“I understand,” she said sadly.
“In the end, I think it’ll work out for the best. There’s nothing more satisfying than building something with your own hands,” I encouraged her. “After we’re done, we’ll have a home together. Just you and me. We’ll be able to do whatever we want, go wherever we want. And it’ll always be there when we come back from our adventures.”
Her cheeks blushed as she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I think I can live with that,” she said in a small, cheery voice. We walked together quietly for another half hour until we came upon a fallen tree and sat down for a break. “Do you really think we’ll find a place like the one you’re hoping for?” she asked, swinging her legs over the edge of the fallen log.
“The way I see it, there’s no chance we can search this entire forest. At least, not on foot.” I pulled up my legs and crossed them beneath me. “However, what we can do is find some promising spots from here to narrow things down, then check them out on foot after.” A quick pulse of mana washed over me as Lia beat me to the punch, and I joined her energy with my own a moment later as our exploration began.
The untamed northern forest held a multitude of distractions from our main goal, and we indulged in them willingly. Freedom to do what we wanted without the threat of danger following close behind was a new experience for us; I felt like we could fully enjoy each other’s company for the first time since we had met, and I planned to do so for as long as possible. We watched a skulk of baby foxes playing in a hollow stump and laughed as they climbed, jumped, and tumbled over the rotten wood. A quick blur underground drew our attention down into a burrow where two rabbits hid from the predators above, their hearts pounding in their chests.
Our focuses eventually diverged, and after an hour we had each found three potential locations for our home. I made a quick mental map of the spots I had chosen, then followed the gentle flow of Lia’s mana to her selections in turn. When our meditation was finished, we had five stops to make on our trip; unbeknownst to one another, we had each chosen the same spot as our foremost pick, and I marked it as our first stop. It sat nearly five miles away from the future Corell homestead, and at our leisurely pace, it took us over an hour to arrive.
The first stop became the only stop as we entered the clearing and instantly knew it was exactly what we were looking for. The clearing itself was far too small for a house, but the area surrounding it was perfectly flat with sparse tree cover. As soon as we arrived, we bypassed the spot and immediately ran to what had drawn our attention to the land in the first place: a spring-fed stream which babbled noisily as it ran across the forest floor about thirty yards away from the clearing. The source spring sat a quarter mile away on an elevated stone shelf, dumping a steady supply of clean, shimmering water down a rock face into the natural stream bed below.
“It’s so pretty!” Lia shouted as she splashed into the crystal clear water. It lapped gently at her knees when she reached the center of the stream, which was about eight feet across at our current location. “And it’s not freezing, either! Come in here, it’s really nice!”
“I think I’m good, thanks,” I said, taking a step back. “I don’t want to be—” My mouth was suddenly filled with water as Lia splashed a wave into my face. She took a step back and lowered into a ready crouch with a devious grin on her face while I blew the surprise water out of my nose. With a quick flick of my wrist, I unhooked my cloak and threw it to the ground behind me, then dashed into the river to take my vengeance.
Our impromptu battle was brief; she had expected my attack and easily deflected my opening attempts to grapple her. However, she failed to account for the knee-high water she was standing in, and her first attempt to reposition was slow and clumsy. My foot caught the back of her heel, and a simple shove to her shoulder knocked her off balance. I held her arm tightly as she fell, pulling her up as soon as her head dunked completely below the surface of the brook. “You were right! This river is surprisingly warm,” I laughed as she wiped the water from her face.
“That was a bit much, don’t you think?” she pouted, cradling her long braid in both hands. “My hair is going to be wet all day now!”
“It’ll be a good reminder to not pick fights you can’t win,” I scolded her sarcastically. She threw her head back and groaned loudly, then held out a begrudging hand. I wove my fingers between hers and turned back towards the clearing. As we left the stream, I scooped up my cloak and dropped it around her shoulders as an apology, and her mood brightened significantly.
“I know that we haven’t seen the other spots yet,” she said once she had comfortably nestled into the cloak, “but this one just feels...right.”
I took a deep breath as I surveyed the clearing again, then nodded. “You’re right. This is the one.”
“What do we do now?”
“Now we wait,” I answered, taking a seat on the ground. “Until we have our building supplies, the best thing we can do is watch the
