Re: [Lake: "Sparrow" & Luke]
"I don't know what that's like, being tired of pain. Things don't hurt for me, not how I think you mean. But I don't think optimism causes pain, and I don't think pretending to be a pessimist spares you from it. It comes anyway, and pretending doesn't make it better, does it?" She didn't notice the way his tongue tangled on itself in the darkness, but she was really, really sure about what she was saying. She didn't believe he was made for darkness, this boy that came out to icy lakes to help complete strangers. "No one came here but you. No one else even tried to help."
Loneliness, though, that she understood. She understood it in a way that she didn't understand the pain he spoke of, and she shook her own ringleted head in the dark. "Being lonely is bad. There's something about emptiness, like something with an open mouth inside you, and I can't manage to feed it. Work helps a little, for a few minutes. I guess that's my version of pretending. I work, and I pretend I'm with someone. For those few minutes, I can create an entire lifetime." She said it with candor, shameless in need spoken husky in the dark. But a smile followed, warm and audible. "You pretend you're ferocious. You're not at all, not even a little, and maybe your dog knows I'm not going to hurt you."
She laughed when he said she could save them both a lot of trouble by not falling in, and something about his voice, the sharp inhale that preceded it when he insisted he'd only reached for her because he didn't wall her to fall in, something about that made her stomach turn over on itself, dance within the walls of her body. "Okay." She moved close, close, and she could probably whisper from this distance and still be heard. "I'll go home, get away from the water, be safe, if you promise me something," she offered, breath warm against his chin.