Sylvia just fell back, breathing out. "Damnit... I hate my body sometimes.. Always ruining everything I touch..." She said in her and Cain's unique language.
"It wasn't your fault, Sylvia. It was his for getting to touchy-feely..." Cain said.
"Don't get jealous, Cain..." Sylvia murmured, "We're just friends..."
"We're friends to..." Cain said, moving to lean into Sylvia.
"Of course we're friends, Cain..." Sylvia said, "We're best friends, Cain... I'll never abandon you, alright?" Sylvia said, opting to reassure Cain of that before doing anything else.
"...Okay..." Cain said, "I... I just get worried, sometimes... That I won't be strong enough..."
Sylvia breathed out, shaking her head. "You are strong, Cain... Really strong..! You just have to believe that, alright? Velen didn't mean to call you weak or anything Cain..."
"I... I know it just..." Cain was about to say something, but Sylvia cut her off.
"Let's just go to sleep, alright...? I was going to train, but... I'm not in the mood to..." Sylvia murmured, laying down and beckoning Cain to lay on her tummy.
Cain did just that, snuggling into Sylvia's stomach as she rested her head on her fellow Rakshashin's chest. Cain would close her eyes, in an attempt to quell herself to sleep, which seemed to be successful. She had accumulated enough physical fatigue that she could put herself to sleep rather quickly.
Sylvia, on the other hand, didn't sleep. Instead... She lay awake, eyes wide open as she stared at the golden ceiling.
She breathed out, continuing to stare. She attempted to clear her mind. She looked down at Cain's sleeping body and smiled, running her hand through the young Rakshashin's dirty, but soft and flowing white hair. In a way, just being like this with her best friend let her calm down in a way that she hadn't calmed down in a long time.
It allowed her to remember one of the good times in her life...
....
She remembered how she lay motionless in pitch black darkness, with only the sound of the cold, desolate wind there to comfort her. How she would lay there, skinny and weak from a lack of food and water, waiting to rot away from her failure, thrown away into a pit as punishment.
She remembered what she was told when she was thrown away. How she was "careless", "undisciplined", "weak", "an insult to the family name".
And as such, this was her punishment, a punishment she was forced to go through countless times already. A punishment that, through time, left her mind hollow, unable to process why she was even being punished in the first place. She could not hope to cry, for all her tears had long since dried up. She could not begin to hope that somebody would come to save her...
But then, she heard something shuffling through the darkness. It wasn't an animal, it didn't smell like that. It smelt like one of her kind, a Rakshashin. But why would one of her kind be thrown into the same pit she was thrown in? She was supposed to be an outlier, wasn't she? All the other children her age were model. None disobeyed orders. They were meant to be machines, with the principles of bloodshed thoroughly pounded into them without fail. And yet... another one of them was given the same punishment she was.
She heard her fellow Rakshashin violently cough, stumbling through the dirt and mud of the pit. She moved around, seemingly to try and find something to cling to. She continued to aimlessly stumble around the cave, letting out groans and coughs until she tripped... Falling right next to Sylvia.
The unknown Rakshashin moved her body, touching Sylvia. As she did so, she clung tightly to her, her claws digging into Sylvia's already frail body. Sylvia didn't react, though. This was normal. She had to kill Sylvia to sustain herself, or else she'd starve to death in this pit.
Sylvia didn't move or react, just letting it happen. Maybe death wasn't such a bad thing, really. If she left the pit, she would only be ridiculed again. She'd only be beaten, and thrown away again. She may as well just let them do it.
But... nothing happened. Nothing violent, anyway.
She wasn't clawed at, or bitten. She wasn't punched or kick. No, what happened was that her fellow Rakshashin clung to her... And she trembled, and cried. She clung to Sylvia's weak body as if this was the only lifeline she had. Sylvia's eyes widened, despite her abundant lack of stamina to even move herself an inch. The girl clung to Sylvia, and Sylvia didn't understand why.
Sylvia didn't move for what seemed like forever. Not because she couldn't move, or well, she couldn't still, but it was more to it than that. She tried to figure out why this girl clung to her so passionately, why she cried and trembled against her. She wanted to know the reason.
And as the girl continued to cry and tremble, she began to move almost instinctively. She slowly, very slowly raised her thin, broken arms, and embraced the girl. And as she did so, as she pulled the crying girl into her embrace, feeling her extremely cold skin press against hers, she realized why the girl so passionately clinging to her.
"Do... you... not... want to be abandoned... to...?" Sylvia thought to herself, the girl's trembling slowly ceasing.
Was this girl so broken, so beaten down, that she clung to somebody she didn't even know in fear of being alone? In fear of being left behind in such pitch-black darkness?...
In a way, Sylvia could understand the girl's plight. In reality, she didn't want her brethren to throw her away, either. She didn't want to be an outcast, a failure. She wanted to be normal to, but, at the same time, she wanted to pursue what she wanted to pursue.
But, this girl didn't want to pursue anything... She just didn't want to be left alone. Her mind was so racked with such a fear, that Sylvia could practically taste the anxiety emanating off of the girl's various wounds. She could taste the cold, hard effort that this girl pounded into herself so that she was not thrown away, rendered pathetic by her own brethren.
She embraced the girl as best she could, letting her tears and trembling cease as they both wasted away in this pit. At the rate they were going, it'd be many months before they were released from confinement.
And for those months, they would simply continue to embrace each other... Until neither had anymore tears to cry.
...
Sylvia remembered this, and couldn't help but feel at ease. In a way, this was similar to that very time that they had met. They would simply embrace each other until a time where darkness went away came. She moved her arms, gently pulling Cain into her chest. It was different from when she did it with Siglos... Like this, for some reason, she felt as if she had no fears. As if there was nothing that she could not face, with this one girl in her arms. She felt overwhelmingly warm with her best friend in her presence, and she allowed Siglos to make her forget that feeling, even for a moment.
"I'm sorry, Cain..." Sylvia thought to herself. She wasn't going to stop doing this for Siglos, but, she wouldn't allow herself to forget this warmth she felt. She'd pound it into herself until she could never forget it again, slowly closing her eyes...
And letting herself drift away...
