I hadn't forgotten about this story, exactly, but I'll admit I might have pushed it back for later if a couple of reviews hadn't spurred me into action now.
So I dedicate this extra-long chapter to make up for the extra-long wait to Ra'iira the Fiend and DevilAndGodAreRagingInsideMe, who decided me to make the time to review and upload this chapter. Thanks for sticking around!
Chapter XLIII. The forest and the sea
Dinner was uneventful, the three of them exchanging impressions of their day visiting the village and a few recollections of Chama's childhood. Chama kissed Valen goodnight and quietly went to her room, letting her father know that she had not lingered in Valen's presence too long.
She busied herself studying and measuring spell components until it was quite late. Even though she did not feel sleepy, she blew off her candle, just in case her father woke and spied light filtering from under her door. Standing at the window in the darkness, she looked up at the stars and the shadow of clouds chasing across the moon's waning crescent. She idly brushed her hair, gathered it in a simple braid, and fussed with her sleeves and skirt. Impatiently, she watched the moon's rise and fall and waited until it set. In the deepest of the night, she strained her ears against the silence of the slumbering house and, when satisfied that everyone else was sound asleep, she slipped out of the window.
Balancing with rusty practice on the edge of the lower story's window, she inched sideways to the sill of Valen's window. She had done this countless times when she was a child, but it had been some time and her fingers and toes fumbled a little before they found their accustomed places. With the warm weather, Valen had left the glass open, and only a curtain obscured the window.
Careful not to startle the weapon master who no doubt slept with his flail within reach, Chama slowly pushed the curtain aside. After all, he might not have the reflexes of a drow assassin, but she had no doubt he could be dangerous if startled awake. She sat on the sill, and lightly tapped her feet on the floor.
Disturbed in his sleep, Valen sighed and turned on his side, but did not wake. Emboldened, she fully slipped inside and softly called his name. He rolled again and, out of reflex it seemed, he opened one eye and saw her standing there grinning at him. Blinking sleepily, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.
Hurriedly, she tiptoed across the small room and whispered, "Hush, or my father might hear us."
Valen pulled the sheets up to cover his chest in an attempt at modesty. "What are you doing here?", he murmured back.
"Taking you out for a stroll. There's one place of these forests I haven't shown you yet."
Valen rubbed his eyes. "In the middle of the night?"
"Come now, where did your sense of adventure go?", she goaded him.
More awake already, he grinned at that; he had the habit of the middle watch, after all. Without warning, he cupped the back of her head and kissed her. However, he pulled back with a grin when she tried to pry the sheets away.
"All right, let's go for a stroll. Just give me a second to put on some more clothes."
He hastily and silently pulled on pants, tunic and boots, and he slid a dagger in his belt for good measure. With whispered explanations, she showed him how to slip out and stand on the upper side of the lower story's windowsill, and from there slide down on the porch's roof and to the ground. While his performance did not rival that of his elven thief companion, Valen nevertheless possessed a respectable amount of finesse and gave a good execution of the acrobatics. Chama took his hand and dragged him through the winding back streets of Saarelmith, transformed into a veritable maze by the dark of night.
"You won't be able to sneak past the sentries," she whispered when they approached the village's edges. She leaned into a nearby rickety shed and handed Valen two empty buckets, which he took only out of reflex. "I will glide past them under the cover of shadows, but you'll have to give them some excuse to leave. Just tell them that I'm a tyrant and I sent you to fetch nightly spring water for my spell components. Tell them you'll have to let it stand under a birch for the rest of the night. If they ask if you know where you're going, tell them you're going to the brook just by the side of the trail further up. They'll let you go out and won't wonder why you're not coming back."
With a roguish smile, Valen quirked an eyebrow. "Have you been planning this for long, my love?"
"Pretty much since Neverwinter, when I realized my father would never leave us two seconds alone. Now come on!"
She pushed him ahead of her on the path while she rolled in her cloak behind. She seamlessly melded into the darkness and he carefully paced his walk so she could keep up with him.
Three shadows dropped nimbly from the trees, where they had been as invisible as Chama was, and lounged in relaxed stances on each side of the path. Valen did not know the three rangers personally, but he remembered seeing them at the revelry the day before.
"What are you doing outside at this hour with two empty buckets?", one of the sentries asked.
The tiefling feigned a weary sigh. "Chama needs spring water for her spell components."
"She needs it so urgently?", the guard asked, obviously holding back his laughter.
"It needs to be collected at night, just after the moon sets," Valen explained with just a bit of feigned displeasure, "and it has to stand under a birch tree for the rest of the night. Please, let me pass. If I wait much longer, the water will have been collected too late and I will have to come back tomorrow."
The three hunters let Valen pass with chuckles and words of commiseration. Not comfortable in the role of actor, Valen made good on his escape and let out a sigh of relief that Chama's scheme had worked. He walked on in silence and seemingly alone until he reached the stream Chama had told him about.
Suddenly she appeared right by his side, grinning widely. "Leave your buckets here, we'll collect them later. Come on! It's this way!"
With a smile at her youthful enthusiasm, he followed her, picking his way through the dark forest thanks to his piercing eyes. They made their way first across a patch of aged spruce, then through a dense undergrowth of fir, and finally through a mature forest of white birch. Chama did not speak, but Valen could easily sense her childlike exuberance at stealing away from her father's notice for a night's time. Seeing her so happy brought a reflexive smile to his lips.
At length Chama stopped and reached back to take Valen's hand and pull him beside her. They had reached her secret haven in the forest: it was a stand of grey pine, growing close together with flawlessly straight and slim trunks. Delicate white lichen covered the ground and crunched underfoot. Cautiously picking her way over faint trails not to mar the lichen's perfect sprawl any more than the forest's inhabitants already had, Chama guided Valen around the edge of the small stand. Some distance in front of them, a patch of bare golden sand rested at the foot of a pine. Small bushes of alder concealed it on two sides, creating a small private alcove.
Stepping carefully over the last stretches of lichen, Chama sat down on the patch of sand, with the comfortable and relaxed look of someone who is at home. Valen sat besides her, marvelling at the private corner of forest around them. The sand was cool and dry.
"I was not sure I would find it again," Chama admitted in a whisper, "or that it would be unchanged. It's been so long… I don't think grey pine live so long. It must be the children of the trees I used to know."
Valen smiled at her. "You used to come here as a child?"
She nodded, looking around her with a mixture of nostalgia and excitement. "Yes. It was my secret lair, when I wanted to escape my parents or the other children of the village."
Valen motioned for Chama to step back and he stretched his cape on the ground. When they sat back down, Valen pulled Chama tenderly against his side. The elf looked left and right, pawed around the base of the alder bushes, and suddenly she let out a triumphant exclamation.
"Look! It's still there!"
She took out a greyish white piece of bone that Valen could not quite place.
"It's a beaver's shoulder blade. The wild elves that live just east of here read the migration routes of beasts in the veins that appear when you burn them. I found this one by the edge of Lake Sandarion… We had gone there with the other hunter apprentices to test our swimming skill."
The tiefling listened silently, thoughts swirling lazily through his mind. He wondered if Lake Sandarion was as glorious a sight as the forests. He wished he knew how to swim. Chama carefully pawed through the alder some more, and finally extirpated a rotten piece of wood out of the sand.
"The rest of my little treasures seems to have disappeared. This is what's left of a goblet I kept here to gather blueberries."
Suddenly sheepish at her childlike display, she shot a shy look at Valen. However, he had not minded, and he lay down on the cape, looking up at the stars through the needles of the pines overcastting the sky.
"Tell me of Lake Sandarion," he asked, eager to hear more of her childhood; he felt like her tales might make him grasp a part of what it meant to be elven.
She lay back on the cape next to him, and naturally she settled in his arms.
"It is many leagues from here, but it is a beautiful lake. I don't think you'd enjoy the trip if I took you up there, assuming I could still find my way. It's a tenday's trek through the thickest of the spruce stands with their whipping branches, high up between two steep hills, and there's no trail leading there. The trek was as much a test as the swimming for us young hunters. Sandarion is shaped like a large kidney, about a league in the longest. At one end, there is a beach of pure sand in a cradled bay. Water there is warm to bathe in, and there are no leeches on the sand."
"Leeches?", Valen exclaimed, appalled.
"Don't grimace like that, big sissy," she teased. "Leeches keep to the edges and to the places where the bottom is in mud, not in sand. Besides, it doesn't even hurt if you get bitten."
"Vampires were enough, thank you very much," Valen muttered with distaste.
Chama smiled amusedly and went on. "So, I was speaking of the lake's beach. Near it, there is a little bay where a gorgeous mat of waterlilies grow, with irises on the shore. On the hillside on the opposite side of the lake, you can see spots of darker green of spruce and fir amidst the sea of soft green of birch and poplar. Every year, a pair of loons nests at Sandarion. Their beautiful love songs haunt the lake all summer long, and towards the fall, they are joined by their fledglings for their first song. At first, though, the young don't sing as beautifully as their parents, but with practice the voices become undistinguishable. In the lake live all sorts of fish, from tiny to almost as long as me."
"You're mocking me," Valen protested.
"No. I said 'almost'. They're not nearly as heavy, but they're nearly as long. Their body is square and thick with muscle, grey with brown spots. They have big teeth and foul tempers, and will attack anything that's red, even if it's just your toenail paint, if it's the right time of year, around Kythorn."
"They're stupid fish. Why do they attack toes?"
"It's the red they attack, not the toe; it's the colour of the inside of the males' mouths." Chama's cheeks coloured slightly in the moonlight, but she went on with her explanation. "They mate around Kythorn. The males are nearly driven insane with the need to reproduce, and they attack anything that remotely resembles an adversary."
Valen grinned with sudden humour and could not resist teasing timid Chama. "I see. Poor fish. Why do the females let them wait and torture them like this?"
"It is to ensure that only the strongest males receive their favours. The weaker fish get routed by the others' attacks or tire out before Kythorn arrives. Waiting until then, the females only get the strongest males, so their offspring will be as strong as their fathers and will survive."
Valen considered a long moment. "There is a strange wisdom to wildlife."
"There is another sort of fish, this one is shorter but fatter. Their back is green, specked with brown and black, and their stomachs are pink or red. They also have a brilliant white stripe at the edge of their fins, and when you're lucky enough to see them swim, you can spy a flash of white zigzagging away. And along with the loons you can hear another bird sing. In the mist of centuries, I had nearly forgotten then. They're so small you could hold them in the palm of your hand. When you look at them, all brown with their head striped with black and white, you could think they are small unremarkable birds, but they have a beautiful song and a voice powerful enough to be heard a league away. I don't know their name in common, but in elvish we call them goaren bere'et."
She whistled the song of the small unknown bird and Valen let the peaceful, seemingly nostalgic sound wash over him.
"Their song is almost as haunting as that of the loons, but they don't sing as often. I lived in human cities for so long; I nearly forgot about the forest, both from the passage of time and from the refusal to revisit what I had lost. The myriad of different trees, the concealing bushes, the enticing birds, the plentiful fish… the annoying flies…"
With a chuckle, she batted her hand at the annoying insect hissing near her ear. With a flourish of the hand, she cast a wind cantrip that shooed the mosquitoes away.
"I can see why you miss the forests," Valen whispered, kissing the top of her head.
"Missing the flies? Never."
Valen's chuckle rumbled in his chest against her ear. "I meant all the trees which names you know, and those birds which songs you memorized, and those mythic fish you have seen…"
She fell silent and the two of them just lay there for a while, Valen stroking her hair as he looked up at the sky above them. At some point, the mood shifted and he laughed.
"It's good to be out of your father's notice for a while."
Grinning, she turned in his arms to kiss him. An unseemly flash of thought, and Valen suddenly commiserated with the poor fish driven insane by desire in Kythorn. His love kissed him, pressed into him and caressed his chest. His own hands started to wander quite of their own volition and the treacherous voice of defeat whispered in his mind that they were alone and that they had waited quite long enough…
Suddenly pulling away, Valen gasped for air and forced his hands to stay wisely on her shoulders.
"Chama, wait… I think we need to talk."
Her quiet laughter sounded like it came right from her very kissable throat and he grasped her shoulders in sudden combat against insistent desire.
"I don't recall you having anything to discuss back in Waterdeep?" After a few seconds of silence on his part, however, she looked up at him seriously.
"True, but at the time, we had just battled the greatest foe, I dealt with the aftermath of being free of the demon, and I had slept with you in my arms. There is only so much temptation I can resist, my lady. Besides, it would be considerably more embarrassing if someone walked in on us than when someone knocked on your door."
"Have no fear, we will not be interrupted here. We're one league from the nearest sentry patrol path, and there are precautions I can take against any changes they might have made to the patrols in the last thirty decades."
Sitting up, she took a breath to steady herself, and started tracing magical glyphs in the air with her hands. Valen observed curiously as a summoning circle flashed into existence on the ground with a hell hound at its heart. He startled at the absence of the familiar crawl on his skin in the presence of one of the devilkin.
"Valen, here is Rubeus. Rubeus, Valen."
The hell hound sat and extended a paw forward, and the tiefling found himself shaking the other outsider's hand.
"You've never conjured him in my presence before," he observed.
"No… I haven't conjured him since Neverwinter. I wasn't ready to face him. I could have chosen to conjure another familiar, but it just wouldn't have felt right. I've spent too much time in Rubeus' company."
Easily the size of a large wolf, the hell hound approached his mistress with surprising meekness, his tail held low and yelping plaintively. Seemingly timid herself, Chama extended her arms slowly. It was all the encouragement the hell hound needed; he jumped happily, crashing in her chest paws first. She lost her balance, but the alder bushes conveniently caught her fall. Rubeus then proceeded to lick her face with his fiery breath while she giggled and tried to push him away, scratching him behind the ears all the while.
Valen watched in stunned surprise. He had led armies with beast masters and abyssal hounds, but he had never seen a hell hound act remotely like Rubeus. Of course, the abyssal houndmasters were unlikely to ever return their beasts' affection.
After a few seconds, the tiefling smiled and decided that action was warranted. He pulled the hell hound's collar back so Chama could properly get back on her feet. He had been expecting a growl, a warning snap of the jaws or even a bite, but Rubeus merely turned and tried to lick his hand with as much enthusiasm as he had Chama's face.
"Rubeus, quiet now."
Obediently, the hound flopped down and looked up at the elf expectantly, panting and swishing his tail. Kneeling, she circled his big muscular neck with her arms and hugged him. He let out a canine coo of delight and half stood up to press harder against her.
Valen smiled at the scene. The hell hound and Chama seemed to both have turned away from evil together, if Rubeus's show of affection meant anything. When the big dog licked Chama's cheek, Valen mock snarled, "I'm about to turn jealous, you know."
Immediately the hell hound jumped to him and stretched on hind legs to lick his cheek enthusiastically, before he started dancing from foot to foot, hesitating as to whom he should try to get a hug from.
"I wasn't meaning jealous of Chama. I meant jealous of you, Rubeus."
The big dog tilted his head, but then Chama moved to Valen and hugged him tightly. Jealousy evaporated from his mind.
It was a long minute before she pulled away. She turned to her dog and exchanged a long look with him. The hell hound's ears prickled forward and he set out of their small enclave of alder, his big paws surprisingly silent on the forest floor.
"And don't you go off chasing hares!", she called after him.
There was a canine sigh, and then silence again as the dog stalked away.
"He'll make sure no one comes this way without our notice. He'll come back and warn us if someone's coming closer."
Before sitting down again, Valen shook the sand that enthusiastic Rubeus had gotten everywhere out of his cape. Chama and Valen sat down together, his arm around her shoulders.
"So," she said, "what is it you wished to talk about?"
He took a breath. "Did you wish to spend the night here? …With me?"
"That was the plan… why else come up with that story about water standing under a birch for the night?"
"Chama… as much as I'd like to spend the night here with you… there might be consequences, and I don't want anything to happen that you could regret."
"It's hard to tell because I skipped a cycle in Hell, but I don't think there's much risk of me getting pregnant tonight, if that's what you're getting at."
Valen sighed. Faced with her careful calm, he found it unexpectedly hard to voice his concerns. "That's not all, my love. There is the… the chance," because he would not call it a 'risk', "there is the chance of us conceiving a child, but it is not my only concern. Chama, if it could endanger you to bear a child, I don't want to risk your life for the sake of pleasure. And even if it doesn't, I would only want a child for us if and when you are ready to be a mother again. You can have me wait for years like those poor fish in Lake Sandarion, until you're sure you have the strongest male, I don't care. I love you, Chama, and I would not want to chance you conceiving a child without knowing for sure that it does not endanger you and that you desire it too."
She averted her eyes briefly at the mention of Gaulthery, but suddenly turned back to him and threw her arms around his neck. "I'm so lucky to have you, my Valen." Then she sat back and stared in his eyes. "I don't know if it's dangerous for me to carry a child. Not even the priestesses know, so it seems you won't be getting any answer to that question."
He took her hand. "And you are willing to try? I'm not sure I wish to risk it."
She threw him a hungry, desperate look that told it all: he really thought they could live the remainder of their lives without ever making love? His visible gulp and darkening eyes were all the answer she needed.
Then, an abrupt change of topic, "I would like to see Sigil."
He could not help but grin happily. "You would?"
"Yes, but I have one condition, Granduc."
Valen quirked an eyebrow. "And what is it, my love?"
"If you wish to have children with me, it will have to be before we go to the City of Doors. I don't want to raise our children in Sigil."
He frowned. "It is not so bad a city. Why not?"
Her eyes turned soft. "Valen… you are a tiefling."
"Yes, but what does that…" And then he understood and he faltered.
"So any child of ours will bear a fraction of the demon blood and be a tiefling too. I don't want to see him wandering Sigil's streets every day, worrying because this is exactly how you were taken away to the Blood Wars. I don't want to risk our child ending up a battle slave."
"I understand," he said, and he drew her in his arms. "Please, believe me: wherever we are, I would lay down my life to protect you and our child. I would not let anything happen to either of you."
They lay down on Valen's cape, the sand shifting under them to give them a firm but comfortable bedding.
"Granduc… That is my only condition regarding children. I've been thinking about it ever since I dreamed of Gaulthery. I've been thinking that I would like to show all those things I have shown you today to a child, to hug a small child like my father used to hug me, to learn and see everything through new eyes, and to know everything else that my imagination cannot fathom right now about the reality of having a child. And I can't imagine having a child with anyone but you."
"I certainly hope so," he said gruffly.
"But there's one thing still that I feel we should discuss."
"Yes?"
"I'm not sure if any child of yours would not be born with the taint."
Valen sighed and considered for a long moment while she stroked his shoulder. "I know. He would be even less tanar'ri than me, though, and life for me was not so bad until I was taken by Grimash't. Do you think it is cruelty to give life to a creature that could spend his whole life in suffering?"
"Granduc, I spent nearly my whole life in suffering, and it had nothing to do with any wish or desire of my parents. I think that anyone has a potential for happiness and suffering… Even you are free of the demonic taint now. But, considering your past difficulties, could you manage to not see yourself in your child's struggles with the taint? …Could you love a child born with the taint?"
"Of course I would, even if it would break my heart every second to see him struggle with the demon the way I struggled with it for all those years."
"Then, my love, I think we have nothing further to discuss."
She gave him a serious look, trying to read in his eyes if he had any other doubts, because now was the time to speak of them.
"It seems impossible that it is finally the moment," he whispered. "Surely someone will suddenly interrupt us or something."
She laughed and slapped him playfully on the shoulder. And then he decided that it might be the good one this time, and that no one would interrupt them, and that finally he did not have to resist temptation anymore…
"Chama?", he asked, pulling his lips away from her neck.
"What?", she answered plaintively.
"Will you marry me? Because I'm not sure I'll survive long enough to see our children born if your father finds out that I have spoilt your honour."
"So you would bind your whole life to me, then?"
He sighed and kissed her tenderly. "I've been bound to you since you threw it in my face what made me tanar'ri."
She blushed. "I did apologize for that."
He chuckled. "You did, but when you said those things but still took me as a comrade-in-arms afterwards, it meant that you didn't care. It meant that you didn't accept me because you didn't know what you were getting into, but that you gave me a chance despite the fact that I'm a tiefling. I was bound to you then."
She gave him a little smile. "And I was bound to you when you scowled at me when I asked you to show me around Lith My'athar. It meant you didn't care one bit for the coldness that threatened to strangle me. It meant I could not keep my distance from you because you just wouldn't see that I was trying to keep one. I will marry you, Valen Shadowbreath."
He laughed and rolled her atop him, but then she grinned.
"Come to think of it, I have another condition to put to the fact that we might have children," she said.
"What is it?"
"He must bear his mother's name, the same as an elf. In my great generosity I would allow you to keep your own name, but our child must have my name."
He laughed at her imperious manner.
"I don't have much of a destiny to pass down the generations," he said, "so I agree to your condition, Lady Indiwasi."
And then he really had nothing to consider but the next moment. The way she was sitting on his stomach, it was just perfect to undo her braid. Reaching up and pulling her hair free, he threaded his fingers through it. Whenever he saw her hair unbound, it reminded him of the first time he had kissed her. In Hell, he had buried his hand in her hair, and it had been wet, and felt wonderfully silken. It was dry, warm and glossy now, but still silken, and Valen threaded his hands through it lovingly.
***
When Valen began taking her hair down, it felt like wading down into water at sea, with waves rising higher and higher around her body until she was swept away by the tide.
It was a bit frightening, the feeling of loss of control, and she almost snapped it back in place in panic, trying to wade back out of the water. Without a word on her part, Valen just knew and understood. He slowed down for a while, smiled and smoothed her hair and told her he loved her.
She breathed out and let go of her control. The currents were a pleasant sensation; it was only abandoning herself to it that she feared. But it had been long enough, and she trusted Valen, so she let it go.
She gave him her love and trust. She surrendered her self-control and let go of her fear. She freed the desire and passion bottled up inside her during centuries of solitude. She gave herself to him, from the tip of her toes to the core of her soul.
But the exchange was far from one-way. She welcomed Valen's smiles and his silvery eyes. She admired his muscled body. She enjoyed his tenderness and took full advantage of his experience. She met his desire with matching passion.
And when at the end desire felt strangely like tension and impatience, she realized that what she had mistaken as a current earlier could be no more than a gentle wave lapping around her, because now a powerful wave lifted her and made her lose her footing. And when release swept her away, she gasped from its delicious violence, and basked in it.
When reality returned, she washed ashore with the last wave before the tide receded. Valen held her in his arms like the most precious thing in the world, sheltering her from the coolness of the night with the warmth of his body. She would have traded the last moments and his abandoned weight on her for nothing in the world. Not even to erase her past.
Visibly shaking himself, Valen lifted himself on his elbows, although he kept his forearms under her shoulders and head, as though he would never let go. And she did not want him to.
When finally she mustered the energy to open her eyes, Valen was watching her with still silvery eyes. Mastery returned to her boneless limbs as she willed her hands up to caress his face. He kissed her gently and lightly.
"I love you," she whispered.
He took a shaking breath and hugged her. "I love you too."
She stroked his horns and played with his long hair. She so liked their colour and the way it made his eyes stand out. In a well-travelled path, now, she slid her hand across his broad shoulders.
"Thank you," she murmured.
Blushing brightly, he chuckled. "I believe this was a little too enjoyable to deserve thanks."
"Oh, but it does," she repeated brightly. He tightened his arms around her and kissed her forehead, wishing again that he could erase her past.
"You have," she said quietly.
"What?", he asked in confusion.
"I believe you have just erased my past."
He blinked a few times in surprise. She had read his thoughts. How could she read his thoughts?
"Just a few seconds ago I was thinking that I wouldn't trade your presence in my life for anything in the world. In all my long life, it's the first time I ever think I would rather keep my past. I think it more or less equates with you erasing it, my love."
He was still looking at her in stunned surprise, so she explained, "I'm an elf. I have the potential for a bond with my mate, to get inklings of your thoughts and feelings. However, since you are not an elf, the bond is incomplete. Shall we say we can keep some privacy?"
Rolling on his side, he pulled Chama against his chest and folded the edge of his cape back over her. Now that they were both cooling down, he could see goose bumps rising on her arms.
"That's amazing," he whispered wonderingly.
"I may have been right a moment ago, but I could easily make mistakes," she nuanced.
"How could you be wrong if you read my thoughts through the bond, incomplete as it is?"
"I'm not reading your thoughts, I just get impressions from you. I have to interpret them and I do so within the limits of my knowledge of your personality and my imagination."
"I don't understand." He frowned slightly, while absent-mindedly running his hand up and down her back below the cape. The simple tender gesture made her love him all the more, and she was suddenly grateful that, unlike what she had heard more than one woman complain about, he was not the kind of lover that fell straight asleep after love.
She tried to find a way to explain the bond in words that he could understand.
"The bond is a little like trying to guess what you cook if I was blind. If we were both elves, it would be like tasting what is being cooked. Because you are not elven, it is a little like if I could only smell what is being prepared. I can recognize many ingredients from the smell and so I can guess many recipes by the ingredients in it. It's easier to guess when it's food familiar to me, but I would have trouble to guess if it was a Kara-Turan preparing dinner. I know you quite well, so it's not like guessing the meal prepared by a Kara-Turan. After what I had just told you, and the wistful regret I felt in you regarding the past, it was easy to guess what you had been thinking. I think you will be able to get wisps of me too, even if you're not an elf."
"That is amazing," he repeated. "It never occurred to me that we might have the chance to have that kind of deep connection."
She smiled at him. "We shouldn't let Father know, though. Making love is the easiest way to establish a bond, so we would basically be admitting it to him."
"Since I value my life, I will not disclose it, my love," he said lightly.
A tinge of blue started to creep in the sky in the East; the sun would rise in about an hour.
"Much as I would like to fall asleep here with you," she sighed, "we should go now if we want to reach the village this morning."
He kissed her gently. "Then you must let me ask your father for you hand. Sleeping with you is a tender grace I have dearly missed since Waterdeep."
Indignant, she sat up and pulled the cape over her breasts. "I'm more than old enough to grant my own hand, thank you very much!"
He burst out laughing and kissed her pouting mouth. "Even if you weren't, I defy anyone to resist you when you've set your mind on something. So all we have to do is announce it to him soon?"
Mollified by his good will, she relented. "This very morning, when I finally get out of my room after much needed sleep."
She regretfully pushed the cape aside to dress and Valen imitated her. He was half-way through buttoning his shirt when he suddenly asked, "Does that mean you will wear a wedding dress?"
She let out a long sigh. "I don't know. Do I have to have one?"
He laughed. "Of course. I do wish to make every man jealous and every woman envious of the beautiful bride."
"And you? What will you wear? I have the right to make women jealous too, you know."
He shrugged. "I don't know. I will have to have new clothes made, because I don't have anything fitting."
They were dressed then, and she fastened the clasp of his cloak back on his shoulder. She took his hand and they walked just like that back towards the stream where they had left the path.
Leaves rustled in the bushes by the side of the trail, and Valen crouched and pushed Chama behind him reflexively. He relaxed when Rubeus appeared out of the dense alder scrubs and nuzzled his leg before going to request a caress from Chama. However, the hell hound soon bounded off again, free now to run after some hare or other game.
When they reached the stream and the buckets, Valen filled them with water and Chama hid under her cape after sending Rubeus back to his outside plane. The two of them made their way back to the village in accomplice silence.
