[Cerise, admittedly, is easier to lavish affection on. There's something almost childlike about the phylax, buoyant and energetic, acting as a counterbalance to her languid witch or an echo of what he might have been like if he hadn't learned so soon about so many kinds of pain, and how to shut it out like so much inconvenient noise.

He feels pain, now. Close and loud, many tiny bee stings along his scalp and behind his eyes. Is it because the Bond isn't being withdrawn according to Myr's wont? That the great detective must witness, up close and personal, an emotional symphony that is not his own?]

I did think it was a dream when you came back. That's the only reason I reached for you the way I did... I wouldn't have tried to possess you, otherwise. I've come to value dreaming so much, because it's a way to be happy, without affecting others at all. I think...

[Cerise keens softly, darting from the table, skulking around the outskirts of the living area.]

I want happiness at no cost to others. I could live in a beautiful dream... it was beautiful then, and today, it... just wasn't real.

[Not like the guilt he feels, disclosing this.]

I wouldn't have known the difference if it wasn't made obvious to me. A part of me liked not knowing, and living there.