He didn't say anything. He lied again and decided that he didn't care. He had been talking to the breeze again, and it really wasn't such an unlikely conclusion. The laughter was ringing loudly between his ears, and he could almost make out words in there too. When the footsteps faded away in the frozen grass and snow, he stood slowly and dragged his cold feet back inside the lonely cottage. The fire had died again, but that didn't matter. Laruku found his way to the bedroom where some two dozen ratty blankets were tossed onto an equally ratty mattress. Lying down, he curled deep into the mass of cloth and pretended that he was invisible, that he was floating through space, and that there was nothing around him. There would be memories in his dreams that night, but in the morning, he would forget about Bane again; he would forget about Tsunami again. It was a tired ritual, but it was all he could manage.
