Page 130 of A Soul to Touch

“I don’t know if other Duskwalkers feel the same way, but I don’t... feel like I belong here. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. I cannot stay on the surface without eventually being hunted by Demonslayers, and I cannot remain in the Veil or I willbe hunted there, too. If I cannot go to these places and live peacefully, where else am I to go?” He twisted his head at a cloudy, glittering spiral he could see way out in the expanding distance. “I know of how I came to be, but not why. Yet I wonder if there are more of my kind somewhere out there.”

He could feel by how she was sitting that she was holding her glass with both hands.

“Well, you said that your father was some keeper of the void. Are you able to go there?”

“I don’t know if I can come back from that place. It is an afterlife, so I have never been tempted.” His sight fell onto the moon. It was bright and near full, so he examined its shadowy craters. “The reason why I have not gone in search of a new world is because I’m worried it will be the same. We Duskwalkersneedviolence. We must feed in order to develop. What if I find another place that hates us just as much? Or one where my kind are undeveloped, and I am still left on my own, unable to speak with them since they do not know how?”

“Are you... lonely, Faunus?”

As much as he tried to stop it, he knew it was her question that caused his orbs to shift to blue.

“Very,”he grated. After a short silence between them, Faunus forced out a chuckle. “See? My thoughts are not very pleasant. Perhaps we should talk of something else.”

“Don’t do that,” she quietly grumbled. “Don’t invalidate your own thoughts and feelings just because they’re unpleasant. They aren’t unwanted, Faunus.”

He turned his head down to her, and two black pools filled with twinkling lights, just like the water around her, glittered at him. The moon had found her eyes, making them even more alluring and spellbinding than normal.

“I have thoughts like this too,” she continued, her eyes flicking over his skull. “Sure, I don’t experience loneliness in the way youhave. I can go almost anywhere humans live and be accepted, but...” Mayumi let out a humourless laugh as she rubbed the back of her neck. “I haven’t always felt like I belong. I don’t think like everyone else, and I’m quick to be violent or cold towards others. I’ve tried. Fuck, have I tried to fit in. But too many people make me feel claustrophobic, and once I’ve spent too long with them, I start to get annoyed by the person next to me just breathing. It’s like there’s a wall around me when I’m on a busy street, and the longer I’m there, the more I feel it getting smaller until I feel like I’m choking. The only time I really felt comfortable being around others was when I was out in the field with the guild hunting Demons. It was the only time I felt like I fit in.”

Mayumi rested her glass against her chest and started stroking the fur over his chest with her free hand. She stared at her hand moving, almost like she was avoiding his gaze.

“People start to feel sticky when I spend too much time with them. After a few days, their skin feels wrong next to mine and my own starts to crawl.”

His heart constricted painfully as he asked, “Do I make you feel that way?”

Her lips curled upwards as she turned her face up to him. “Not at all. Maybe it’s because you’re covered in fur.”

She stroked her cheek against his chest, which only made it feel lighter under her touch. It even began to radiate a contented rumble.

Mayumi gestured back towards her house. “I know it’s not much or very big, but you at least fit in here... just like me.”

“But I don’t fit in here. I can’t even stand properly inside your home.”

“I feel so bad, but we can’t just lift the roof and make it bigger. You’re wanted here, is what I meant.”

His orbs brightened in their colour of yellow. “I know.”

She gave a pout when she realised he’d been teasing her.

Faunus knew Mayumi wanted him, and he was delighted to know that she would have hated anyone else remaining here as long as he had.

“Have you ever had alcohol?” she asked, lifting her glass slightly.

“Never.” Why would he have? This was a human drink, as far as he knew.

He tried to remember if Demons had ever imbibed but couldn’t think if he’d ever been to a place within the Demon Village that offered it. There could be, but maybe he’d just never been there.

He wasn’t particularly welcome there. All Duskwalkers weren’t. Even more so now since he’d learned from Orpheus and Magnar that their kind were banished from the Demon Village by Jabez.

“Try it,” she demanded. “You won’t know if you don’t like it unless you try it.”

By the smell alone, he was uncertain. However, she was right. He couldn’t say he disliked it until he tried.

“Perhaps we would try this when you have a second glass?” he asked as he examined it.

He didn’t have lips or a mouth that could drink from such an item.

“Just poke your tongue in it, Faunus! I’ve had it in my mouth enough times not to care.”

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