A minute alone can feel like hours. The frozen hands of a clock entwined. But it is also quiet. With no Aadya, Yuki sits and cradles Eclair. The friend she didn't leave. She stayed, so her friend left. Always a choice, always someone left out. There was no certainty in any of this. Only the doubt of forever wondering what could have been down another path. Wondering if there was another Thellamie out there with a Yuki who had sprung up after Aadya and left Eclair to awaken alone. Was that Thellamie the dead end path, or was this the dead end, simply awaiting its few fleeting moments with a choice that cannot be sustained before its pruned out of existence to make way for the better Yuki who knew how to make better choices.

The steam clears out of the air and Yuki's skin prickles with the cold from the door. She feels Sulochana's arrival through the rush of air through the door, the hint of perfume that flutters past her nose before she really senses it. And then she is swept up. In warm coils and the closeness of Eclair's body pressed together with hers, miraculously still asleep. Or perhaps not so miraculous at all, for all that she had seemed so desperately to need it.

At first, Yuki simply buries her head in Sulochana's coils, in the stomach and the side, inhaling her friend, pressing her face deep into her. She keeps her arms around Eclair, doesn't worry about how her shift bunches up against the two of them and enjoys the feeling of Eclair snuggled up close to her shoudler, the three friends all pressed together so deeply. 

There is, then, no time to kiss Sulochana and we will all have to wait for another day to determine whether that two is the right path or the path that sends all of Thellamie to a new dead end. Instead, when the snuggling is done, there is a flood of words. 

"...Civelia poisoned..."
"Super cool assassin fan vs. heartblade knuckles, like I didn't even know you could..."
"...and then I interrupted it with a towel cuz I suck but her heart was [i]crying[/i] Suli!"
"...and Aadya's a big dumby dumb who doesn't know how to do her job except to run headfirst into a wall and and..."

"...and I'm tired Suli. I'm so tired. I can't be everywhere at once, I can't be with everyone at once, and I'm...I'm not the chosen one this time even though everybody keeps expecting me to be."