Page 150 of A Soul to Touch

Faunus walked around the yard to make sure it was safe.

There had been a great deal of blood due to the number of Demons that had come during the night. When he first emerged from the house, he’d done the best he could to hide it by covering what he could find with snow and dirt. The area still had a certain reek to it, one he’d managed to mask but not fully remove.

Thankfully, Demon blood was rather off-putting and foul. It didn’t particularly stir hunger in his kind, but it was difficult for him to smell through. Mayumi said she couldn’t notice anything once he’d covered it all.

When she emerged from the house, she went to the back again and began filing the arrowheads into sharp points with a grinder. He watched her foot press up and down on a pedal while it made some kind of rotating, whirring noise.

His orbs darkened in their yellow colour as he examined the machine with profound curiosity. He'd never seen anything like it.

Just as he crouched down and went to touch it, she smacked his hand away.

“Don’t shove your fingers into things you don’t understand,” she bit. “That’s how you hurt yourself or lose one.”

He looked up to her and noticed the concerned, disapproving frown of her brows.

“I’ve already told you I will heal within a day, no matter the injury.” Except for his skull, of course.

A gruff sigh came from her as she rolled her eyes.

“Just because it’ll grow back doesn’t mean you should be so careless. It’ll hurt a whole bunch, and you might break my tool.”

“Hmm.” He hadn’t thought of that.

He stood and just continued watching her.

His hackles rose when she pulled out the same glue she’d used to put his face back together. He was hoping she wouldn’t try to do so again.

Faunus had been... hopeful when she tried. The fact she cared so deeply about him that she was willing to fix his face had been heart-warming.

It hadn’t helped. Instead, it had only further dismayed him. She’d asked if she could use her other glue, and he’d rejected her offer. The animal glue she’d worked into the sensitive crack of his skull had stung in the same way that even water getting into it hurt.

The failure had stung far worse.

I’ve already accepted my fate.

Thinking there might be a cure or a way to fix his injury just reopened the cavernous wound in his heart. He’d much rather ignore it, push it to the deepest, furthest place of his mind, and just live in the present with her.

Relief washed through him when she used the glue, once it was heated and liquefied, to attach the hollow edge of the arrow to shafts she already had prepared.

It appeared this lengthy task was one she did often.

When she started using her mallet and a special blunt tool to dent the arrow and shaft together, he couldn’t help but ask, “What is the point of using glue if you are binding them together this way regardless?”

“It makes them sturdier,” she answered when she was doing the last one. “I can use these arrows right away, but the glue helps prevent them from coming apart if the metal or shaft distorts for any reason.”

Faunus followed her when she picked up all thirty arrows in her arms and walked them to the front of her home. She placed them on the porch as she headed inside to grab her bow before coming back outside to his awaiting form.

All the way from her porch, Mayumi picked up an arrow and nocked it onto her bowstring. Making sure he didn’t get in the way, she raised her bow and aimed.

She unleashed the arrow, and it landed straight into the stake in the middle of the clearing. Doing this multiple times, most of her arrows embedded themselves into the thick, wooden pole.

Faunus looked up to the sky, noticing the sun was not far from finishing its descent, and already the shadows were long enough to shield the house completely.

Dusk. It was a dangerous time of the day as Demons who were brave enough to risk getting minor burns began to hunt on the surface.

I’ve always enjoyed this time of day.

He observed the blast of colour that was painted in the sky. The varying oranges, yellows, purples, and blues. He especially liked that very brief time when even stars would begin to twinkle. Sometimes, he even caught the moon in the bright sky.

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