He was awkward, foolish feeling.
"I don't think I do," he said at last. "I think that we should save some
things to tell each other for later."
She blinked, slow and lazy, and one tear rolled down and dripped off her
nose, splashing on the red T-shirt and darkening it to wineish purple.
"Will you sit with me?" she said.
He crossed the room and sat on the other end of the sofa, his hand on
the seam that joined the two halves together, crossing the border into
her territory, an invitation that could be refused without awkwardness.
She covered his hand with hers, and hers was cold and smooth but not
distant: immediate, scritching and twitching against his skin. Slowly,
slowly, she leaned toward him, curling her wing round his far shoulder
like a blanket or a lover's arm, head coming to rest on his chest,
breath hot on his nipple through the thin fabric of his T-shirt.
"Alan?" she murmured into his chest.
"Yes?"
"What are we?" she said.
"Huh?"
"Are we human? Where do we come from? How did we get here? Why do I have
wings?"
He closed his eyes and found that they'd welled up with tears. Once the
first tear slid down his cheek, the rest came, and he was crying,
weeping silently at first and then braying like a donkey in sobs that
started in his balls and emerged from his throat like vomit, gushing out
with hot tears and hot snot.
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