"Winny, dude, you all right? We can chill for a bit" is what this unassuming, overachieving, prettykit geology student of a mere 12 years transmits.
Winn mindsighs in response without looking up, then continues with a slight blush and vulnerability in his words "Yes, thank you Theron. I appreciate your understanding of my elderly ailments" as he moves without hurry to raise himself from the cold stone slate beneath, oblivious to the offered helping hand.
As Winn finishes his transmission he is struck by a parallel Light refraction reminding him of the mouthtalkers, he could hardly imagine what it must be like to have to use his eating maw for such a sophisticated and intimate act as speaking to another person. Of course it had been those rabbit magicians who revealed to him the knowledge of a form taken by Life in the Pearl Before. Those utterly repulsive but seemingly organized intelligent forms that ate and spoke from the same orifice and could only manage a crude approximation of less than a single ounce of the sacred understanding that so readily pours from one mind into another in this Pearl lovingly strung upon Mother's necklace.
And while he is thinking about that, Theon had begun quickly unfastening all the various barriers that exist between him and Winn and their physical bodies. Winn has trust in his calculation but the limited growth of his thin iridescent fur had not felt like it did much against the chill of this cold windswept stone trail. Given his pathetic fur situation and that he was forced to wear several of the heavier layers that otherwise would have been with his things on the supplying vessel, Winn is surely carrying a heavy weight. Thankfully his pair is here to relieve him of some of that burden with his dependable strengths.
As this everbright student finishes unbuttoning that last button, Theon then slips his hands inside the shell of undone clothing and around Winn's shorter slender frame. He pulls the senior student up into a firm hug that lifts him a little off the ground. The fur-to-fur contact sends a healing warmth though Winn's coldswept body. It helps him feel a little less like death's hands are digging into his thin shoulders. His collaborations with the rabbit magicians left him with a sense that not all of him was there. His once strong and powerful legs that once let him escape into new, surreal forms of regret had gradually atrophied while he had been in what he may uncharitably call the Witch's grasp. This is to say, Winn is tired and cold and wearing far too many colorful coats and in the throws of exhaustion he finds his need for embrace being fulfilled by his pair. His mind and body gradually slip into warm peace.
"Ah, how's that Winny?" Theon queries as he readjusts to pull Winn up and deeper into his arms and then with that interminable confidence he continues "Just let me know when you're good!"
Oh, Mother if he could just hold me right now forever is what Winn did not quite intend to think but it is in the general direction. While he and Theon got on quite well together, Winn had been unable to maintain much of a persisting emotional attachment to his younger academic pair. The warmth he felt is of routine in this ritual exchange of Light that all people in this Pearl are born needing. It is of course nice to do it with someone who anticipates and accepts his eccentricities and has such firm capable arms to pick up this wiry body without much effort. Goodness, what Winn is trying to think is how he is not continuously attached to much outside of his mind even while he is actually inside of his body. The greatest service that Theon provides is in being the calm person to explain to others that it is completely normal for this frail, pale jackalope to occasionally go mute, limp, and have Light burst forth from his dark, elongated eyes. It is hard for Winn to not dread the first time that this would happen in front of new people in a new place, but for now everything is ok. Theon is holding him close.
The rustle of their twin topologically improbable strawhats that effortlessly slide around antlers and large ears and leave them cutely displayed through the hat prompts Winn to sparkle fully back to his senses and to convey convincingly "Thank you, I'm good Theron. Oh Mother, I mean Theon. I'm sorry kit, I don't know why I keep saying it wrong." Winn almost believes himself, though he knows that it isn't like he could be having miscommunication with his physical body like those baffling Before people who moved their maws grotesquely to merely mimic Mother's greatest gift. Winn is getting it wrong because part of himself that names pass through occasionally drifts through storms of unorganized and half assembled knowledge. Winn is also getting it wrong because Theron is the name belonging to those fangs who had pierced into his heart and ripped it free of its cage.
Winn attempts to access that first day of his second 3rd year but the fragment remains elusive. Nevertheless, he has faith in that former self who surely saw more than just a name back when he first sat down next to Theon in the auditorium. It had been historically rare for Winn to try to connect with anyone of his own volition. Winn had been one to wait to be sought out for pairing at the beginning of those first 2 years of university that he did manage to complete and is the mechanism by which he gained so many bewilderingly strange and rare experiences to be put off by vague anxieties any longer in finding the what he and the people around him need from each other. Just as well, Theon found Winn utterly adorable. This waifish antler twink hobbles up all the steps to the top of the auditorium just to chat him up and then rambles about Life and Light and something about how Love is how it all works. Whatever it was, at the time Theon main concern had been that Winn is just too precious to let anyone else pair with him first.
