She had watched a friend run the course of a bad acid trip before, at his side while he shook and muttered, screamed into the trees and curled up at their roots. Like weak company, a couple of sooty embers in a fire pit on a chilly night, she could do nothing but follow and watch, grasping to the hope that something was better than nothing. As his tale began to spin and his eyes followed images that were not on this plain, she drew a line between that summer night two years ago, and this dull afternoon.
Only Ahren truly owned these hallucinations, and there was no clock to will onwards and sweep the self-imposed toxins away. This was fever and disease, without explanation or expectation, and Poe found herself eagerly gathering his words, like bread crumbs in a dark forest with no path. They had to lead somewhere, didn't they? Her hand absently slid down his arm until it disappeared behind his back, unwillingly linked to the other. The physical contact seemed important to her then, in the way that it often did, a desperate grasp for connection and grounding, so her hand hung on the side of his ribs, searched out a heartbeat inside that cage.
