She was tiny. Tiny and inappropriately close, he realized, but somehow the message got lost somewhere between his brain and his arms and close she stayed. More often than not his limbs had a will of their own, and right now it didn’t even annoy him like it should have. Horrified, of course, but there were other, more pressing things to be scared of. Like the silence that, despite the commotion going on around them, had taken over his thoughts. It was never, ever supposed to be this still inside his head.
Clearing his throat and fumbling to find even a single coherent word worth voicing, Tico peered down at the girl. “Hi,” he managed, but the effort was inhuman and from that on it was downhill again. “I mean sorry. I mean – Hi. Er, I -” There, he actually made a pathetic little whimper.