“But it’s not perfect.” She had been in the background during the conversation between him and Aura, and while Ziem had been much more understanding, it hurt Candra to watch Orlando with Aura. She kept quiet about it most of the time, since it was so soon afterward, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Especially now that she was so in love with him.
He stopped in the middle of their walk to look at her, pulling as much power from her in one draw as he could, since he knew she was more comfortable if she wasn’t buzzing with it all the time. It caused sparks to fly all over his dark clothing, lighting up the night around them and making several of those around them flinch back, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at her.
“No, it’s not perfect. I’m not a knight in shining armor, or king of some far-off kingdom seeking your hand in marriage. And you’re sure as hell not a damsel in distress. At least not anymore.” He kissed her, trying to make her smile. “You’re more than that. And I like to think there’s more to me than a storybook description. There’s more to all of us than just that. So it’s not perfect, but it’s ours.” He kissed her again, sending sparks up and down her spine that made every hair she had stand on end. “I love you. I hope that’s enough.”
Candra kissed him back for a long time without saying a single word as she continued to pour more of her energy into him. It made her feel so relaxed that he almost had to hold her up. “I love you too. More than anything else in the world.” She kissed his cheek and looked around as they stepped into the Stoneborn sector. She looked back at him with a smirk before she ran around to hop up onto his back. “If you don’t feel like being the knight, how about the horse?”
He laughed and carried her a little ways through the Stoneborn sector where they were greeted slightly more often than in the Earthborn sector, with a few of the wolves there complimenting them on the precious stones they had received so far that night.
Soon they were into the Forestborn sector, which was along the fence line because it was actually just a section of forest that had been claimed from the woods, far beyond the original boundaries of the compound. Most of them were already asleep, up in the trees and wound into the branches above their heads. Those few that were lying about on the grass along the ground, though, greeted them with smiles that were as free-flowing and generally open as Forestborn often were.
Eventually she jumped down from Orlando’s back and stepped away slightly to admire some of the absolutely beautiful plants and flowers. They were so perfect, and even all the renderings of them in books didn’t do justice to the real thing. “They are just…gorgeous.”
“Thank you.” A young-sounding voice said from behind the flowers where she hadn’t seen someone laying out. The flowers moved aside to show a woman that was wearing a shirt and skirt made out of thick woven leaves. It was obvious it wasn’t her normal clothing because of how flimsy it looked, but it served the purpose of covering her for the moment at least. “I worked hard on them this afternoon.”
Candra giggled in surprise as the woman became visible. “I need to come to you for help with hiding. That would really up the level of the game.” She turned to look at Orlando.
The woman looked up at her and Orlando and her eyes widened for a moment as she rolled away in shock. “You’re…”
“Just walking through.” Candra answered quickly. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” She got up a little, walking barefoot through the grass that lay down to protect her feet as if it was happy to be walked on by her. “I just…didn’t expect to see you out here. I thought you’d be with a bunch of guards or something.”
“A bunch of guards? I think the guards get kind of scared of us too.” Candra countered with another nervous laugh.
The woman giggled and looked over Candra’s decorated and bejeweled arms. “I see you’ve received gifts from the other packs. They’re very pretty.”
Candra looked down at everything that she had gathered and she nodded with a grin. “Most of them were from little children. They were all so cute. I’ve not really been around children very much before, so I think I was more afraid of them than they were of me.”
That got another giggle from the Forestborn, and the woman looked up at Orlando with an appraising up-and-down. “Well, I’m not a child, but I feel an obligation to represent my people. You two are a little too Stone and Iron right now.” She whisked away gracefully to a bunch of ferns that were all grown together, and under which there were a few other people she revealed sleeping, wrapped intimately in each other’s arms. It made Orlando a little uncomfortable and he looked away, but the happy little Forestborn didn’t think anything of it as she looked through a woven basket for something, then stepped back over to them.
She knelt down in between her flowers and pushed them aside, making them lie down facing away from her as she planted two very small seeds between the small blades of grass and laid her hands over them with her eyes closed.
Candra was captivated as she watched the Forestborn work with the tiny seeds, since she hadn’t watched a Forestborn use their power so actively before. She watched with the innocence and curiosity of a child, because in some ways, she still
