[It's still scary - scary and bewildering and bracing, like a steep drop-off and sharp winter wind. Ruin couldn't do this, couldn't see his thoughts and didn't care about them anyway, couldn't express or convey meaning. He just shouted, or pulled Marsh's strings. Bianca could do it - but then, for the most part, she didn't bother. No one shows themselves to tools. This is something that only happens with her.
He shows her something back, lurching and tentative, focusing on it and hoping his constant state of machiolation lets it through. It's just a memory, less conceptual and more vivid, a memory of himself from the Oxford breach, stumbling down an unknown road, leaning on Sedge, with chunks carved from the donkey's flanks and the last vertebra cut from her tail, and the sick soul-deep ache in his stomach and his skull and his fingertips. Missing pieces, he thinks without words, wisps of association flitting from his spikes to Zane's like a calytpra moth. He won't be mended, but Zane was, could be again. He remembers Riddick's shoulder, steady as a cold mountain under his arm. Yes, it leaves one unbalanced.]
[spam]
He shows her something back, lurching and tentative, focusing on it and hoping his constant state of machiolation lets it through. It's just a memory, less conceptual and more vivid, a memory of himself from the Oxford breach, stumbling down an unknown road, leaning on Sedge, with chunks carved from the donkey's flanks and the last vertebra cut from her tail, and the sick soul-deep ache in his stomach and his skull and his fingertips. Missing pieces, he thinks without words, wisps of association flitting from his spikes to Zane's like a calytpra moth. He won't be mended, but Zane was, could be again. He remembers Riddick's shoulder, steady as a cold mountain under his arm. Yes, it leaves one unbalanced.]
You've got plenty of us to lean on.