The Elegy & Storm

[Seydon of Arda]

As if on cue, to lend an emphasis to her soft words, the decking beneath their naked feet shook slightly. Buffers installed throughout the walling, offering sound cancelling, muffled the roar of an overhead thunderclap. Seroth paused regardless, in the midst of gently pouring a thimble's worth of vanilla into a wide cup of Falleenine alabastor ceramic. Trace fogs of whitened steam rose, trailing the strong, acrid pungence of somewhat strong caff. 'Acrid' to the lad, though. He'd never developed a taste for coffees and teas were an invalid taste on his coarser taste-buds. Heat shot up through his cheeks while he glanced down to Rosa. Had she been appreciative of his 'coarser taste-buds' during the nights... exercises? The lad fought with his inner habits of shyness, calming speckles of drifting juvenile excitement. He recalled Rosa had more empathetic abilities. Partially reflexive and intentional. He just wanted her to feel as she wished, without his state being a factor. The press of her breast to his shoulder blade brought the beat of her heart. Seroth sighed softly, and pitched his neck back to nuzzle his cheek to her brow.

"I... I had not meant to be so... I had never..." The lad tripped over his wording. "You were so encouraging... Reciprocating... I have never been with a woman before... I did not wish to leave you with a bad impression... I... I can be strong, when I need to be, Rosa..."

Swiftly, yet somehow managing to not stir a drop over the cup's lid, he turned and laid the small tea-plate into Rosa's small palms and closed her fingers round the handle. Roughened callouses touched to velvet flesh. Seroth blinked as a strike of electric-fire bore up behind his eyes and warmed down to his belly. ...Becoming painfully aware of his state of undress. Coughing, grinning like a little fool, he bade her sit down with him by a breakfast table. Rumps fell into plush chairing. The hull cadenced the patter of hard rainfall; a light throb of distantly roaring sound. Seroth knew the storm would end by morning, without fail. Not out of knowledge of broadcasted weather, but... a twinge in the back of his thoughts said so. He turned those thoughts to Rosa, and felt the glow of her face entrance him. "You are devilish, you know... And bold. Though I suppose boldness and beauty go hand in hand, when all is right..."

 

[Rosa Gunn]

A low chuckle escaped her as Seroth stumbled over his words and she bit her lower lips watching him carefully as he handed her the caff. He was so gentle and shy at times, yet he had moments of boldness, moments of power that took her breath away. She wanted to tell him that there was no danger of any bad impression being made, that she had thoroughly enjoyed it but somehow the words didn't sound right in her mind. Instead she tilted her head and smiled, her face glowing. "I know, Seroth." she said softly in response before sitting on the chair beside him.

She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply and drawing the scent of the caff into her nose before taking a sip. "Mmmm," she said opening her eyes "...perfect." she set the cup and plate on the bar and grinned at his comment "You make me bold." the grin faded to a soft smile "I have a courage, when I'm with you, that I didn't have before. Not the sort of courage that makes you stand strong when an enemy is bearing down upon you, but a different sort..." she trailed off trying to find words to explain herself and shook her head. Leaning forward she kissed him softly, her hand caressing his cheek.

Another deep rumble of thunder made the ship tremble, the lightening flashed instantly after, striking the hull and making the lights flicker. She drew back a wild smile on her face. "It's right on top of us," she breathed, a devilish glint glowing in her eyes. "Have you ever meditated in a storm?"

 

[Seydon of Arda]

"I have not..." Something wistful crossed his eyes whilst he spoke. He waited for her to finish her needed caff, then rose and took her by a hand. "Show me what you mean..."

At her insistence, he threw on his pair of worn slacks, stiffened now with caked sand and earthen mud. Shirtless, slapping with hammering chills of rain water, he waded behind her into a world washed with blue. The storm lent gloom and wafting coastal mist up from the soaring tide. Everything was a churning blur of sound and natural violence. Rosa seemed the calmed center, untouchable by wind or water or flecks of splintering palm trunks. Seroth watched her. Kissed by salty tears down her cheeks. Breathing in the chaos, exhaling calmed order. Attuned, as much a part of the world about her as the ocean roaring up at them from down the beach. He followed her to a patch of kelp and grass. At her instruction, he sat cross-legged and positioned his hands out just so.

His breathing managed to slow. With gentle persuasion from her own probing thoughts, he spilled out his mind. Emptiness now. Just the air, water, earth, carbon mixing around a little shell that called itself Seroth. Sound became channeled into tight cones. Patters of rainfall across two-inch shore rock. Cracks of supple, scaled bark from writhing fruit trees. Palm fronds whistling with wind-catches. A heartbeat... Steady, strong. ...Familiar. ...Her heartbeat. What he listened to over night, brow pressed to her sternum and plying his body in ways that aired strangled gasps from her throat. He thought of her eyes, diving his mind into the brown flecks swimming behind glassy, wet corneas. The entirety of the island, the ocean, and a small window into the starless sky became known to him. It all coalesced into a bright fleck of light, as an eye opened and watched currents of Force energy washing by in an invisible stream...

 

[Rosa Gunn]

They breathed as one, they thought as one, they felt as one. As Rosa opened her mind to him and he to her, she could feel the vibrations of his heart beat, as if it was in her own chest. His thoughts caused a shiver of pleasure to run through her and she faltered, the rhythmic breathing stuttering for a brief moment as she to a second to regain control of her thoughts and let the moment pass as they fell from the paths of their own minds and fully immersed themselves in the force. She watched the water droplet moved within the clouds, picking up others as it went sinking slowly to the clouds base before gravity and mass pulled it free.

She fell with it, and time lost its meaning, the storm fell silent and the world became still in her minds eye. The water droplet suspended in its flight to the ground below. The paradise that was faded from her minds eye, replaced with an unfamiliar world its sharp edges and hard faced people placed it somewhere in the Outer Rim. Beyond that the vision came in brief flashes; narrow corridors decorated in death, a carpet of dead bodies across the floor bearing the marks of a lightsaber. A sharp faced woman that bore some similarity to the man who meditated with her. A man tied with his hands above him and someone rained blows upon him, leaving him bruised and bleeding...Seroth. Her heart was racing now, as she lost her calm the images moved too fast to be seen clearly.

Brown eyes snapped open and the storm raged around her once more. She didn't know if the vision had been shared or not, all she knew was that after this, she was not likely to see Seroth for some time. Closing her eyes once more she began moving through the calming exercises again, slowing her breathing letting go of her emotions and hopefully her heart. He would hear it racing, despite her efforts to calm herself.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

A beat.

A low hiccup of misplaced thought.

"Hmmn?" Seroth murmured, his first vocalization for the entirety of their shared meditation.

There'd been a tremor, picked up by subconscious as a glimmer of cold. A dimmer sensation of autumn air drifting with promises of snow, morn-frost, and sleet rain. Just a vague collection of pseudo-impressions. His mind couldn't accept or visualize the peels of quickening vision in the same manner Rosa, or other Jedi, could readily form. It was all just glamours and phantasmagoria, ghostly and fleeting, tricking him with promise that he didn't posses. He thought he had reached out to touch across Rosa's cheek. Eyes closed, yet open and grazing over an intangible landscape of shifting sand and incandescent waves, it was only a telepathic gesture. It would have felt like a falling leaf, tickling down her jaw bone.

Seroth concentrated and fed his neural sensation into his physical arm. He reached. Touched to warm skin laced with rain drop. Stroked up over a shoulder and laid it bare a moment as fingers strolled beneath the fabric of her tunic. He disengaged, returning with a gentle knuckle-press that rubbed back and forth over velvet bone. The lad fancied an image of lifting her by way of telekinetic Force and depositing her against his lap, and lacing their arms about as they meditated in a far more intimate fashion.

...There was an echo of lilting laughter.

The lad remembered. The linkage wrought between their minds was heavily reciprocal. If his imagination ran rampant, Rosa could easily pick up and peruse the chaotic trails emanating from his juvenile mind. And it had just ran rampant. There came a visualization of a young man with dark hair and clenched eyes blushing like a blood fruit. He hoped to simply to crawl into the earth and flush out his embarrassment there.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

The intimacy that Seroth desired was shared, his gentle caress on her cheek a welcome gesture of reassurance that made her believe that the vision had not been shared. Drawing in a deep breath she let out a soft sigh and leant forward forehead gently touching his before she kissed him lightly.

“You,” she said, her voice light with humour, “Are incredibly distracting.”

Rising smoothly, she padded through the rain towards the ship. There had been no indication in the vision that she was there, that she needed to be there, so why was she being shown? Simply to prepare her for the time they would have apart? Or so that she could warn him? It needed further meditation before she could come to any conclusion, and that was certainly not going to happen tonight.
Above the sky rumbled angrily, the roar of thunder deafening. So coiled up in her thoughts that she was she missed the flash of warning in the force as lightening lanced out its yellow fingers striking a tree with a resounding crack that made her jump.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The lad surmised that his emboldened imagination had put pay to their meditation. So he thought, but, glancing to Rosa’s retreating backside, wet with rain soak that clung a shapeliness to her logged clothing, he wondered if perhaps something to do with her sensitive, empathic nature had fouled her constitution. There was always some badness, some evil, echoing in from the unseen portions of the wider Galaxy. It wasn’t a thing unheard of for a man or woman of special talent to be able to pick up those seedy ripples. Maybe Rosa had bent her ear to close to the ripples. He got off his crossed knees and padded after her over the sand. He was glad the gentle sensation of quieted ‘wholeness’ hadn’t left him yet.

But was that something to accredit his foray into sustained meditation, or was that simply from the charge of Rosa’s spirit mingling with his own freely?

Then some unseen god of thunder opened its eyes and grinned, hurling a spear of splitting light down towards their hidden oasis beach. Seroth was fortunate to be strolling fast up the ramp embarkation when something like ice pricked the back of his mind. As a boy, when those first sensations picked up and misfortune or hurt followed, he likened to calling it, juvenilely, a ‘danger sense’. It was merely whispers of the Force casting a very brief vision or sensation of precognition, though nothing was ‘mere’ where the Force was concerned. There was an impression of heat, light, and exploding sound. Seroth shivered, interposing himself between Rosa and the ‘frame’ of danger arising from behind his left hip.

Thunder cracked too loudly and stung the tender of their ears. A palm tree caught the ire of a lightnining strike, dying. It went up in a bursting fog-plume of micro-embers, a million upon a thousand splinters, as palm fronds ignited and turned briefly into a sap-laden tapers. Too large break offs of hurtling softwood jarringly spun their way. Seroth kept his arms thrown over Rosa’s head, shielding from the horrendous crack of thunder while denuded backbone and shoulders took the abuse of flying debris and pseudo shrapnel. Most pieces slapped and bounced off harmlessly…

But several niggling shards of sharpened bark turned over like makeshift throwing stars. Seroth grunted, feeling something thud into his hip and shoulder blade, a speeding shard glancing off his brow as they hurried up the rampart and swiftly closed it behind.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

The sounds of the storm were all but silenced as the rampart closed and Rosa took a moment to calm her startled and racing heart, letting out a slow breath. Brown eyes met grey, and flicked up to the red line across Seroth’s brow, eyes widening in surprise. “Stars,” she breathed, eyes widening slightly as she gently moved round him so asses the rest of the damage.

“I’m so sorry,” she began, tugging him towards the galley once more. “I should have seen it, should have been paying attention." She pushed him gently into a barstool and moved away, rummaging through the cupboards for a medkit which she deposited next to him. Picking out a bandage and a tin to deposit the splinters into she chose the largest of the splints of wood, buried deep beneath her lovers skin.

“Not quite the end one expects to a simple meditation.” she mused, reaching out carefully with the force to gently pull the splint from his flesh, pressing the bandage firmly over the holeto staunch the bleeding. “Here,” she said taking his hand and pressing it over the bandage. “Hold that there, I don’t want you bleeding all over my carpet.”

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The bolt of solidified light left a milking after-image in his vision. It was stubborn to fade as he sat, still and calmly, while Rosa took her time delicately plying hefting shards of bark from their punctured skin sleeves. Every few moments he loosed a grunt. Blood plunked wetly, thickly, onto the galley floor, hot and a touch salty. The lad joked to his caregiver, recalling a time when a creature much like a Corellian porcuboar found him out in the wilds. It took him a day and some to extract distended quills buried up the length of his calves, done mostly without anesthetic. Seroth rolled up the leggings of one pant and gestured to four perfect rows of silvery scar tissue.

Bandage-press in hand, using a handful of medical strips to keep the gauze tied to his backside, he rose and gave his range of motion a momentary spin. Even something as small as errant splinters could be detrimental. It never paid to be condescending to hurts. Seroth paused, watching Rosa stare a moment at the slide of muscle and flesh over the taut of his ribs, slowly lowering his arms. It was an apt lesson in the benefits that could be drawn in keeping up with physical activity. And reminded him to be careful of pitfalls associated with ego. He was immensely fortunate Rosa had a preference at all for his company. What she found desirable in his manner and image, he didn’t know. Gratefully, he reached and held a hand between his calloused fingers, smiling quietly.

“...But, Rosa?” He asked. ...However, he was still prone to a touch of cheek now and again. “You did not seem to mind the other stains that have been left on the floors.”

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa’s expression dissolved into one of shock and surprise, she had forgotten just how sharp Seroth’s tongue could be. “I don’t...I didn’t...by the force Seroth!” she exclaimed with a laugh, hitting him lightly and shaking her head, her mind too slow to form a response. She could feel heat in her face as she blushed. She tried to remember the last time she had blushed like a girl with a silly crush. She laughed softly, lifting her eyes up to find grey looking back at her, the smugness in his eyes giving them a silvery glare.

For several moments she said nothing, drawing closer to him, losing herself in his gaze, hands moving up to rest lightly upon his chest. "You know," she began softly "I'm to miss you terribly after this." The image of him hanging, beaten flashed past her eyes "The road ahead is dark and cold, Seroth and it will test both of us." Eyes flicked down to where her hands rested eyes enjoying the curves of his muscles, finger feeling the rhythmic beat of his heart. Brown looked up once more to meet grey "I want you to remember something, when it all seems hopeless and the darkness is never ending. Know that I love you."

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Thunder sounded outside a beat after a lightning bolt tore past a galley porthole. Plasmic white on white light scattered strange edgings of shadow and shade, throwing their physical frames into stark relief. It was indicative of their lives and love. Billowing, incandescent and too hot touches of lightning grounding just for a split second, fingers touching in the dark with kisses following, sighs echoing as thunder in the wake. Another startling burst of image and sound, splitting a second tree clean down its middle out on the exposed beach. Seroth wasn’t listening to anything but the lilt of Rosa’s voice. Just her words, not the creak of wind-blasted bulkheads, the strain of secured landing stanchions sunk into the sand, not the bellows of spirits hurling their physical spite from high up in black thunderheads. A dark and cold path leading on ahead? But… Surely their world was already dark and cold. For why else when they touched did so much heat and fire rise?

“Then remember, please, in turn, Rosa… How much I love you…”

That heat and fire that had pricked his mind with sobered thought, realizing they lived a charmless life, caused tracts of childlike boldness. Children when young enough had no concept of fear. Everything was big and grand as polished brass, hands touching out with shameless eagerness to press and experience. So he and her would not have the luxury of visiting nights such as this in… what was to be a goodly while, it felt. They were not so addled that they each required a marriage at the hip, but Rosa’s company was… Was… How could it be communicated? His breath was choking, throat watering with ten thousand words that didn’t have a language to be expressed, fingers aching. Seroth pushed and pressed Rosa to the counter edge of the kitchen, kissing ravenously while powerful hands sought and cupped the globes of her chest.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa drew in a shuddering breath between kisses as the passion ignited once more between them. The storm raging outside was no match for the hurricane within the Golden Rose as all decorum was forgotten, ripping through the galley and back towards the already demolished bedroom.

**

Rosa lay with her head resting on his chest, arm draped across him more content than she could ever remember being. There was no pressing matter lurking at the back of her mind, nor the fear that a call of duty would pull them apart. She was free to enjoy every minute with Seroth.

Propping herself up for a moment on one elbow she kissed him lightly. "I have something for you." She slipped from his arms and padded to the dresser, stepping lightly between the torn linen that littered the floor. Opening a simple wooden box that served to hold the small amount of jewelry she owned, she pulled out a velvet pouch, holding it to her heart for a moment before returning to the bed, and the warmth that emanated from him.

"Here." She said offering him the pouch.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Hmn?” Something of velvet other than Rosa’s skin touched into his palm. Seroth grunted and sucked in a touch of air, sore from brow to toes as he readjusted the ride of his spine against the stacked pillows. Faint and bolder, reddened scratch lines ran down the flesh of his pectorals and stomach, marring his complexion in a very flattering manner. He took a bedside cloth, wiping down his brow of drying sweat. Briefly, before Rosa’s voice woke him, he’d been in a temporary state of unconsciousness. Sense and thought mingled together as they laid together, separated by nothing, tempted to roll and simply kiss the beautiful woman to sleep.

His fingers undid the pouch binding. Something light but hardy and solid fell into his hand. Seroth sat up, mystified by the small piece of almost tribal jewelry. The pouch had been hiding away a polished ring of obsidian halfway an inch in thickness. The outermost edging had been smoothed, dulled to lessen the catastrophic chance of an accidental cut. Despite its brittle reputation, once upon an ancient era, a sharpened length of volcanic black stone could slice clean to bone. Someone in their thoughtfulness had looped a bind of leather thong through its emptied pit-center, braided with a weave of artful beads showcasing some runic character.

“...Was this yours?” Seroth asked softly. He turned the ring over in his fingertips, watching the catch of her reflection. A score of smiling Rosas. “It’s darkly pretty…”

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"It was my father's." She replied with the same softness, a touch of sadness lingering in her eyes as memories of her family flickered through her mind. "He used to tell me it brought him luck...kept him safe when the Order sent him away on missions."

She paused, eyes glistening for a moment with sentiment. A soft chuckle escaped her as she dropped her eyes for a moment, blinking away the sorrow before looking up and meeting his eyes. "A simple tale, to calm a child’s fears, for the most part but..." she closed her eyes, the images from the murder scene flashing across her eyelids.

"Two days before he was killed he came to me. Things were stressful. I had bribes and threats coming from either side of a war I was meant to help settle. He came to me, told me all would be alright and whatever choice I made would be the right one and he gave me the ring. 'To keep you safe.' He said."
She left the rest of the story untold and gave him a sad smile. "I want you to have it."

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“But… This was something of your father…” He blinked.

The boy had grown in the secluded wings and atriums of the training grounds, cycled between Tython and Coruscant by caregivers worried that someday, the sky would be begin to bleed as Sith hellions rode down upon basilisks and assault carriers. In essence, his mother and father had been a hundred different teachers. They’d been kind, giving of their time and energies when pulled in a thousand directions by similarly needy boys and girls, but they had only ever been a substitute.His parents were bleak impressions caught behind a closed helmet and rebreather, staring up at a grey noise sky. He hadn’t known them and possessed nothing to keep in fondness of their by-now desiccated memories.

“...Are you sure?” Seroth asked earnestly.

Few keepsakes were as bought and paid for by a father’s spilt blood. It was a personal vestige of him for Rosa, a kind of pseudo totem. A physical link in her families unbroken chain. He felt both elated, honoured, and unsure of being the next in line to be its inheritor. What had he done lately to earn something of this personal caliber? Seroth was a runaway. Another Unknown Region mongrel. He turned it over with his thumb and stared in the polished volcanic glass. Smoothed to a fault, a little chipped but the small scars of weary tearing lent a weight of character. Who knows where this little ring of obsidian had been and seen? ...It was humbling to wonder if by some dint of fortune and time, it would outlive him and anyone he could call his own inheritor or… Or child. Seroth blinked, and looked up over to Rosa, arms laid behind her head as she rested, watching her bare ribs grow and shrink with breathe.

“It will never leave my company,” He said, reaching over to take her hand. “I promise, Rosa…”

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa gave him a small smile. "I know." She replied, sitting up she took the trinket from him and loped the beaded leather throng over his head leaving the obsidian ring to rest against his chest, a stark contrast to his pale skin.

She kissed him once, before sliding her slender frame against his, head resting once more against his chest, hand over the ring. Eyes fluttered closed as she finally gave in to the blissful exhaustion of the evenings events slipping into a content and dreamless sleep.

**

The first rays of the morning sun glared through the porthole, stirring Rosa reluctantly from her slumber. Lifting her head she shifted from Seroth, placing a light kiss on his brow before rising silently careful not to wake him she snatched up a blouse and some underpants and padded half dressed from the room.

A soft chuckle escaped her as she reached the galley, the medkit had at some point been knocked to the floor bacta tubes and dressings were scattered across the floor. Humming softly she began to tidy up, flicking on the caff machine as she did, allowing the night to run through her mind drawing smirks and small laughs from her lips. She paused as she disposed of the tray of splinters, the vision rippling through her mind once more.

"Why did you show me?" She murmured softly.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Wakefulness came with a blink of naked sunlight. A straight beam scythed through soft rolls of dusty air, colliding head on with a sleepy lad’s brow and face. It’d been his fault, really. In his sleep, breathing deeply through his dreamless state, Seroth rolled over slightly to take up the now emptied spot where Rosa had lain just a few minutes prior. Right into the pathway of an illuminating shaft that highlighted the whole of his naked state. The lad sharply snorted in his breath and blinked his eyes open. After images of wafting sunlight kept up their strobes, as he rose and pulled on his old pair of slacks following a moments sigh and a heavy tuck.

“I did not know caff could smell so strongly,” He said. The galley was seemingly suffused with heavy percolation. Embittered, freeze dried caffeine mixed with fresher vanilla beans. A section of counter space was portioned for selections of creamer milk flagons, Denon-cinnamon sprinklers, other totes that were necessary to compile into a perfect cup.

Seroth glanced over from a mag-locked refrigerator unit, collecting a carton of unopened fruit juice. Rosa’s face was softened in distracted thought, considering a subject Seroth assumed was unknowable for him to properly understand. Regardless, he ventured close, pressing an arm over her shoulders. “And what has you so deep in thought this ‘morn, love?”

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa was so lost in thought she barely heard his comment about caf, eyes glazed over forehead creased slightly in a frown. “Hmm?” she said blinking, the glaze disappearing as Seroth put an arm around her shoulders. She turned her head to look up at him and smiled, studying his face carefully realising she had left it too long now to pass her thought of as ‘nothing’ and give him something. An answer of worth.
“You do.” she replied, before kissing him and slipping away to make her caff. “The road will be dark and cold.” she breathed, her hands working automatically to make the caff, eyes glazing once more “I will not be there to bring light nor warmth, but I’ve seen it nonetheless.” she set the freshly made cup of caf on a saucer and rested her hands on the counter, head bowed. Torn between telling him and holding her tongue.

“I want to tell you what I saw yesterday, but I am unsure if it is the right thing to do.”

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The lad held a pity for those able to discern the future from time’s silver mirror. Ordinarily, what anyone saw was just clouds and wishful thinking, even those with a grand degree of Force power. But for a special few, a handful out of tens of millions, Rosa was that one faint degree of inherent talent that could read and discern what the Force told in her dreams. He held his tongue and his breath to a degree. Cold frin-mango and bestaydah juice slaked his thirst and warmed down his gullet. His hand tapped to the counter space, wondering what to do for the moment.

...So he turned to her, took her jaw in his worn palms, and gently leaned forward to kiss until there was a warm reciprocation. They stood there for a goodly while, holding close, listening to each other breathe while the caff brewed with perky energy. Seroth paused them with a suckle across Rosa’s adam’s apple, and then regarded her with his steady gaze.

“If it you are unsure, then it is not right,” He said. “You are burdened with the weight of the future. One that is mine. If it is to be hard and rotten, then that is my lot to bear. What matters is that I come back. To you. So do not fret…”
Warm lips touched to her brow. “I will be keeping your memory close. Memory can be a light, when you are trapped in evil. Have your caff, Rosa. ...And then come with me to the shower.”

 

[Rosa Gunn]

It was easy to say ‘do not fret’ when the image of a loved one in pain wasn’t there when you closed your eyes. She sighed heavily, lowering her chin and nodding in agreement with him. He was right, whatever the future had in store for him was his to bear but that would not stop her from worrying. The one comforting thought in it all, was that he would come back to her, and that she could enjoy every moment she had with him in between.

Before he could draw away, she looped her arms about his neck and buried her face in the dark gap between her arm and the side of his neck, feeling his arms wrap around her waist in response. She held him there, locked in that comforting embrace, each breath she exhaled she released some of her anxiety with, until she was finally relaxed. She drew back a little, brushing her lips lightly across his, her eyes glinting once more with joy, her worries pushed harshly to one side.

“I love you.” she said softly, before pulling away enough to collect her caf. “Even if you do snore.” She watched Seroth over the rim of her cup as she took a small sip, eyes glittering with mischief.