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“It’s unlikely.”
“Next time, we’ll just figure something else out. Do you have anything we can use to write with?”
“There are many stones that work on your paper.” He bent over, running his fingers through the dirt for a moment before he came up with a chunk of rock. I accepted it, and when he handed me a sheet of paper, set it up against the tree and wrote a quick message.
I went with Remmo willingly.We’ll come back when I’m ready.
<3 Sunny
I scribbledthe same thing on a few more sheets of paper, just in case one or two of them blew away or something. It didn’t rain very often in the forest outside of the rainy season that was approaching in the next few weeks, so the chance of the notes getting wrecked wasn’t huge.
We put them around the lake, pinned half-beneath rocks and stuck to trees with some kind of sap that Remmo got out of one of the trunks. He healed the tree afterward with his magic, of course.
When that was done, I looked at the lake one last time.
Though I wasn’t sure whether or not it had healed me, I did feel stronger than I had before I came there. More capable, too.
Something told me that was more Remmo’s fault than the lake’s, but I ignored that voice in my head as we concealed our scents with the stinky leaves, then shifted forms and slipped back into the forest.
Remmo had offered to show me a pretty cave system that only he and a few of his closest friends knew about, so off we went.
We traveledthrough the rest of the day, stopping for the night inside one of the trees with the shell-fruit called fromil. I ate more than my weight in that shit before wrapping myself around a branch to sleep.
Part of me considered asking Remmo if he’d mind letting me sleep in his cozy snake cocoon, but I decided that was probably too mate-like, and we were just friends.
Friends who had made out, sure, but still.
Just friends.
After two more days oftraveling, we were deep into unseelie territory, nearing the ocean at the back of the land. Remmo explained that it was called the Salt Shore, and that there was some kind of force field preventing the fae from going past the beach.
He told me about some monsters trapped inside a frozen cave nearby, and that made me shudder. I cut him off before he could give me any details about them, because I didnotneed to start having nightmares again.
The force field on the beach, though, was really damn strange. I questioned him about it when we stopped for the third night, but Remmo didn’t seem to know anything beyond what he’d told me.
Halfway through the fourth day, we shifted back to our human forms. We’d been sliding past small ponds and lakes that looked like they held all kinds of little creatures, which sort of disturbed me.
Mostly because I hated bugs.
But come on, wholikesbugs?
“The cave is up here, through a small pond,” Remmo explained to me.
“Are there bugs in it?” I checked.
“Probably.” He flashed me an amused look. “You’re a basilisk, Iloli.”
“I know. But I hate bugs.” A shudder rolled through me.
He chuckled, and I found myself opening up a little more.
Talking a little more.
“It usually takes me time to get used to new people and places. Being this comfortable with you is actually kind of out of character for me.” I studied him closely. “You’re still planning to head back to the others after we explore a bit, right?”
“Of course.”
I slipped my hand into his, and his shoulders relaxed as I parted his fingers with mine. The touch was sort of intimate, but it just felt right with him. “Okay, let’s do it.”
