Chapter 32: Trips & Names
Misha didn’t speak the rest of that day. Instead, after returning home, he spent most of his time staring absentmindedly at a tracing he’d taken of the small profile picture from his mother’s grave. He stared at it and stared at it, yet found it became no more familiar than a stranger’s face.
He spoke a little the next day, greeted Bran in the morning and gave short answers when asked questions, but he otherwise remained silent, though instead of staring at his mother’s picture, he read Bran’s notebooks.
Bran decided that it was an improvement and quietly stayed by his side, not too close to be a bother but close enough that he could answer any questions he might come up with.
There were none.
Finally, on the fourth day, Misha came back to himself.
He hugged Bran.
Bran had been about ready to start cooking that day’s breakfast when Misha padded up from behind and put his arms around him and hugged him tight.
"Let me cook," he said.
They hadn’t slept in the same bed since the adventure in the dream-Coil so the sudden contact was all the more startling to Bran.
"Alright," he managed to say after a moment.
Something had changed in the last few days. At first, Bran had just thought it was an internal thing just in Misha but he was realising now that it was more between the two of them.