Gavin didn't wake at all that night.

The following day, around mid-afternoon, Gavin slowly opened his eyes, wincing because of his massive headache caused by dehydration. He slowly pushing himself up onto his elbows, glancing tiredly around.

'Wasn't I on the floor...?' he thought to himself. 'Great...' He sighed, a feeling similar to failure washing through him. 'How the hell did I live through that?'

Though he did feel a sense of relief; whatever had been inside him seemed to be gone now.

Zenis, holding a tall glass of water in his hands, still staring at Gavin, twitched a bit of a smile.
"Good morning, Tease of Leliel. The poor Goddess must be in tatters and tears over losing your pretty heart. But, ah, some water for you. You must be thirsty."

He looked up at Zenis, a hard expression filling his eyes before softening; his last memory before waking playing in his head. The feeling of his life slipping away, and then gentle fingers slipping inside his throat and giving his life back to him...

"You saved me... Didn't you...?" he asked quietly.

Zenis shruged.
"Depends on your perception, I suppose," he said, offering the glass, the ice clinking against it gently. "I saved you from dying, I did not save you from living, if that's what you were planning to escape in the first place. Call me selfish, but I didn't want you dead."

He hung his head a little, taking the water. "It's not like I actually wanted to die... I was just trying to escape with what little dignity I have before that thing managed to take that..."

Sitting up more, he pulled his legs to be in front of him, though he didn't cross his ankles. Drinking deeply from the glass, the liquid was quickly consumed and he pulled an ice cube into his mouth to suck on and chew at for more water.

Zenis nodded.
"Well, you know, all you had to do was ask me and I would've taken it with less struggle and pain in an instant. I'm sure you knew you just had to throw open a window and call for me. I would've been right there for you." He pulled up the green sphere and it widened until the glass became transparent an full. Inside of it, a sickly greenish black fog swirled.

"This is your friendly neighborhood lost soul, the one that took a liking to your innards. I saved it for later."

"Ugh, get it away from me," he winced, not wanting to think about it anymore. He crunched a piece off of his ice cube and melted it with his tongue, allowing the cold, nourishing water to trickle down his throat.

"Pleasurably." The glass gaped open, like a bubble popping in slow motion. Zenis reached inside of it, grabbing the spirit with his hand. His clenched fist lifted to his face and he inhaled deeply. The fog was inhaled through his nose and it vanished.

"So, I guess that I'll be off then. Unless you don't think that you can manage here on your own. Then I'll linger for a bit longer."

"I hate to admit it, but I don't know if I'll be okay just yet. I'm feeling very dizzy and fatigued..." He sighed, crunching the rest of his ice cube and swallowing the melting shards. "Why did you say you didn't want me dead? I'm nothing significant to you."

"Then I will stay," Zenis said gently, taking a seat. He took off his coat and folded it, leaving it on the floor. The blue sphere materialized and then spiraled all the way down over his body. As it did, his clothes were suddenly transformed. And he then was wearing what looked like a clean-cut black, collared shirt and nice blue jeans. His dirty blond hair was styled nicely and his face didn't have smudges on it any longer. His yellow eyes glimmered.

"Well, if you died, my Embryr would be lost to me forever, for one," he stated matter-of-factly. "Secondly...ah...well...I've gone soft and am too attached for my own good. This planet is not good for me, really."

"Attached to what, exactly?" he asked, leaning back on his arm a bit and putting the glass of ice to his lips again, pulling another ice cube into his mouth.

"Attached to you," Zenis said straight-forwardly. "I don't tend to stick around people I exorcise from. I've lingered around you for an abnormally long time and I've developed a small affection."

"I don't see how," he replied, crushing and swallowing this ice cube as well. "All you know about me is that I was possessed and then you saved my life. We've never even really spoken properly before..."

"You have to understand that I am a wayfarer." Zenis gazed out the widow as the blue and green spheres twirled around each other in the air. "I don't put my coat down anywhere for too long. I have to force myself to move along, never settling. For then, I wouldn't want to live. I've lingered here to long for you...so you've become an attachment to me, simple as that."

He turned his head back towards Gavin.
"Tell me your name, I don't know it."

By now he was already sucking on another ice cube, a bulge in his cheek and a look that bordered between boredom and exhaustion about him. "Gavin," he said, the ice cube making his voice sound a little different.

"The White Hawk," Zenis acknowledged. "And I am The Way to Vanaserot, The Pilgrim of Dimensions and the Human Element. Zenis is the abbreviation for 'Zenisthera', meaning 'Highest of Dreams'." He grinned awkwardly. "I like your name, though. It's...proud."

"I've never really felt all that proud; or rather, that I never really had anything to be proud of. I like my name and all, but I never really felt that the meaning fit." He shrugged a little, eating his current ice cube.

"Well, my name is my job, imagine how stupid that is." Zenis shrugged. "If you wouldn't mind, I would like my Embryr back. Mizushi and Zepharot get lonely without it. Hell, I have all eight of the Elemental Manifests, Fire is just one that you can't live without." He pointed up at the ceiling where the red cage was swaying gently.

He glanced up at the cage, thinking for a few minutes in silence. "I have a question..."

"What is it?" Zenis said gently.

"Say for a moment that I might believe it wasn't all just a horrible hallucination and I haven't lost my mind... You said that I had a parasite that was sucking out part of my soul; couldn't it have sucked out whatever was possessing me?"

He put down the glass and stood up on the bed, reaching out to take the little cage into his hand and to sit back down on the bed, looking it over closely.

"Not really," Zenis said. "That would be like trying to force two magnets of the same poles together. Extremely difficult and impossible to maintain." He watched Gavin turn the cage in his hands. "Departed Earth souls the linger in the physical realm can't compare easily to the shards of living souls that have been cast off. There's a distinct difference in their melodies, like an aria compared to a percussion piece. It's difficult."

"But this thing didn't actually hurt me... At least I don't think it did..." He kept watching the parasite inside the cage. "Can't you just release it?"

"There's a delicate philosophy about these," Zenis said to him. "They're not at all evil, they abide by common commands. But if they're moved about unnaturally without the proper path, they can be damaging. It's just a safety precaution, to be honest."

"But it needs to feed off of someone to survive, right?"