Sorry it's been taking me longer to update ( and sorry this is going to be such a short chapter ). My boyfriend and I have recently taken in two tiny feral kittens and getting them healthy has been super time consuming. When we first got them they were starved skin bags and now they're full, fluffy little terrors of dooooom. THANK YOU LINDZ FOR DROPPING THEM OFF WITH ME! :) PS the song that's feeding my imagination for this chapter is Renee Fleming's rendition of Rusalka - Dvorak "Oh Lovely Silver Moon" (title has more than one translation but it isn't very difficult to find) An AMAZING opera piece, full of love and longing and ahhhh, hearing it makes my heart beat a little faster every time. Go on and listen on youtube! DO IT! PSS I'm not editing this before I post it tonight like I wanted to - if I do it'll be tomorrow. I'm so tired right now I can't type anymore haha. As always THANK YOU for taking the time to read Echelon. Please review after reading if you can! Your input really helps to guide me in the right direction and is very much appreciated.

Standing there holding him the way I was it was impossible for me to see his face. In my world it was totally normal to give a comforting embrace but when I first approached him he felt nervous and stiff I was afraid he would reject me. Was there a chance that no one had ever hugged him before? It wasn't until his arms fell loosely around me that I was sure my actions were acceptable enough. This wasn't the first time in the past two days that he'd slipped and given me a glimpse of the wretched sorrow in his eye's. Come to think of it, even with the stone walls of the theater there to keep us apart, I could still sense it there somewhere hidden in his voice. Witnessing it first hand today with both his expressions and his song together had shocked me to the core and I was unable to hold myself back from him. Seeing him struggle caused my heart to break too.

"If I can never know what causes you such pain..." Was he afraid of what I might say next? The moment I started speaking in to his chest his arms tightened around me. "Will this be enough to ease your suffering?"

"Oh, Christine." he sighed my name and pulled me closer, crushing me to him and buried his face in my hair, breathing in deeply. "Your very presence has been enough, but this means so much more." He was warm and soft, solid but gentle, his quickening heart thudded audibly in his chest and all at once the aroma's of lavender and sage... and was that parchment and candle wax? All of these sensations combined washed over me like an ocean tidal wave - caused my soul to swell ten times it's normal size to make room for a whole new world of emotion, a new perspective on our strange and fragile existence together. Was it possible... was this love?

How was he feeling? I pulled away slightly, desperate to see his face and was relieved to see he was smiling at me. There wasn't a single indication that he'd been upset only minutes ago. "Much better!" I grinned. He released his grip on me and I slipped away to lean on the branch behind me. As if I'd had just a little too much to drink, there was a warm fuzzy heat creeping in to my extremities tingling all the way through to the tips of my fingers and toes, spreading, settling...

So this is love?

The word dangerously repeated itself over and over in my head until there was no way around it. I was falling for this masked man, my teacher, my angel, Erik - who until recently I wasn't even sure truly existed at all... who was he really anyway? I wanted to run in to the grass and twirl around laughing, or climb up to the top of the tree and cry out against the beautiful morning sky. Did I have the strength to resist?

He leaned forward, turned one of my hands over to drop the apple back in to my palm and curled my fingers around it. "This was meant for you." he paused and turned his gaze up to mine, smirking. "I confess. I have no intention of taking you back to your rehearsals." His eye's were a sort of green outside in this light but with the way they were smoldering in to mine you would think that there was a molten fire burning behind them. How did he do that?

"Oh!" I blinked, shrugging my shoulders. Thank God that the subject was changed! Now I would have a minute to collect myself, but this was confusing. Usually he always the one making excuses to cut our lessons short. What else could he possibly have planned? I would gladly spend the day at his mercy. "Will we stay outdoors?"

"I think not." he lifted his chin to the sky and scanned the clouds. "It may rain soon."

Rain? I looked up too, peeking through the leaves above me and was disappointed to see a gray mass of thick clouds in the distance. "How unlucky." I huffed. "I was just getting to know this beautiful place."

Before heading in to the tunnels he promised to bring me back to the meadow the next time he brought Caeser up. He warned that these journeys were typically a nightly activity but I knew I wouldn't mind. At least then we would have the candle light to guide us on our way. While we traveled back to his home on the horses back, I ate my apple and Erik explained to me the history and science behind the ducts and tunnels ahead, and how he'd decided to improve them. Most of the vocabulary and terminology that he used made little to no sense to me at all and it wasn't until we were out of the gondola that I started to catch on and understand. As it turned out, the rain was always an exciting event for him since he'd designed a special drainage system on the surface that would collect the water and trickle it down through the walls in copper tubing and to his lake. No matter what, as long as there was rain up above, he would always have fresh water. During an especially good storm the water pressure would even activate his many decorative fountains, and he made sure to point them all out along the way.

There were times when his words seemed to muffle while he was speaking. Each time he turned look at me I was more captivated by him than anything he was saying. The sharp contrast between the sides of his face were more melded to me than they had been days before. I barely noticed his mask anymore - that is to say unless I was paying direct attention to it, but even then in a way the enigma of the mask itself was just as alluring as his fleshy cheek. Everything about Erik was more attractive, more magnificent than it ever had been before now that I knew I cared for him as more than a friend or guardian. The sound of his heartbeat still repeated back to me fresh in my mind. From now on there would never be a day that went by that I wouldn't miss him. I would hold him if he was sad, give him all of my free time - I was truly beginning to love him. Could he tell, would he be angry, or was this what he'd hoped for all along?