The big man smiles and that breaks through the darkness, like lightening in a storm. "Of course I did, ninia," he says, hand in my hair. I sigh, breath coming out easy enough, and lay against him again. "I'll always hear you, when you call for me in the night. And no matter where I am, I'll come for you. That's a promise." Again the voice rumbles in his chest, through me where I'm laying until I can feel the words just like hearing them, see them behind my eyelids as they dance in the air. Important words, like the name.

I whisper it against his neck, my lips close enough to his skin that I think I can taste it, him and the name all in the same. "Gaueko, Gaueko, Gaueko..."

It's like a nursery rhyme, the sort Mama Susan would sing, and she isn't here now but there's another hand warm in my hair and another heart beating in my ear and I feel myself slipping away. The darkness is very close to the dreaming place, I know now, and it's easy to move there, curled up tight against him. I could fight it, like before, but now I don't want to, because I'm sleepy and safe enough to go there, an easy step from one paving stone to the other. "Don't... Don't leave me," I think I say, before my eyes just won't open anymore and the world goes quiet.