“Grace!” Adam cried out as we shuffled into the guy’s common room. “You’re awake!”

“Yeah, thanks to Ryn,” she smiled, glancing sideways at me and lifting our intertwined fingers.

Holding hands had seemed like the easiest way to keep the level of her magic low, so here we were… holding hands. I was struggling with this whole situation on a deep and heartfelt level. The way we were holding hands was more than just how we might do it out of necessity, but we weren’t really talking about it. I mean really, her thumb kept absently brushing mine with so much care that it was making my eyes water.

That brought Adam’s eyebrows up and his eyes down to our hands. “What do you mean?”

Either the buns or the guys had dragged a table and some chairs up, so Grace and I sat down with them, dropping each other’s hands so we could eat. During breakfast, I went on to explain Grace's problem, and how I could mitigate it by absorbing the energy via skin contact. Grace seemed to be perfectly functional otherwise, which meant that after a morning of rest we might be able to continue our journey.

Well, we thought she was fine, until ten minutes into breakfast and she reached for an apple. It was one that had been grown in my grove, or it was… until her magic made itself known again. A small spark of rainbow light, like a miniature coronal mass ejection whipped out with a crack, blowing the apple into little chunks. The tiny explosion sprayed everyone at the table with those chunks of fruit, and we all stopped for a second to stare at it.

“You sure you feel up to travelling?” Troy asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” she nodded, somewhat defensively. “I feel… fine.”

She’d wobbled slightly with that last word, and I took that as my cue to do some proper draining of her powers. I reached over without asking, and lifted her shirt slightly, sliding my hands and bare forearms up her back and stomach. She twitched and straightened as I leaned close and placed my cheek to her neck, head facing away from everyone at the table. I needed as much skin contact as possible after all.

“Oh,” she whispered breathlessly, leaning into the intense skin on skin contact between us. “That’s nice.”

I heard Adam clear his throat with a chuckle and say awkwardly, “I’m sure it is.”

“Shut up,” Grace grumbled. “She’s so nice and cold. It feels like I have a fever and she’s a lovely cold shower. She feels amazing.”

On an incredibly naughty impulse, I shifted my lips to brush at her ear, knowing full well what it would look like to the others, and whispered, “Now which one of us is being compelled to enjoy the touches between us, hmm?”

I felt her answering stutter of breath through my hands and arms, and placed my head back down on her shoulder with a grin, my index finger tracing a slow, soft circle over her spine. She’d been teasing me and testing my self control for weeks now, and with the discovery that she felt something for me, be it sexual or romantic… well I couldn’t resist a little payback.

Troy made a strange, awkward sound, his voice gruff as he said, “Right, so long as you two can… keep that up, do you think we’ll be fine to try and make some miles?”

Shifting my position to look back at him, I nodded. “We might leave a trail of flowers or something behind us though.”

“Uh, what?” Kit blurted, staring between Grace and I with flushed cheeks.

“I’m absorbing all the energy she’d generating and then converting it into growth energy, but there’s no way I could hold the amount she’s making, so instead I’m just constantly radiating the stuff,” I told them. “You might have noticed how there’s some weird new growth around, or the beginnings of some sinks in the bathrooms.”

“Ah, I did notice that,” Kit nodded, looking thoughtfully down at his food. “That’s actually rather useful.”

“It is, I might take my new pet nuke out for a spin soon to grow some of my plants a bit more,” I giggled, getting a grumpy sound from Grace.

“Only if your battery says yes, thank you very much,” she told me, leaning back to glare at me. A glare that was undercut just slightly by the flicker of a smile that was threatening to become a grin.

We held each other’s gazes for probably far longer than necessary, but her eyes were just so entrancing, I couldn’t look away.

“Well, let’s finish breakfast then,” Troy interrupted, and I glanced over to see him very pointedly not looking at us, with Kit doing the same. Adam was grinning at us like an idiot, his eyes sparkling with mirth. Then he wiggled his fuckin’ eyebrows at us. Crap. He was going to add to our suffering with even more of his teasing, I just knew it. Not that Grace and I were doing much to stop that suffering right now.

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Despite our teasing back and forth, Grace did actually agree to walk around my grove with me and help give my plants a boost. My grove was going well, the forest sections I’d planted were thriving under the care of my buns, and my resource fields were looking good too. I could see where the buns had been cutting down the trees I’d set out as lumber too, which was great news. I should check out the other storage room that had all the resources collecting in it.

When I did, I found a whole bunch of hardwood logs stacked up, aging and drying in there. There were also several piles of various fruits and vegetables that had little trails of crumbs leading from them. The bunnies had been snacking. That was fine, they were good little buns. Other materials had been collected too, ready for processing, whenever that could be figured out. Maybe I could sell a bunch of this stuff for tools, or maybe doors for the rooms inside the tree. Preferably before another storm hit us.

When lunch came and went, so did we, walking out into the plains again to continue our journey. The mountains were properly visible now, and my word did they look strange. They reminded me of the mountains from that one area in china, huge pillars of rock everywhere, some of them so large and dizzyingly high that I could have sworn they would fall over at any moment. How could anyone live in this place with the fear of those things falling over onto them?

They weren’t all the same height though, or starting off at the same elevation, because where there weren’t rock pillars, it was canyons. The walls of which were so massive that they had definitely earned the right to be called mountains.

It looked like a nightmare to traverse, and I was already wondering how the hell we were going to make our way through. Because on top of the massive rock spires and sheer canyon walls, the whole thing was covered in what looked like a dense, impenetrable temperate rainforest.

We were still a day or so away, but already we were having discussions about what the hell to do next. None of us were equipped to get through. We might have to find our way to a road before we tried to go in too deep. Privately I was kicking myself for not asking about a route through the mountains. My ignorant city-girl nature was really showing itself right about now.

That night we headed back into the grove and stumbled our way through our bedtime routines. Grace and I had to take very quick baths, because neither of us was comfortable bathing with the other, but she still had to have her energy siphoned off constantly.

I sat in our makeshift bed as I waited for her to finish, staring around at the happily glowing vegetation from last night. I really hoped that it wouldn’t get too out of control. Maybe I should get the buns to clear the room out tomorrow? As pretty as it was, it made the room rather hard to use.

“Ryn!” Grace’s voice came through from what we were calling the girl’s common room outside.

“In here!” I replied, leaning my head on the back of one of the couches, now the side wall of our little bed-fort.

A few moments later and she was stumbling into the room, gasping for air. “Please,” she begged, her eyes unfocused, skin pale and arcing with energy, her expression drawn.

“Shit,” I swore, shuffling towards the foot of the bed and helping to pull her into it.

She slept with a sports bra on while she was with me, so I yanked her top up over her head, then did my own. I knew that I wasn’t wearing anything under that top, but she did not look good right now, and that took priority.

I pulled her on top of me, pressing smooth skin to smooth skin and settling her head down on my shoulder while I tried to maximise skin contact across the rest of her body. I was still in my minimum plant form, and had been for the entire day almost, so arousal wasn’t too much a problem. Well, besides the fact that I was now cradling Grace while topless.

“I’ve got you,” I soothed, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head. “I’ve got you.”

“I feel like I’m on fire,” she whimpered, clinging to me. “Like I’ve just eaten a really spicy pepper, but my whole body is feeling it, not just my tongue.”

“Yeah, I can feel how warm you are,” I said gently, brushing my fingers down the dip of her spine sympathetically. “I’m draining it though, you’ll feel better soon.”

“Thank you,” she said, so quiet it was more of a sigh than real speech.

While I held her, I decided to make a change to my tree that was purely aesthetic. I added glowing flowers to the outside branches, the colours ranging from purple to pink and into blue. If I was going to constantly be exploding with growth energy while I slept, may as well put it to some use.

“Can we sleep like this tonight?” she murmured drowsily into my collarbone. “I’m comfortable and happy.”

“Yes, of course,” I told her, affection welling up and overflowing within me, just like my magic. Holy shit, I cared about her so damned much. How was it even possible to feel this much raw emotion? “Whatever will make you happy, that’s what we’ll do,” I continued, my voice aching with care.

“Blankets,” she grumbled, tightening her hold on me. “I’m cold no— Ryn… are you topless?“

“Yup,” I laughed quietly. “I didn’t exactly have time to put a bra on before tending to you.”

“Okay, put a bra on or something, then blankets,” she said with embarrassment flaming her cheeks, rolling off me as fast as possible.

I watched her valiantly avoid staring at my boobs for a whole three seconds before her eyes gave a quick flick down, then back up again. I just grinned, it was nice having her get embarrassed about seeing my chest. My boobs were pretty great, and plus, the way she was acting was just a very intense and intimate affirmation of my gender. I was a girl, and not just a girl, but a hot girl who was being stared at by another hot girl, and both of us found the other girl hot. If that makes sense...

Deciding to show a little mercy, I pushed myself out of bed and went hunting in my pack for my bra and the blankets, then hopped back into bed. Smiling sleepily, she waited until I was settled in and then tentatively shuffled over to me.

“I can still…?” she asked, whispering hopefully.

My answer was to smoothly pull her down on top of me. “Yes, you can.”