I feel the static of a shadow in your place,
I see a savage in the still upon your face.

His question passes like a wave. It crashes on the rocks of her mind and then recedes back from where it came from. They’d always talked about honesty.

“Some of it,” Echidna says.

Her slim fingers twist together, she worries. Even without the realization. She always felt like he expected something from her she could never produce – there was no rabbit in her top hat, no handkerchief up her sleeve. Her doves died eons ago. Echidna was not a magician, there was very little she could do. But he wants to know, curious little badger. His next point of conversation draws only the slightest glance and then she rubs her dirty hands over her face. Exhausted, frustrated, unsure. It was never easy when they wanted it to be.

If she’d not meant for them to be friends, she wouldn’t have bothered. Though, in truth, she hardly remembers any of her motivations back then. Sometimes she wondered why he didn’t slap her back to her senses, why he hadn’t worried about her. It was such a dramatic change of character.

Echidna chews her bottom lip for a minute. “No, that wasn’t the point. I don’t remember everything I thought then, it’s cloudy but, what I do remember is when I knew you were in Knell I had to find you.”

At least that was the complete truth. A solid, resounding truth. Even now, it pinches her somewhere deep inside and she slicks her palms against her thighs. “I don’t know what I wanted, maybe to be your friend, if you wanted that because I felt for a long time you never wanted to see me again.”

She shrugs. It’s what under the bridge. He’d told her before that wasn’t true but she couldn’t shake the feeling anyway. It stuck to her like glue.

“I guess what I’m saying is,” Echidna flicks her dark eyes up to his face and she holds his eyes for as long as she can, “I still love you –”

“I’m angry because I can’t stop loving your stupid face even when you don’t want me. It isn't fair,” Echidna pounds her fists against the ground and looks up at the sky.