Little Quena had fallen asleep curled up in Lhut's arm.

Cahuan cuddled up to Lhut's other side, burying her face in the crook of his neck. She sighed happily. Lhut was large and strong, and so familiar. This was the man who had been by her side all those days full of children, all those nights full of pain and hope.

Cahuan kissed him gently on the cheek. Lhut grunted approvingly and a warm wave swept through Cahuan, causing her to kiss him once again, on the lips this time, fully and tenderly. She nestled up to him, the curves of her body melting into his. With her arm lying loosely across Lhut's chest, she rested a hand on Quena's back, feeling the child's little chest rise and fall. Cahuan gave a blissful little moan. Her home. Her family. She felt the glow of happiness run through her like a slow caress.

Lhut shifted slightly and a hiss of pain escaped him. His muscles tensed. He tried to calm his uneven breath, but it still came raggedly.

"Help me?" Lhut mumbled into Cahuan's thick mermaid hair.

"Hmm," Cahuan nodded against his skin. She laid a gentle hand on the edge of his thigh.

Lhut exhaled deeply, with deliberate effort. As his sleepy mind relaxed its spell, the ache came back, the pain that would live on forever in his phantom leg, in his body's memory of what had been torn away. Gnawing at Lhut, keeping him from sleep, locking him into a wheel of suffering.

But there was a way out.

Lhut began to whisper. Cahuan joined in, letting their mingled voices grow into an incantation, a solemn, powerful raga that wove patterns into the night. The song of an ocean, where the pain has lain forgotten all day, down in the deep. But whence it woke come darkness, transforming into a dragon that rose up, hungry and restless, until it broke surface with a roar of fury, its mighty tail lashing the foaming waves.

But in the blackness over the waters hovered a prayer, a song of yearning and need, of trust and hope. Held safely within its magic, Lhut drifted away into the quiet dreams of the universe, into the embrace of the stars.