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“I don’t know, in trees? Caves?”
“Well, some do. But a lot of us like things a bit more civilized, even if that just means a simple hut. But a lot of my kind doesn’t like to reside in one place for too long.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, there aren’t that many of us, and we try not to draw too much attention to ourselves. Just in case.”
Sierra twirls around in the water, skimming her hands on the surface.
“You know, I’ve never gotten to do something like this before,” she says, looking up at me through her lashes.
“Something like what?”
“This.” She gestures to the water around us.
“You’ve never swam in a river before?”
“Nope. And I’ve never gotten to just simply enjoy myself like this, either. Have fun. It’s just like I imagined it would be.”
“How did you survive that life?” I wonder out loud.
“I had to. I couldn’t let those bastards win. They don’t deserve the satisfaction of me giving up on life because they decided that I was nothing more than a worthless piece of meat for them to fuck.”
A growl rises up in my chest upon hearing this, but I shove it back down, not wanting to scare her off. Not when she’s just beginning to open up to me like this.
“I’m sorry that you had to live like that for so long. If I had known you were out there…” I trail off.
She looks at me with an odd expression on her face before turning around and surveying the land around us.
“Does anyone ever come through here?”
“I’ve never encountered anyone but my kind out here.”
“Your kind? Do they live near here?”
“Yes, we travel in tribes mostly.”
“Oh,” she says, with a look in her eyes that I can’t quite identify.
I sometimes wish that I could read her mind. It would make things much simpler.
“We can stay here as long as you like and visit whenever you want.”
“Thank you,” she says, smiling shyly.
“You mentioned cooking and cleaning for me earlier. Do you have experience cooking?”
“Not much. Nothing fancy and definitely nothing as good as the food that you make.”
“You really think my food is that good?”
“It’s delicious, Zephiro. The elves didn’t feed me that well, if they even remembered to at all. But they never cared if we liked the food. We didn’t get those kinds of luxuries.”
I’m hearing everything she says, but I’m still stuck on the moment she said my name. It was so casual, so normal. She’s said it before, but for some reason, it sounded different coming out of her mouth just now.
It slid off of her tongue like a perfectly composed song of legend.
“So let me get this straight. You want me to let you out of the room to cook for me and force me to eat your terrible food? Instead of eating mine, which you have described as being delicious?”
