I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.

This time, Mallos was aware that he was in a dream.

This again, he thought grimly as he stared into the void.

Just knowing that this was only a dream made it a thousand times more bearable. He was still paralysed, chained to a wall in total blackness with nothing but the steady distant dripping to keep him company, but he didn’t feel quite so… hopeless. Usually, when this memory replayed at night, his sleeping self was transported back in time. Back to the utter despondency of it all. The boredom. Boredom was a self-piteous emotion at best, rarely invoking of sympathy, but no one in the world had known boredom such as this. No one had sat in the dark, unable to move, without reprieve, for a thousand years. They’d never had nothing to do but fear for an eternity spent doing nothing.

But this time was different. This time, Mallos knew he’d wake up in a few hours at most, and all he had to do was sit tight until then.

Still boring, though. Was his dream state mimicking his conscious state? There was a wretched symbolism in being cuffed to a wall, helpless, lost in the dark.

His hand twitched of its own accord and the wall shifted behind his back. Mallos jolted awake a split second before Croe transformed; not long enough to gain any awareness. His head fell against the mattress, which sprung up suddenly to his right as the weight shifted. The room was dark, but not the all-encompassing blackness of the place he’d been before; the gleam of dawn in the cracks between the curtains, which he’d roughly pulled together the night before, accentuated the outline of the bed, the wardrobe, the settee – and the bird’s wings. Mallos sat up on his elbow to follow the movement, eyes adjusting to the low light, brain catching up to wakefulness. Was that… a crow…?

He glanced at the empty bed beside him, then back at the bird. It clicked.

“Croe!” He shouted, tossing the covers on the floor and leaping off the bed.

She’d found her way into the gap between the curtains, her claws scrabbling at the glass. Mallos crossed the room and ripped the curtains apart, accidentally pulling part of one off the hook, but was at a loss for what else to do. Should he try and catch her? Transform into a bird with her? Talk to her? Indecision gripped him; he stood frozen.

She found her way back to the centre of the room, shifting back into fairy form, and collapsed onto all fours, facing away from him. He moved cautiously around her until he was by her head and fell to his knees, reaching out one hand to take her shoulder. It was the same shoulder he’d gripped and shaken half a dozen times in the last two days but now it was shaking of its own accord. She lifted her head, her dark eyes meeting his, gleaming with fear and hysteria and strain and life.

He took her by the other shoulder and pulled her in to a tight embrace. The turmoil and despair of the last two days flooded away in a storm of relief, an immense weight lifting from his shoulders. He was aware of her heart beating against his chest and her breath on his neck; simple sensations which, for a while there, had been so hopelessly beyond reach. He couldn’t even feel the morning glow or smell the metallic tang of blood, his senses shut off to everything except her warm, wakeful, living touch.

Somehow, he had the width of focus to whisper a prayer of thanks in his mind.

Mallos
I've learned enough to know I'm never letting go