Page 167 of A Soul to Touch

“How many times do I need to remind you that I don’t need your help, Faunus? I have never needed it.” She slipped over his shoulder so she could lay on his crossed legs. “But I would like your company. You can still hand me vegetables to cook. You canstill play board games with me. You can still talk to me until the stars are beginning to fade and we watch the rising sun. I have never needed help, but I have always needed someone to fill the void of my home.” Then she gave him a small, forced smile as she said, “And you do take up a lot of space. You make it cosy.”

But was that enough? He wanted it to be.

I don’t want to leave.

What if Jabez came here? How would Mayumi face the Demon King by herself with him gone? He’d most likely think she were lying if she were to say that Faunus had just left.

Currently he was torn between what he wanted.

I don’t want to leave her, but what right do I have to stay?

A light sound thudding beyond her front door spooked her into alertness. Mayumi rushed to crouch so suddenly that her feet nearly got caught in her blanket and tripped her.

“Faunus?” she shouted, standing as she took a step towards the outside, uncaring that she was in nothing more than a sleep shirt.

“I’m right here,” he answered from the back of her home where her lounging chairs were.

She turned to find him sitting by the window and staring out at the early morning light. He was leaning up against the wall with his shoulder, one leg straight and the other bent, his body so brightened in colour that his fur almost had a blue tinge to it. Even his skull seemed to glisten.

Fuck,she thought as she brushed the tangled knots of her hair from her face.I thought he left.

Even though it was only a night ago that he’d been playing with her soul in the dark, Faunus had never promised that he would stay here. Since then, Mayumi had been on edge.

“Why are you over there?”

“The sun was shining on my face, and it woke me.”

It was a lie, an obvious one. She knew his orbs weren’t the same as human’s closed eyelids passing light through. It also wasn’t that bright yet.

He isn’t sleeping.She knew he did a little, but he was no longer the lazy, sleepy Duskwalker she knew him to be.

Mayumi bit her lips to stop herself from responding before she rounded and went to the kitchen.

She wasn’t going to coddle him. He’d asked her not to, and if she tried to, if she treated him like a lost, sick puppy, it would push him to leave. She tried to act as normal as possible. Which is why she started transferring some of her drinking water to a pot so she could boil it for tea.

When she grabbed the ceramic container and opened it, she shook the very last few leaves that were inside it. She slyly let her eyes drift to the corners of her lids to inspect her dwindling supplies.

I have two or three days left of food.And it wasn’t good food either. Her potatoes and onions could last, but already her carrots, pumpkin, and beets were going soft, and her broccoli and cauliflower were withering.

This was the point at which Mayumi would start considering going to Colt’s Outpost. Actually, that was days ago. Her dwindling food was a choice, and she’d been rationing in order to stay here with Faunus.

I don’t know how well he’ll do making the journey to the town... or if he’ll leave once he sees me go inside.

She couldn’t ride his back like before. Even though her weight was light for him, she wouldn’t want to add any extra pressure to his body that could accelerate his heart rate.But if I don’t ride his back, he’ll think he’s weak and unhelpful.

A cooing sound beyond her front door had her ears perking and her head turning that way.

“It’s your bird,” Faunus told her while keeping his skull pointing upwards and outwards to the cold, wintery outside world. “I didn’t want to fetch it for you in case it flew off. I doubt it would trust me.”

“I guess I better go get him then before he freezes,” Mayumi sighed as she threw the last of her tea leaves into the pot.

Since she only had her own light body sweat to deal with, she quickly wiped herself down with cold water to clean herself. Then she pulled on her brown deer hide pants, a cream tunic, and her usual white wolf pelt jacket so she could brave the elements. Of course, she donned her weapons belt as the sun was just low enough that Demons could still be hiding in their shadows.

Her boots were outside, and she put them on just in case her pigeon decided to be skittish.

“Hey there, boy,” Mayumi fondly murmured as she reached her arm out to her pigeon sitting on the railing of her porch. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

When her messenger pigeon was resting upon her forearm, she lifted him so she could check his leg for a message.

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