hannah and david: woods
David hardly knew what time it was, just that it was one of the rare ones where he hadn't been drawn to the Capital. Even when he wasn't, something sang and hummed inside him by night, dancing on a razor's edge between this physical self and that part-immaterial one, part-stone.
He had been attracted to the party by the light and the sound, but in the end he could never bring himself to enter. No one's fault - no one made him feel unwelcome. But he was too close to the middle and he had pushed himself hard to attend parties and gatherings and to be social in the last year, to be a human being, to pretend to breathe. He had grown tired of it, after December came and went again. The anniversary came and went with it, and he did searching of his own, and then went back to the streets again, spinning and spitting blood by moonlight.
When he saw a figure in the distance, not far ahead of him, there was a moment. It didn't last. It melted like a pastille on the tongue, liked shadows did appear. He saw someone who wasn't there, and he knew she couldn't be. She was walking with him, wasn't she? When he looked and wanted to find her, she was with him, some way off, silent and unspeaking. The vivid figure in the dark wasn't her. It hummed. It had footfalls.
He grew closer, saw a sliver of the side of her face, and called out. "Nice night," he said. He had a voice that rang and carried, many years of song. "But a lonely walk."