[There's a moment, one single moment, when Rohan breaks the contact between them and she's afraid. It's nothing rational; in fact, it's perfectly natural to feel that little stab of uncertainty when something that she knows is helping to keep her alive is removed, even for a temporary period of time.

But, she reminds herself, she'll be all right. It won't take long for him to come back, and he will come back. She's got plenty of chroma to tide her over, and even if she doesn't, Rohan will come running to help her. She's not stranded out in the Solemn Grounds right now, she's on his couch. He's right here with her. It's going to be all right.

So she watches him dart off to get changed, and while he does she holds as still as she can and dozes, like she's hibernating to conserve energy or something ridiculous like that, and when he comes back she doesn't waste any time in gravitating back against him, wanting the reassurance of feeling the chroma they're generating by being in contact.

(This isn't normal. Normal people don't cuddle up under blankets and kiss each other and send fifteen text messages out of sheer worry for each other. This isn't normal, but if she thinks too hard about it, she'll have to acknowledge it, and she doesn't want to.)

She tucks against him instead, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder.]

Yeah. It was like...it's a place for ghosts. It felt like it kept drawing me in.

[Difficult to admit, but she has to. The way that spring had made her feel...now, in retrospect, that scares her, too.]

I kept going in and I couldn't get back out again.