such as the Enterprise were for.

They didn't have the time to look at them all, so she said: "the second star to the right, straight on till morning".

This earned her a raised eyebrow in inquiry "What is the meaning of this another idiomatic sentence?"

She told him about the human legend of a planet on the second star where a child named "Peter Pan" resided. He could fly, so he took three pre-warp human children away from earth to his planet. And how they travelled the whole night straight on and arrived on the planet in the morning.

Amanda saw Sarek press his lips slightly together. "It would have been unethical under federation laws to get three underaged pre-warp children who still cannot give proper consent," Sarek replied.

"But you do know, do you? That Earth literature is full of stories of pre-warp children taken into a different planet?"

Sarek told her post-warp civilization oftentimes take children from pre-warp worlds to their own worlds because they are still too young to be believed but following the founding of the Federation, this action was now made illegal.

He told her about different galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy where it was reported to have more advanced technology than their own Milky Way. He told her of his knowledge of the vast cosmos. In return, Amanda told him about the stories of Earth visiting strange new worlds.

According to the stories, when the Earth was new and there were usually chinks and chasms in caves, connecting this world to another. That was why a girl from World War II was able to enter a Wardrobe to find herself in a new world where it was "always winter and never Christmas." She grew to be an adult there but when she came back, she was just a child again as if no time had passed.

Sarek explained that it was possible because radio-active elements of early earth that have not yet decomposed has time-dilation properties. He also explained the concepts behind temporal theory. Amanda's head hurt and she sheepishly admitted she had failing grades in temporal physics. All those charts crisscrossing to reveal the current time. Only to be told that there was no such thing as a now. That everything was just temporary. It was a haywire thing to map something twenty-one Dimensional to their three-dimensional holos. There were so many derivatives.

Sarek said time was more like following a thread closely. When it bent a corner and you could find its next location on a different planet, the equation could still follow it as long as one is careful to put the right variables.

Something caught Amanda's eye which immediately led her to exclaim, "Oh, look! A shooting star. We can make a wish." She immediately cringed after she said this. It was such a casual thing to say when one sees a shooting star she quite forgot she was talking to a Vulcan.

"That is not a star," Sarek replied calmly. "That is a meteor hitting the planet's atmosphere."

Amanda was about to explain another set of human terms when she decided to keep her mouth shut. It was enough lessons on illogical human culture in a day. "Right now, I just want to go back to my own star. I don't even know where it is," Amanda sighed.

Sarek set his empty soup aside then stood up. He held out his hand. "Come. Let me show you." She took his outstretched hand. He stood behind her and slowly moved his hands lower to hers, slowly slipping his forefingers into position with hers. He gripped it so only their forefingers were pointing. Then, making sure their eyesight is at the level, he directed her hand up to the sky. He put his other hand on her shoulders. He guided her shoulders with his other hand in a similar direction. "That is your solar system."

"How do you know?" said Amanda, suddenly breathless, suddenly very conscious that he was right behind her and that she could feel his breath on the side of her ear. She wanted to look behind her to see a glimpse of his face but she suddenly felt very shy in his presence.

"The trajectory of this land is 54.7 degrees from its axis. Since this is now nighttime it could only mean we are in position 004-mark-253. Earth would be to your far-right bearing 016-mark-200. Judging by the energy of your star, amount of light fluctuation it can produce at this distance, this star there would be yours," said Sarek, keeping his voice low because he was closer to her ears.

"Are you sure?" Amanda whispered back, it seemed that her breath was catching.

"Yes. I am certain." Amanda smiled faintly. Her star twinkled faintly the same as all the others. But she immediately saw it differently. It was the star where she belonged.

"What about you?" she looked up behind her to meet his eye. "Where is your home star?"

Sarek directed both their hands to another part of the sky. "Do you see those three stars?"

"Yes," she said, keenly aware that he was quietly speaking behind her. His breath formed fog when he speaks. There was fog forming around them. Sarek's closer body and his hand holding hers to point to the sky was offering a comforting warmth.

"The 40 Eridani system has three stars that circle each other. My stars are 16.5 light-years away from your solar system."

Amanda looked hard at the three seemingly simple dots on that part of the sky. It was a marvel to think that behind those simple dots lay a whole planet teeming with life.

"Fascinating," said Amanda, adapting his parlance. "When you finally go home to your star, I'll know where to find you in the night sky. Your stars are not easy to miss. Three little dots glowing around almost as one, dancing with each other. Like dancing kindred spirits."

Sarek didn't reply. But Amanda was already comfortable with their silence. Maybe he didn't care so much about her metaphysical descriptions of celestial bodies. It was silly of her to call such a big ball of gasses of hard science as dancing kindred spirits.

Amanda thought he was not going to say anything anymore. Then suddenly, his soft voice broke the silence. "We have no high-powered telescope here. But when we go back to civilization," he finally spoke quietly. "I will take you to an observatory. You will see our star system circle in harmony. Like a great dance of celestial beings."

It was such a simple statement. But Amanda felt as if she saw a bit of Sarek inside his solid walls. It was clear that he liked astronomy, even though he continually said he had no likes and dislikes, he had preferences. He was an astrophysicist after all. "Really?" she whispered.

"Must you always ask me to re-affirm facts which I already stated?"

"Alright. Pinky swear," she turned and held out her pinky finger in front of him. Sarek look at it confused. He did not know what to do with it.

"What are you attempting to achieve?"

"Oh. This is a human tradition. You hold out your last finger like this so, " she took his pinky finger "And intertwine it with mine as a sign. After making this sign, you must do what you promised to this person."

"Is it a binding contract?"

"A promise. As binding as friendship. The agreements can range from small to big things."

"Yes, I am familiar with contract agreements."

"Yes, you are."

So Sarek held out his last finger but did not touch it to hers.

She closed her eyes as the unasked for but not stopped ozh'esta took hold between the least of their fingers. The horizon paled as the light of dawn started to appear. Nobody had noticed the time. They had been talking so long. The air was cool and crisp. The dragonettes started singing.