“Could you express mana into me again?”
Kilniara blushed a brilliant red again and slapped him on his chest, “You… you are … so horny!”
Joe laughed freely at this and shook his head before continuing, “No. I just want to practice feeling the intentions as you said.”
This brought a different embarrassment but she nodded and mana flowed through him, but more slowly and controlled than what she’d done this morning. Again, he shuddered at the feeling suffusing his entirety before taking a deep calming breath and closing his eyes to feel her mana. He soon quickly noticed foreign but easily identifiable emotions seeming to emanate from the mana. Love. Desire. True concern for me. Hints of worry… about what I’ll find. Joe smiled at the last before returning to his inspection. A hint… of selfish… Joe felt himself flinch a bit at the mercenary feeling he was getting and quickly delved back into it. A hint of selfish desire for her own future. To use him for her gain. To … The emotions quickly swirled and her love washed over that emotion in a massive wave, smothering it, but not hiding it from him. He took a moment to feel it again and realized that she was revealing her deepest and honest heart, without concern for what he would find. She truly did love him, but seemed to still understand the very pragmatic demands reality placed on people.
When he found this, he actually felt a bit revolted, unpleasant rejection of such mercenary expectations of love and he shuddered but calmed himself quickly. He’d already experienced this before, but usually in his friendships. The reality was very few could understand true unconditional love and it seemed she likely had never known of it. Joe felt himself caught in a quandary before finally sighing and knowing exactly what he had to do. No one could understand the truth of unconditional love until they experienced it themselves. Time to practice what I want in return then, I guess.
Even with that understanding, the moment still trapped him in fear of what she would do or how she would react, but replied to his own fear by simply bathing in her deep love already for him. He could only hope that she would respond in kind. Should I just… no… better explain a bit first, maybe?
“Kilniara. I’m honored, incredibly, for your love for me. And I know you have incredibly deep feelings for me. But I hope you understand that amongst my people, the deepest and purest form of love… Well, it is incredibly rare. Truly. Almost impossible to find, but many do find it. It takes much effort and work. And… well… I believe… I hope we may have this love… or may be able to grow this love. Please, sense my mana and feel my love. This… I wish for this in my lover. Is this… can… will…” Joe paused and took a deep breath before continuing, “I believe you may possibly be able to offer a similar love. Only it will be difficult for you to learn and to do. I hope that … Would you be willing to at least try?”
Kilniara looked at him with some confusion and worry, her embarrassment and happiness dropping rapidly before she nodded quickly, “Joe… I…” worry rapidly overcame her speech and she found herself unable to continue.
“Don’t worry. Please just… feel. You will understand more, I think, if I can show you. The feelings will be here now, but you will see over the next months and years, if you are willing to learn and grow with me.”
Kilniara calmed with his proclamation of the lengthy time still to be had in the relationship before she nodded and he smiled.
“OK. Just… just feel.”
Joe turned their embrace so that he was looking out over the field of goblins, keeping an eye out for a possible attack before he unleashed his mana and embedded it with every example he could think of in loving another without worry, concern, expectation, or demands. He tinged that with the understanding that relationships needed work, of course, but the love and promise of support was permanent and would never be withdrawn. His love was hers, without price.
* * *
As master began explaining his expectations and speaking of love, her heart fluttered ever more powerfully until it quickly calmed as she realized that he was asking of her something that she was somehow not giving him. Her love for him was overwhelming to her and she could not understand what more he could want. He was a good man and would care for her well. There would be little reason to seek another and even less reason to be dissatisfied with their relationship. In return, she would give her all to him. And she had made clear in her expression of love exactly that so that he could practice parsing intention.
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But when Joe opened his intent to her, his mana suffused with it so deeply that it overwhelmed her more than she’d ever experienced before, she shuddered in his embrace. The promise of protection, love, and genuine love; permanent and never to be withdrawn for any reason. The promise to be by her side regardless of her health, worry, wealth, greatness, or absolute poverty and nothingness. He would never discard her for the entirety of her life; a promise without end or measure. The absoluteness of this love was tempered by the understanding that both were required to do this, and put forth the effort equal to the love they felt for one another, love as an emotion proven by love as action in all they did.
She shuddered under the overwhelming meaning and beauty of that life, but was bowed under the utter terror that such complete surrender would demand of her. To surrender to another so completely … the emotion pulled at her heart so temptingly, yet terrified her in equal measure. To not have to worry ever, but to be so completely under the control of another.
The desire warred with her fear but the emotion of his love for her was so deep she could not meaningfully reply and struggled to be coherent with her words. Unable to meaningfully question, she resorted to replying in kind, expressing mana in return to him laden with absolute desire for him but wrapped in and around by a fear and worry so deep she could not freely reply or accept his love or return such pure love.
Even as her mana seeped into him, his love for her remained unchanged, and even more so replied in kind, offering an even deeper promise against abandonment, rejection, or bitterness; a promise to maintain his love, pure and untainted, permanent without end until his death. This promise and love reinforced and grew upon his earlier original release of intent, but had patience and acceptance of her need to grow and develop. A promise that this patience and acceptance was without end as she continued in her growth to learn, develop, and come into her own unconditional love for him.
She shuddered at his response, his love for her soon overwhelmed by her desire and love for him. It burdened her mana intent, returned to him, and he quickly accepted it and replied back with a teasing highlight of where he found her protected concern and hidden intent and expectations for him. Even as she felt her own love carefully wrapped around her own desire for wealth, prestige, fame, and dozens of other less meaningful but still existing motivations, shame rapidly tinged her mana. She found herself bending under the weight of her own tainted love and shame collapsed her into herself but found herself quickly wrapped in Joe’s endless love in the intent of his mana, tying her up and wrapping her in complete acceptance and understanding of the need to develop and grow.
Her shame fell, and Joe replied with his own selfish desires, acknowledging their existence but rejecting their power, showing her that she was not required to somehow remove such honest emotions and achieve an impossible perfection, but simply acknowledge and guard against them while living her life with every intention to do so without these emotions controlling her and to guard every action and emotion from that moment on from these inappropriate actions and selfishness. This complete openness he promised her, however, rapidly proved to become guarded as he revealed more and more people in their lives, promising that caution was wise for all others, but between them, he desired an openness so complete and revelatory that she became immediately embarrassed at the realization that he wished to know her so completely. That embarrassment quickly disappeared when he promised her she could know him in the same way.
Worry vanished, and her mana washed through him with as pure love as she could for Joe, and she felt him shudder in his arms in that moment as his love reflected hers. The moment was so fleeting, gone in a blink of an eye, but she was able to, if only a moment, reply in kind. And his response was so pure and joyous she found herself addicted to trying to find it again.
Their mana naturally stopped flowing as they stepped back from one another, Kilniara looking up at him in awe and wonder at such a purity of love even as Joe beamed down at her in joy that she, at least for a moment, appeared to feel the same for him. She breathed deeply a few times even as Joe seemed to stand steady, rock like in the midst of such an amazing revelation of pure relationship.
“Your people live like this?!” She asked in shocked wonder.
Joe laughed heartily, deeply, and shook his head before replying, “I wish. Very, very few are lucky enough to find this, but there are some. Often, they are normal and small people living in simple places doing simple things and enjoying their time with one another as the other is their pure joy. They do not desire other things greater than their love. But, it is rare.”
“But known.”
“Known, desired for, described regularly in our tales and stories, and taught to us from a young age, with some… stupidity and … well, let’s just say sometimes they put love so high on a pedestal they forget that marriage takes work, effort, and diligence.”
“But that work and diligence are more than worth it if you truly love one another like this.”
Joe nodded, saying nothing, but smiling deeply in response.
Kilniara smiled at him in response as well before the smile faded and she sighed, “It will be hard for me.”
“Really? Cause you got it there for a couple moments.”
“But you had it so easily right from the beginning.”
Joe laughed and shook his head, “Wait till you piss me off one day.”
Her eyes rose in shock at this before she squinted, “You promised it was permanent!”
“It will be till the day I die, but I did not say that you couldn’t make me angry or that I couldn’t be in a bad mood.”
She thought for a bit before she giggled and nodded.
Joe smiled in reply, “You must become angry at your brother sometimes, even if he is your brother. Angry enough to do some pretty horrible things to him.”
* * *