Movement at her right caught her eye, and she watched you approach and wearily lower yourself onto the ground, using your baseball bat as support. There was a protracted clink as it vanished to barely a viewable size, followed by an uncomfortably long silence as she found herself the recipient of a lengthy, studious gaze. Long enough, in fact, for her to look away from your eyes for just a brief second.

It was strange how Castorice found it hard to look at you, but couldn’t stop flicking her eyes up to you every few seconds, even as the silence moved further into awkward territory. Confusion added itself into the mix, a sense of puzzlement at, despite her feelings of self-loathing and fear, the fact that you cared about her left her feeling relatively light…and incredibly special. You would even be willing to risk your entire well-being to be there at her side, and to embrace her, after all. No-one else would be willing to have done that physical touch, especially with the knowledge that she was a high risk as the literal embodiment of death itself.

Castorice let out a shaky breath, one you suspected carried with it her pent-up anxiety and fear at the simple act of touching someone. “We spoke about my lack of physical touch, are you ready?” she whispered.

Kephale of a question. What could she do as the servant of the Shadow Hand and the twin sister of Polyxia, other than lead the living to their ruin? She couldn’t touch a thing without rendering it to dust, and she wouldn’t dare lay a finger on a living being unless required. What she did know was that contact on any part of your bare skin would spread a large layer of death, so the act of embracing you was uncertain.

But she needed to have you embrace her, and she needed to embrace you. Years of discipline plus years of strict adherence to a routine where would resist the urge to hold a single flower without it eroding by her fingertips…yet, she needed to belong.

To belong to you. To belong to the natural orders of life, and never the ending cycle of death. To hold onto your face and feel your flesh against hers. To be part of a whole, something greater than even herself and Kephale. Even greater than Thanatos.

Castorice wanted to embrace.

To do that?

There it was: the nod of approval when you affirmed your answer that you could, and were willing to do it no matter what. Any rebuttals she’d prepared died in her throat, and the purposeful shadow hands that wished to embrace fiddled with each-other within a relatively safe distance from you.

Castorice felt a heavy weight slammed down on her gut, pulling her gaze to the floor in response to the challenge. Her brow furrowed; she had to confront it. May Kephale allow me to embrace, she thought. So far her mind had regarded the ordeal of her golden blood as a curse, and the fabric covering her fingers was a barrier to the darkness that had befallen upon her. To reveal her hands would be to validate it.

It was unfortunate that her heart betrayed her, and superseded her mind’s control. Slowly, reluctantly, her hands revealed themselves in all their unclad glory as she pulled the fabric away. You let out a long breath through your nose, one that she thought sounded like you were disappointed of, disapproving of and judging her.

When she risked a glance at your face, it radiated empathy. Oddly, it made her relieved. She watched as you snaked your right hand across the expanse between her and you, feathering your fingers out and stopping between her and your’s touched heads.

Her breathing trembled yet grew deeper, and slowly, inch by inch, her hand moved toward it, palms up as it closed the distance until, with a sensation that made her heart skip a beat, her fingertips touched skin. Liquid pooling in her eyes, her fingers completed the unison by slipping in between yours and clenching fiercely, holding on tight for fear that you would vanish and dissipate if she were ever let go. “You grant me the right to embrace,” Castorice whispered gently “if you let go of my hand, you may not wake from it.”