Kash had worn himself out with talking. Vax. Percy. Molly. Vex. Pike would happen sooner or later. Talking was exhausting at the best of times but when the one person he most wanted to talk to was the only one he couldn't (well, he could, but she wasn't answering except inside his head), it made him want to be a monk.

Since it wasn't his shift in the clinic, Snow didn't need him in the stables, someone else was minding Trink, and Kash wasn't feeling up to training Molly right now, he'd decided to go for a run. It was something he'd learned here that they didn't do at home. It helped him clear his mind.

So when he jogged near the girls on a parallel path, he wore bright green sweatpants with the Madonna Inn crest at his hip (better green than pink), and carried a t-shirt he'd pulled off rather than marinate in his own sweat. The leather cord he'd stopped wearing daily was bound around his head to keep his sweat-damp hair back, and the length of it lay braided between his shoulder blades.

He was worn out from talking, but the sun and the snatches of Curnen's song felt good on his skin.