She edged closer, his baby, her image fuzzy for the first time. He didn't care; she'd come back to him. She was giving him another chance, and he nearly cried again with joy. All the places he'd take her this time; the meadow, the field, anywhere. Everywhere. But his crying had startled her into retreat, and somewhere in his mind he felt a thread of suspicion trickle through. She was never unsure of him.
And with the sound of her speech, the suspicion bloomed. "Are you ok?" he hears a gentle voice ask. In life, Kinley had of course spoken to him, but never again since her death no matter how often her image appeared to him. A tiny ember of hope still sparked though, and he blinked rapidly, trying to see her face. He needed to see for himself it was not her.
Bleary eyes slowly focused, too weak to do anything more than lift his head inches from the ground. The sweet face so near had no calming effect to the anguish that assaulted him next, ripping through him with violent shudders with the painful realization Kinley hadn't return to him after all. His mind felt sluggish and dulled, a sickness of sorrow lodged deep within him. And it took longer than it should have for him to remember she, the stranger, was there, so lost in his pain as he was.
The faintest brush of her breath against his neck was what brought him around again. He flinched, and stiffened. unaccustomed to being touched. He had isolated himself for so long, slowly losing his mind as his only company was the imagined manifestation of his guilty conscience in the form of his dead daughter. A part of him could not deny an innocent pleasure in another's touch, wanting to melt against it for the offered comfort.
But a slow, dangerous stirring in his mind marked the waking of the beast within. The feral one. Uncontrollable. Yet more evidence of his fraying state of mind. It roused with a low rumbling growl, almost as quiet as a whisper at first, using him as its mouthpiece. It stretched its great bat-like wings in his head, hot steam slipping from the corners of its mouth. He was amazed, not for the first time, that the massive creature even fit in his consciousness; though, it wasn't truly real, was it?
The intelligence slipped from his eyes then and he felt his head rise again, slowly. Locking her with the look of a rabid dog, the growls intensified. It was a bluff, the monster knew, for his body was too weary and worn to follow through with the threat. But it bared its teeth regardless, his own lips peeling back as though commanded, as if it felt threatened by her innocent kindness. Afraid someone, some day, would soften and dull the lethal weapon it knew he was.