Bleeding Heart 38 Shattering

As he had been expecting, he had loved her romantically, and very deeply too. But she had not loved him back. Not cared one whit for him either and would have gladly used him. At least from what he remembered. At first he tried to rationalize that maybe that had just been temporary and maybe she had come to love him and he just did not remember that part, but deep inside he knew that was not the case.

He had no one waiting for him. The person who had been most important to him was probably more than happy for him to be gone.

Needless, to say his heart was in quite a bit of pain at the moment. He could have talked to Dawn about it, but he did not want to tell her or anyone about his broken heart. For one he had no idea where he would begin.

So he just did his best not to think about it, and to push it as far back as he could. He hoped though that he never went through such a thing ever again and that his heart had learned its lesson about falling in love with someone who did not love him back no matter what he did.

Raven could not wait for night to fall again that way they could continue on. Waiting here, in silence other than an occasional sentence or two, was not helping him distract himself from his thoughts.

Finally he heard the others stirring and before he could get up to see how he could help, he felt a small humanoid form dive and burrow itself in his arms. One of the kids, he was pretty sure it Thorn.

A small smile came to his lips as he patted her head and gave a small chuckle. He could feel his spirits lifting. So what that he had had a bad experience with love? In the long run it hardly changed anything as it was now, just lowered his hopes for after the journey.

The little girl was playing with his hair which meant she was definitely Thorn. Raven ignored the slight pain that came from her tugging on his hair. He could feel Dawn staring at him and heard her mutter under her breath that she was glad he looked happier.

Warmth spread through him at the fact that she cared. It was nice to have friends that truly cared about you. He felt touched especially as at the moment he really needed that. even if he did not talk about hi feelings it felt good to know that she would listen.

He held onto the girl until it was time to go, and then handed her off and got up unto the fluffy beast he was becoming very fond of. Zyph was so well behaved and was probably a real cutie.

As Rex leaned into his side, Raven reflected that he rather liked being surrounded by children. He was pretty happy that Dawn had given that duty to him even though he was probably not the best person for the job. There were people with them who probably had more experience with kids. Lowks for instance had apparently looked after kids before. But Dawn had decided he was the best choice for this and he wanted to make sure she did not regret it for any shortcoming he had.

It was a bit cold as they moved, nearly flying over the ground. But that was not why Raven disliked the desert. The cold actually hardly bothered him. No, it felt too quiet. There were not nearly enough plants and animal activity was hard to actually find. It felt dry. Not just due to the lack of water but also just dry of life in general. The lack of life might be tied up in the lack of water but it was the symptom that truly bothered him.

He did not like it but he could not do anything about it. Dawn had decided the best course of action and he would follow her where she led.