It was an endless slog to the grove; the woodland paths that came after the road were a never-ending twist and twined along the trunks of the old trees. The ground was moist without the late spring sun to wick away the early morning fog, as were the grasses and herbs and whatnot.
Anna complained as I did my best not to laugh or act demeaningly, which was, in my defence, very hard. She was very adorable as a mouse, and I found it hard not to pat her, tickle her, and watch her boggle at me while she attempted to tell me that she didn’t like it at all or squeaked in defiance.
Her actions gave away the truth, even if it was one that she would not admit to. I could tell just from watching her that she enjoyed the attention; I could see it in the movement of her tail and the squeaks my instinct fed to me as joy.
It was a simple joy, just her being acknowledged in a way that brought her a simple pleasure. She enjoyed the attention, even if she didn’t like it on a human level.
It only made her cuter; in that adorable way, tiny things could be adorable.
The simple nature of it didn’t last the entire trip. As she hopped out of the basket, she complained about the entire trip being bumpy. She hurled herself out of it in a squeak and, upon doing so, in a flicker, turned back into her human form.
Just as it had come, it had gone in an instant, with no flash of light or ceremony, just there one moment and gone the next so quickly it felt like blinking. One moment, there was mouse Anna, then Human Anna. She was still wearing her clothes and everything. She landed on all fours and, for a moment, looked back at me, her eyes held wide like a mouse, only for her to blush as she caught herself and stood up straight, brushing invisible dirt from herself.
I moved to scoop her up, but she refused my approach.
“I can walk, Saphine; I don’t want to get hauled around like luggage.”
She sounded a little embarrassed, but it seemed to be about something else, and I could understand the embarrassment. That was the Anna special. She did it all the time when she got affection, but there was something else there that I couldn’t read for my life.
My instinct did not understand it either, so it was no simple animal thing. It was not of beasts but of man, and it was not something I was familiar with spotting. It wasn’t shame or her being upset or anything I had seen.
Instead of picking her up, I walked over to her and offered her my hand, and slowly she took it. She gave me a wiggle that looked like a good wiggle, but I couldn’t understand the look.
We walked, her holding close to me while we walked. Selly took a nap while we trod calmly through the woods, and without her attention, we got to hold one another's hands properly for a while. She stroked my hand gently until the pressure grew familiar. I, too, stroked her hand with my thumb in return; we didn’t compete; we didn’t flirt; we just took in the moment next to each other, the calm of the forest a nice balm.
I felt like an idiot for feeling the way I did at such a simple thing, but it was nice.
I was glad we were on the right side of the grove. The ground here, while damp, did not hold the baleful dark magic taint that existed in the forest beyond. Whatever magic the focus points like Groves did as nodes of the ley lines that ran underfoot beyond my fledgling senses, it was enough to hold it back.
Anna began to notice something as we got closer, a look of confusion and puzzlement overtaking her face. She looked at me, and I could see a question on her lips and the corner of her eyes, only for her to hold it in and save the secret.
She became excited as we got closer, paying attention to what I assumed to be the mana, and as we got closer, the excitement grew until we reached the mouth of the clearing, dense wood that had but a few entrances and exits.
“Close your eyes,” I whispered to her.
She bit her lip but took a deep breath and closed her eyes, gripping onto me tightly, her head laid against my arm.
I gave her a quick walk into the grove, and I felt as if she felt the feeling of the place, the weight of it, in the same way I could feel her grove.
“Give it a look,” I whispered down to her.
She opened her eyes, and over the course of a few moments, she was rendered speechless. Her face took it in. Awe and, familiarity, and wonder spread on her face like a child on the winter solstice, unwrapping presents with the glee only one pure of heart could have.
It was much as I had last seen it, but the effect it had was still fresh, new enough for a second round of wonder on my part.
The grove was just as enchanting, just as magical as prior, with its woodland critters and otherworldly light. The eye trees loomed around, giants that blocked out enough light to give it a mood lighting, while the grass bristled with the attention of nature, its blades peeking out to tickle toes and hide the smallest of woodland critters, mice and more.
It was the picturesque sight of a magical woodland, and at its heart lay the familiar nameless who lay with a court of animals next to them while others lay inside.
I could see a hare hop out the back of the belly plating of one, a small line of bunnies behind her as they made for feasting on the mana-rich grasses.
I returned to looking at Anna’s surprised shock, the wonder of childhood left behind in her echoing in her eyes, and I leaned over and gave her a peck on the head, not speaking a word, as if my speech would break the magic over the moment, and bring her back to reality.
I snuck my hand into the basket to pull out a cloth for us to lay down on. I bumped Selly, but she must have been out cold because she didn’t even budge. Holding the basket in the crook of my arm and the cloth in the same hand, I waited for Anna to come back down from her gaping, and once I did, I got her to pick out a spot to set up.
I tossed open the blanket and sat down, opening up the basket to take out some of the food.
Anna sat down, and then lay back, hands crossing over her stomach, staring up at the canopy, rays of light drifting through and down onto us.
“So, what do you think? I would say it's suitable astounding for a picnic.”
“It’s… It’s beautiful…” she said, still astounded by the glade.
I fetched a sandwich and passed it into her hands, her fingers moving to grasp first the sandwich, then the hand that proffered it to her. I followed the pull of her arm until she had pulled me all the way over to her, then to her lap, where she got me to rest my head.
Her legs were soft beneath my head, and I kept my eyes up instead of taking in Anna's body from an angle of her lap. Her dress wrinkled below my head, and her hand came down to my hair, her fingers running through stands and about the base of my ears; the short hair and the feeling of newness let me relax in her lap, the food forgotten.
“Thank you, Saphine… It’s beautiful. Thank you for bringing me here,” she said softly. “I didn’t know what to expect, but this is far and above what I thought. So much so that I feel I should apologize. I was a bit dismissive earlier, and I was prickly about it on the way here, and I’m sorry for that.”
She had an openness in her voice and about her that made her feel chastened to me.
“That’s ok, Anna. I kept it from you, and everyone needs some alone time. I’ve been leaning into your time, and you were finally getting some only for me to whisk you away,” I told her then as an afterthought to not be rude about it, “and I accept your apology.”
As far as I was concerned, Anna was entitled to want to stay and paint; her being a bit dismissive was no big deal to me. Everyone was entitled to some alone time, even if they were close. The fact is I had been taking all of hers up with myself.
“What did I ever do to deserve you?” she asked after she let out a chuckle that was not so much humour as pained, like a dying soldier laughing at their mortal wound.
The audacity of her words was like a blow to my head and left me dazed and confused.
“You always excuse me my shortcomings, always turning the other cheek… If I didn’t know you better, I would think you were demeaning me, but you’re not. You just hear something and say that it makes perfect sense and accept it.” she said, adding to my confusion, “I won’t lie; it drives me a little mad how you can just see and accept something. I don’t know how you do it. It’s like everything makes sense, even if you don’t understand it at all.”
“I’m… Sorry?” I said, confused enough that I said it as a question instead of as a statement.
That got her to smile, a real smile. I could tell by the way it lit up her face. Blessedly, she put a finger to my lips to stop me from saying something dumb.
“None of that, Saphine. You get me to do stuff… you lead, you act, and you take care of me and my needs. But I’m the one who takes care of you and your needs… including getting you to open up and, as I am becoming aware of quite quickly, your tendency to curl back up. Is that something you would agree with?” she asked.
I had the feeling that she meant me to move my head in agreement or denial, but I said, “Yes?” a question that even muffled made me want to smash my forehead with my palm.
“Good. You don’t need to curl back up then, no need to close yourself off or apologize to me for who you are, ok,” she told me, cupping my cheek.
I nodded, not chastened but certainly close to it.
She sat up at my agreement, making her chest move in a way that drew my eye and made me blush like a dolt.
Don’t notice, don’t-
She noticed.
“Well, look at that. Were you staring at my womanly assets? Well, at least I know you're still interested in that, even if you have your hangups… Now then, I’ve noticed you’re tenser, more than you usually are. What has you in a tissy?” she asked, removing her finger from my lips.
There were so many things, too many things that I could tell her.
I could start with the hair, or the cat, or the monster. I could remark on my fears about bringing her into fights, or my hangups, or a bit about her assets and my internal struggle. I had a million things my stupid mouth could spew out like a sewage pipe from every fold of my mind.
But I held them back; instead, I asked her tenuously, “What do you see in me? Why me? You could probably achieve better… even if it's hard to find someone else. So why settle for me?”
She looked at me, reading the lines of my face, and a flush, not of embarrassment but a flush nonetheless, spread across her cheeks.
“Where to even start?” she asked herself, “You are attractive; you are taller than me and have big, strong arms to hold me. You’re a bit exotic with your ears and eyes and nose; for some, that might be enough… But you make me feel safe and secure; you make me feel understood, too. You always seem to know how to take care of my needs, including the ones I didn’t even know I had. You are safe, and that’s worth a thousand promises… And that’s why I’m attracted to you, purely physically and emotionally attached. But then there's why I like you, and… And why I think I love you too. All bound together. It's hard to pick one reason.”
She said it, and I shuddered a little as an instinctive sliver of fear bit into the back of my mind. My instinct reared up, raising its head and nipping at it, and my feelings began to descend into anarchy, my mind warring with itself. My instinctive fear of love warred with how I cared about Anna.
Anna reached out and lay her hands on my cheeks, looking me in the eye. I could hide nothing from her where I lay in her lap, the vulnerability of the position breaking down the barrier of thick skin. I had to hold out the world and hold in my pain. It was carefully kept and maintained, but it was weak, and Anna leaning down to kiss me was all it took to punch through it like a great [Knights] lance. To reveal the boiling mass of pain to the light.
I could feel tears in the corners of my eyes while Anna's lips were pressed to mine for a few moments, and then she drew back and stared into my eyes and saw something in them.
“I…” I tried to say, “I can’t say I get it,” I told her before she could ask me what was wrong...
She did not shy away, she did not ask me what was wrong, she just nodded, accepting it.
“Then let's talk about it if you’re up for that. I’ve leaned on you, and I would have it so that you lean on me. That’s how a relationship works… You were holding back your instincts, and now you are free to show them. I want to know you... All of you, even whatever is eating you up inside. You’re obviously feeling something, so let me take some of that weight, ok?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t bring the words out. They all sounded terrible in my head.
What was I going to say? I don’t love you? I don’t know if I love you. Would I insult her sense of taste if I dumped on myself? If I skipped that, what would I say? I’m afraid you don’t love me and want things from me? That wasn’t Anna, and I knew it. None of them were right, and none of them were wrong, but each was a heavy load of things I didn’t know if I could plant on Anna.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The big thing that held me from saying those words felt like lead weights around my heart. I didn’t even know if, at the moment, I could say love without bursting into tears because of the tumultuous tempest of my mind.
But if I couldn’t say that, what would I say? What could I say?
I opened my mouth like a fish, and my mouth moved, pushed by my instinct to tell her something, and my mind fished out an answer to the conversation at hand.
“I can’t say I get it… what you see in me. You talk about it like I’m great, but I just can’t see it. I’m not all that good, I guess. I’ve never… It just makes me think I’m going to disappoint you…” I told her, managing to hold in the worst of my tears, “And I don’t like the idea of leading you on with things that you think are worth liking about me when I’m a waste of time.”
Anna looked at me then, looked at me, and she saw something, I could see she saw something. It was not with a skill nor feat of magic; she did not see in me something that worried her but saw something. It was the kind of look when you solved a puzzle, connecting the dots.
She gained a look of calculation in her eyes before I could see a sliver of resolve flash in her.
“And what about you, makes you think you would be a waste of my time?” she asked.
It hurt to think about myself, hurt to think about all my terrible features she was somehow unaware of. It worried me. It worried me greatly that she would know of my worst and turn away from me, leave me.
But I had felt that way about my instinct hadn’t I? Felt that it was dangerous and disgraceful? And she accepted it, welcomed it.
“She did,” my instinct pushed at me, explaining something complex and yet limited. I had no doubt I had missed the full extent of its thoughts as it continued. It did not speak in words but confused animalistic metaphor and image, but I could understand it somewhat. “Speak your words, tear them from yourself, and show her them in the light of day. She has never turned her back on us,” it thought.
“I’m… I’m not all that great at all that much.” I said, feeling like opening a floodgate, “I can shovel or tend a plant, but I can’t do much beyond that. I have no family and nothing to my name to fall back on. I’m not smart; I have never been; I can barely do my math, read and write, and I have a terrible memory. I’m fidgety and can barely sit still long enough to carry a conversation, and I’m so bad at that that it might be a blessing in disguise. I’m not good with much, and I don’t have many useful skills... Hells, I’m not even all that good at cooking or cleaning. I’ve never succeeded in anything I’ve tried to do. I’m just a useless idiot with a shovel who has never amounted to anything and probably never will, and I don’t think it’s the shovel you want. I’m not the kind of girl you can bring home and not get nagged about bringing me, I can’t even help you with saving the valley… I don’t know how. I’m a waste of breath most of the time, and it kills me inside knowing that someone as useless as me is allowed to leech off of you. I’m not even all that good-looking, I’m not tall for a deer fox, I’m a runt-”
Anna flicked my ear, the suddenness of it so jarring that it cut me off, instinctually shutting my mouth. I winced, knowing I had been blabbing, drawing it out while Anna held me. I focused back on the situation, back on Anna, and took her in. Her displeasure was notable, and it hurt. She looked at me, brows furrowed like I was a problem now.
“Saphine… do you… Do you hate yourself?” she asked me, her voice not matching her face.
I could feel the tears start up while she got it in one.
“It’s hard not to…” I told her, sniffing as I watched her take me in, “When you’re just smart enough to know you’re a waste of space,”
“Well…” she told me simply, “I’m sorry to say that you are an idiot… a blind, def, stupid girl. You are one of the dumbest people I know. The fact that you can’t see with all your wisdom that you are so uncharitable is astounding,” she told me.
Her words hurt, hurt like a punch to the gut, a solid blow that would wind me if they were anything but words. And yet they hurt in a way that I could agree with; the part of me that believed she needed to know and understand my worthlessness agreed… until she called me uncharitable.
“Wha-” I tried to say, only for her to shush me and wipe away my tear-blurred eyes.
“It's my time to talk; you’ve said your piece, so now it's time to say mine.” She told me, “Saphine, you are a simpleton, a truly unbelievable dumbass if you think any of those things are true or bother me. Do you think I care where you come from? Because I don’t. I don’t care that we can’t rely on you having a rich family or a family at all. I don’t rely on mine, and I haven’t for a decade. I will be your family if you will be mine. I don’t care that you have a bad memory or fidget or have problems holding conversations or that you think so little of yourself that you would turn to self-slander. I think the world of you, and I will not stand for it and fight you on every point, die on every hill until you see it,” She told me.
She threw up her hands, working herself up to boiling, “I like your food! And you clean just fine, what were you expecting, the ability to cook the best food? To take care of the home? You're not a [Cook] or a [Maid]. The idea that you might not have useful skills is utter horseshit. Your skills are no better or worse than anyone else's, and if you mean to say you have no ability to do things beyond them, that is also horseshit. Only a truly idiotic person could have watched you for months on end, watch you while you learn magic from scratch, without years of tutoring, and see your ability as anything less than exemplary!” she shouted before leaning down to me, tears rolling down my cheeks.
She wiped my eyes clean a second time while I watched her, utterly confused. My heart hurt, but not in a bad way, my stomach felt like I had swallowed a butterfly, multiplying inside of me. Her face leaned down in close enough to kiss, and she said, “You're not just an idiot. You're my idiot. And I’m not going to stop loving you because you feel you're useless or don’t know how to solve a problem that’s been brewing for centuries, I will love you until you learn to love yourself.”
I sniffed, the tears annoying me, blurring her face. “I don’t… I don’t know if I’m worthy of it,” I told her.
She takes it in and… laughs, pulling me up out of her lap to hold me from behind. I can feel the flutter of her lungs through my back as she presses herself around me, legs locking around my front. Her arms reach around, and she takes my hands in hers, her smaller fingers wrapping around my own.
“Worthy has nothing to do with love, Saphine. Love just is. I don’t care about if you’re worthy… I care about you, and I’m going to keep caring about you,” she told me, kissing the back of my head.
My head span, self-loathing and hatred of myself tried to spark back to life, searching for anything that they could catch. Squirming until it grabbed ahold of my great fear.
“I don’t know what love is… It scares me. What if I don’t love you? What if I take and take and am never ready?” I asked her, “What if I’m just like my dad or worse?”
She laughed again, not unkindly and snuggled me, resting her head on the back of my shoulder, her hands guiding mine as she hugged me from behind, holding me still from behind as if she could hold me back from running.
“If you don’t love me, you don’t love me, but you certainly seem to care for me, and that’s all I need. I don’t need you to know if you love me. You don’t know you love something, it is not a fact. It is not a formula you can observe and check with. Love is a feeling, and if you feel it, you feel it, and if you don’t, you don’t. As it stands now, the only thing you don’t take care of that I need is something that I can take care of myself, and you would have to work up the nerve to do that. As for your father, you would have to both literally and metaphorically have a hefty pair of balls to seduce and lie to me, put a baby in my belly, and still have enough to run away. I’m not saying I don’t think you have enough courage to get in my small clothes. I just doubt you have the equipment for the rest of it.”
Her words made me flush with warmth while simultaneously choking the life out of my fear. My loathing grasped at Anna's desires, and I said, “I can’t give you a kid. I know you want one, but I can’t give you that.”
Anna leaned back, pulling me back with her until we lay on the ground, our arms still wrapped around my waist, her legs locked with mine as she quietly said, “We can adopt. I would love a kid of my own, but I don’t need to have one. I’ve seen my mother give birth, and I could do without it, for all the joy of watching a baby open its eyes for the first time would bring me.”
“Your parents would never agree to us being married or having a life together,” I told her.
“My parents have no right to tell me how to spend my life, who to live with, or who or how to love.”
The word still sent shivers through me, cold spikes of dread next to fluttering. I started to tire of the crying, tire of the cold fear; my body sagged, and Anna rolled me over on the cloth until we were on our sides. I curled in on myself, and Anna spoke first, cupped around me.
“What has you like this? In so much pain? What kicked this off?” She asked, burrowing into me sure as a knife, straight to the heart of the matter.
“I stopped taking care of myself when my mom died…” I told her, sniffing again, “I haven't cut my hair since… since she died,” I told her, tears running over the bridge of my nose.
She untangled herself, moving with all the liquid grace she must have used to tangle with me while asleep, and tugged at me. I rolled over and into her chest, and she held me there in the same way I had done for her.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Saphine; if she was anything like you, she must have been one hell of a woman.”
She held me there, against her chest, and I cried as her heartbeat in my ears, and my nose picked up my scent on her until my heart started to calm, and the self-loathing puttered out. Anna murmured to me throughout, humming in a calm tone and brushing her fingers through my hair and along my ears. Relaxing me.
By the time I was done, I was tuckered out.
I started to drift out, Anna whispering, “There there, Saphy… There there… Sleep tight.”
***
I woke up with my back in the dark water of my soul, having fallen asleep after crying into Anna.
Despite my prior state, I felt comparatively normal. I had literally cried myself to sleep holding Anna, but through it, I had burned out the worst of the feelings. Strangely, instead of being hollowed by it, I felt… Full. Whole, or more whole, and content in a way I had never felt before, as if I had been filled back up after I spilled my guts to her, carefully packed back in, with a little extra to spare.
My heart tingled, a phantom feeling.
I sat up, ignoring the aurora of light above me, and looked around. I didn’t want to level up, and I didn’t want to stand around; I wanted to get back to Anna.
Sophy was there, far larger than I expected her to be, with wiggly hands on her hips. She looked six months pregnant.
“Why are you… No, don’t tell me; I don’t want to know why you have a baby bump. I need to wake up! I’m on a date!”
“I know; I’ve been vicariously watching you for entertainment while I digest this Anamid,” she told me, waddling over.
“What happened?” I asked her, staring at the bump.
“Hmm? You fell asleep after crying your eyes out. You’ve been out for ten minutes. Selly woke up, and she’s talking with Anna; they’re going to give you a few more minutes before they start eating.”
“I meant with the… the… Anamid? Are you going to have a baby?”
She raised her eyebrows, which was probably incredibly hard for someone with no eyebrows, and said, “No, it's an Anamid, it's basically a bunch of skills and classes in a condensed form, looped like a rope. We share them with each other, remember the thing with the guy I was talking about? He left this behind.”
Okay… I should not have asked.
“Shure… so uh… congratulations? How do I wake up?”
“You wake up by not backsliding, learning to love yourself and most importantly, going back down into the essence.”
I looked down into my essence, giving it a little hop, and looked back up at her.
“Try diving into it headfirst; it's not solid; it's your soul. I’m just going to go, by the way. It's obvious you don’t want to level up.”
She turned and walked out, there one moment and gone the next, like she had walked beyond a curtain.
I looked down at the dark and shrugged before diving headfirst into the dark. I splat headfirst into the liquid like a normal floor.
I muttered darkly to myself, and I hoped I would get out before they ate everything.
***
I did not get out before they started eating, but they had left some for me. Something I noted about waking up was that it was like I had restarted. I didn’t feel like I knew I should, with my puffy eyes. I felt weirdly fresh.
After stretching, I went over to Anna, slipped in behind her, and said, “Thank you” while hugging her from behind.
Selly waved, shooting off towards the Nameless.
She leaned forward, and I did so with her, my chest pressed to the back of her neck while she retrieved a sandwich with a tiny wooden toothpick holding it together.
“Sandwich?” She asked before following it up with, “By the way, if you keep pressing yourself up to me like that, I might get a little cross with you.”
I felt warm while I grabbed the sandwich, and I was glad she couldn’t see it; freshness aside, I had bawled my eyes out to her; my pride, what little I had, was a bit bruised.
“So…” she asked, letting go of the morsel, “are you feeling better?”
“I… I am, actually. I can’t believe I fell asleep, though,” I told her.
“That’s good to hear, a good cry is one that leaves you feeling better. I would hate to have pushed you into admitting all of that, only for you to feel like garbage after.”
I felt a hint of mirth. Of course, Anna would have a metric on what a good or bad cry was.
I paused and felt the need to lean into her, but I resisted it; all that would do was push her over. Instead, I put the sandwich down and wrapped my arms around her.
“Thanks… For that,” I told her.
“Nothing to it, partner,” she said, “I know you're not just going to stop hating yourself… so do you want to swap what you hate about yourself? If you think that would help, that is.”
I hadn’t. There was a ball of self-loathing still sitting in my chest, a cancer that would remain with me until I changed. But it was lighter.
It felt like my shoulders were lighter, having shown it as if by bringing it up, I had left a weight behind. I felt closer to her, like the thick skin had kept me distant, the difference between touching up against one another skin to skin and hands pressing against a pane of glass.
“I… I don’t feel like that would be productive, no. But thank you for being willing to listen. About what I said… About not knowing if I love you…” I said.
“It’s fine, Saphine,” she told me, reaching her hand down to lie on my thigh, “Love is a feeling, and I’m willing to spend as long as I need next to you for you to find out if you love me.”
“But… But you want to… You know,” told her.
She sighed, “Yes, Saphine. It’s part of being Human that I would like to get into your undergarments, but it’s not like I’m beholden to you to take care of my urges. You haven’t even noticed when I do it.”
I could feel my face heat so much Anna could probably feel it.
“I… How do you… you know,” I asked her.
I could see her ears flushing, and her fingers fidgeted on my thigh.
“I… Well, the top drawer of my dresser has a magical staff in it, if you know what I mean.”
I hadn’t even known. I hadn’t even smelled it on her. She had to have known that, though; she had bought soap with a nice smell when all her old soap had a strong, overpowering fragrance.
Holy cow, she’s been doing a whole lot of stuff for a long time. That was… Gods, months ago, she changed soap.
In the midst of my lewd epiphany over Anna and her magic wand, me and her awkwardly and with a sudden awareness of ourselves, both wiggled in embarrassment over our proximity.
“You know you don’t have to… hide your scent,” I told her before immediately wanting to curl into a ball and die of embarrassment.
I could feel Anna radiate heat, but to my horror, she managed to squeak out, “I… I’ll take it under advisement.”
Dear god of romance, please kill me and end my suffering. I thought. I got no reply, but I did get the feeling that I had been heard, which just made everything worse.
I let out a chuckle.
“Oh no, I just sent a prayer to the god of romance,” I told her.
“You what? How? I didn’t even know there was a god for that,” Anna asked, turning her red face to look at me.
“I don’t know, it just does. I think it’s because I’m a [Saint of Death], and I didn’t know they existed either,” I told her.
I held her gaze for a moment, and the conversation lulled as we remembered that we were both still embarrassed.
“Shall we eat?” Anna suggested.
“Let's,” I told her too quickly. I shied back, letting go of Anna and moved to sit next to her before picking up my sandwich.
We stayed in the clearing for another hour, eating, making small talk, big talk and holding one another. There was a draw I felt to her, a magnetism that, while not missing, had been strengthened throughout our time here. I felt physically drawn to her, as if my place in the universe was right next to her, an arm around her.
It was my instinct, I knew. She had claimed me as hers, just as I had claimed her as mine. I didn’t think Anna understood what she had done, but I was too afraid to bring it up. It was something lovers did, and love was still scary, even if lessened by Anna's confrontation.
Her scent, all over me from when she held me as I cried into her, soothed me when I was next to her because it soothed my instinct. It acted as a balance, something that kept me grounded.
I was a little worried by it, my instinct wanting to stand next to her like a faithful hound, but I ultimately was in control of myself.
It had been a good day. I had shed some of the pain… Even if it wasn’t gone, it had been lessened, excised in part through my talk with Anna and part through the balance of a mate accepting me as hers.
It was good that I ended the day on a good note because after making the winding trek back, there was the smell of smoke in the air as we made our way down the old road and back to the edge of the tree line. A faint orange light was visible through the trees, even in the recent set, not quite dark night. We came out of the tree line on the old road and stopped, staring in horror as we saw New Moarn on fire.