"Preposterous!" sputtered a fussy brown-haired young man, the Quill in his hand abandoned in the air. "Pure madness!"
He was in the Scamander Manor, just finished with his meeting with the other Naturalists, when he exited the room muttering furiously under his breath. The cause of his frustration was actually sitting right beside him beside the fireplace, her owl-like eyes wide, the firelight reflecting in her deep grey eyes. She was rather young with pale blonde hair that reached to her waist in spirals. She was fiddling with her radish earrings and her onion ring around her finger. Looking, for all intents and purposes, quite calm and unflustered.
"It is not madness," she replied airly, twirling the onion ring in her finger, "It is faith, which you, sadly, lack."
Rolf Scamander slammed his notebook down, looking rather scandalized by her honesty.
"My dear Luna!" he said, astonished. "What you are suggesting is pure fancy! Surely you have heard of my grandfather's grandiose adventures?"
She nodded and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"Oh, yes," she replied, her eyes fixed owlishly on the fireplace, "He was a remarkable man, with admittedly more faith than his grandson," she sighed. "Shame, isn't it? How quickly Nargles can distort heredity. Of course, I don't blame you for inheriting the wrong traits."
Rolf looked appalled.
"You see!" he cried, sitting up straight in indignance. "These-These Nargles – these Wrackspurts! as you call them – These creatures that no man had ever seen! That no naturalist had ever encountered in the centuries since the field had started. These fanciful concepts, which I assure you, my grandfather himself had never encountered in all of his years studying Magical creatures, my dear Luna, as it stands in this day and age, is pure fancy!"
But she regarded him with a dreamy look on her face, an arm tucked on the armchair. Her chin perched in her hand. Her knuckles curled around her lips.
"Is it faith that I can't see it?" she asked, her eyes never blinking. They were almost hypnotizing in their stare. "Or is it ignorance that you are blind to it?"
Rolf slumped back dejectedly on his armchair.
"Oh," he huffed, defeated, "My grandfather did always chide me for my rather narrowed perspective in life. Very well," he said stiffly, sitting up. He gave her a determined look. "I suppose I will give you the benefit of the doubt."
To his surprise, she beamed. Then, much to his embarrassment, she said.
"When you will take my hand, Rolf?" she breathed softly, twirling the onion ring in her finger. And he felt the heat rise to his neck and ears.
"What madness!" He sputtered.
It is often said that some people have this strange fancy where they can feel eyes boring into their heads, even when they are not paying attention to it. And as Rolf sat at the dinner table with the other naturalist, his head buried in his books while the other naturalists engaged in fruitless conversation, he could feel exactly that from across the table. But he refused to respond it.
A moment passed – he could feel the tension rise up. How she could keep such an intense stare was beyond his knowledge.
But by God! He had never met anyone so unusual before. Suddenly, unable to hold it any longer, his spoon clattered to his plate, and he glanced up questionably at the accused – feeling dreadfully uncomfortable.
"Dear Luna," he said, flustered. "Surely there isn't anything here that could possibly have beguiled you?"
But she smiled, her chin tucked on her hand. Her eyes unabashedly dreamy. And he flushed under her gaze.
"You are very strange," she breathed.
He flinched.
"Me?" he said, astonished. "Surely not."
He had a faint feeling that he was being mocked, but he didn't dwell much on it. Instead, he reached up to take his spoon when an idea suddenly struck him. Looking back, he genuinely wondered if it was the coffee addling his wits.
"Luna?"
"Yes, Rolf?"
He fidgeted.
This was all fairly new to him. But he guessed that he could give it a try.
"D'you – D'you think that perhaps –" he stuttered, fidgeting with the sleeve of his robe. "I mean – is it – is it ever possible for . . . a spoon to bend, that is?"
Silence.
He expected her to laugh. To giggle. To tilt her chair back in amusement. He nearly ducked his head under the table with the sheer absurdity of it all. But she remained still as a Jobberknoll.
"If you believe it," she said simply, though her eyes were gleaming. He gave her a long stare from across the table. Their eyes remained locked for a long moment – hazel to grey.
He frowned.
"D'you believe it, Luna?"
She beamed.
"What is knowing without believing?"
He gave her a strange but hesitant look before he straightened up stiffly and sank his spoon into his gravy.
"Very well," he nodded, a solemn look on his face. "I trust your judgments, then." So engrossed in his books, he missed her giddy look.
"When will you take my hand, Rolf?" she breathed, her eyes fixed dreamily on him. And he nearly spat his drink out in astonishment.
"Dear Luna," he sputtered, flushing intensely. "The world to you is but pure fantasy!"
He didn't know exactly how it came about, or why he had even accepted it. But he had been so engrossed in his routine walks along the trail outside of the Scamander Manor when she had suddenly offered to accompany him. Naturally, as a gentleman – and as a person who was raised to be humble and polite – he didn't refuse her. Though an irritating part of him told him that he could never refuse Luna.
What was it about her that seemed so –
Strange?
Sure, he had never had enough experiences in relationships, or even the opposite gender. He had been so engrossed in his studies that he had never given them much thought. But he could swear that there was no other girl out there that was like Luna. No girl out there that wore a necklace made of radishes. Or even allowed a Doxy to rest – rather endearingly, in his opinion – on her nose.
She was like a daisy in the midst of roses.
"Have you ever heard of the girl who chased after a white rabbit?" she asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
He tore his eyes away from the BilliWig that had been climbing up the leaves of the tree near them to look at her. She seemed to be waving her hands dreamily, imitating the fluttering Doxy near her. The Doxy, in turn, seemed to enjoy her company.
Strange how she seemed to tame even the most hideous of creatures.
"A white rabbit?" he asked, astonished. "How queer. Why would anyone chase after a white rabbit? They are hardly mysterious in nature."
But she looked unfazed.
"Why look for meaning in things that have none?" she asked wistfully, the Doxy perched on her finger. She had a sort of childish wonder that he found oddly . . .
Fascinating.
Rolf frowned. "Is there meaning in nonsense?"
She smiled. "What is nonsense without meaning?"
"What is meaning without meaning?"
"What is a circle without an end?"
Rolf shook his head.
"Oh, Luna," he sighed. "How clever you are, yet how unfortunate that you choose to expend all your mental vitality chasing after fruitless conjecture."
She gave him a searching look.
"Which is better," she asked dreamily. "the heart or the mind?
His eyebrows creased.
"Surely both!"
She smiled, albeit in a mysterious fashion.
"When will you take my hand, Rolf?" she breathed dreamily, watching the Doxy flutter away from her hand.
He flushed.
"Dear Luna!" he muttered exasperatedly and shook his head. "You baffle me!"
Admiring nature had always been his own strange niche, rather like how Luna was to her fanciful creatures. After weeks of pouring endlessly in his books, the greenhouse in the back where the Magical plants grew, and cages where the Magical creatures prospered in the back of the Manor, he would always take at least an hour or two a day to travel far beyond the Manor for a bit of peaceful stroll.
The trail was fashioned by his feet. It was a strange oddity that he had. But it gave him peace and contentment. It relieved him from the stress of the mind. Instead, it gave him tranquility in the heart.
Funny, was that what Luna had meant?
To his utter bewilderment, as if hearing his thoughts, he found the subject of his thoughts at the far end of the trail. He looked up and found the girl in question standing at the far edge of a steep cliff, looking down at the majesty of the waters below. The wind caressed her cloudy-colored hair, her butterbeer-bottled earrings tinkling and clattering. She was humming softly and balancing on one foot rather precariously at the edge of the cliff. She was barefoot. And despite the chill winter air, she was wearing a short-sleeved rainbow dress that reached to her ankle.
There was a strange oneness with her and nature.
But he grew alarmed.
"Luna!" he cried, rushing towards her. "Must you stand so close to the edge? And where is your cloak? Have you lost the grasp of your senses?"
He tried to reach her, but she simply twirled away from his grasp. She was even closer to the edge of the cliff, and he felt his anxiety amplify.
"Luna – " he said weakly.
But either she didn't hear him, or she was deliberately humoring him. With heavy-lidded dreamy grey eyes, she gave him a soft smile, knelt down, and took a handful of sand from the edge of the cliff. Rolf simply watched warily as the sand dripped from her fingers in waves.
But she spoke.
"Is everything that we see or seem," she said wistfully, sounding oddly forlorn. "but a dream within a dream?"
He looked at her. He didn't know why her solemn tone made him feel so strangely – as if he desired nothing than to return her back to her former state. It was strange. He realized that he rather liked her oddity.
He was dismayed by her solemn mood.
"If it is," he said softly, watching the sand drip – grain after grain. "then surely it is a dream from which I never wish to wake."
She smiled, and the last grain of sand reached the ground.
"If I leap from the edge," she said, reverting back to her dreamy state. "Will I ever reach the bottom?"
He startled.
"What madness, Luna!" he chided. "I fear the consequences, if you leap."
"Fear?" she asked, fairly astonished. "Fear in me leaping or fear in me losing my sanity?"
He frowned.
"Surely both!"
She smiled mysteriously.
Carefully, he closed the gap between them as he neared her. He didn't know if she really did consider throwing herself off the cliff, but the thought terrified him nevertheless. As a sort of reassurance, he approached her, which she finally allowed. He then placed a gentle hand on her back and one hand on her shoulder and led her away.
But she stared up at him with a rather curious look.
"Did you know that even a blind man can see the truth?"
He looked astonished.
"Surely you aren't implying that I can't?" he said indignantly. He knew vaguely what she was implying.
Her eyes glistened, and she beamed.
"When you will take my hand, Rolf?" she breathed softly, fiddling with her butterbeer earrings. He gave her a piercing stare.
This time, he sighed.
"I –" he hesitated. He shook his head. "Oh, Luna."
"There are Wrackspurts here."
Rolf looked up from his notebook. She was standing over him with scarlet robes, a straw hat on her head, her Basilisk necklace reached down to her knees, a yellow sundress underneath her robes . . . in the middle of winter.
He had tried . . . He really did. To convince her to wear more winter appropriate apparel for the long journey. They were researching the foraging rate of the Nogtails with the other naturalists, when they somehow found themselves wandering off to find a different herd. But she seemed to have a firm grasp of her own self. And he told himself . . .
He wouldn't have it any other way.
"Odd," he remarked, frowning down at his notebook. The rational part of him wanted to ignore her, but the other wished to please her. "Don't they appear in times of great distress?"
"Oh, yes," she affirmed, astonished. "Or when the subject is feeling particularly distracted by a strange oddity."
Tearing his eyes from his notebook, he stood up and frowned.
"An oddity?" he asked, bewildered. "Surely there is nothing odd about anything outside of the norm. If anything, it's what is normal that is the oddity."
She smiled again in that mysterious way of her. And when he finally realized what he said, he flushed an intense shade of red.
Surely she had taken him for a fool!
"L-Luna," he sputtered, running an agitated hand through his tousled brown hair. "I – I do believe that there are Wrackspurts nearby."
To his utter embarrassment, she wilted and looked profoundly sympathetic. She approached him until only his notebook on the ground was separating them.
"They must be addling your wits, Rolf," she said concernedly, brushing her knuckles across his cheek. "Do you know how to repel them?"
He flushed.
"I – I – " he choked. "I think so."
A hint of a smile appeared on her face.
"Will you take my hand, Rolf?" she asked softly. And it alarmed him how astute she was.
She had predicted the outcome from the beginning.
She had faith in him.
And he hated himself for it. He was usually confident and collected. Why did she have the ability to reduce him into Flobberworm just by being, well – her! He had never met anyone like this. Surely he would never find anyone like Luna, or even close to Luna. Surely even if he travelled across the seven seas, past the horizons, past the seven continents, and continued, he would never someone with as much as faith as Luna – who, in his rather learned mind, was the very essence of eccentricity.
"I –I –" he stammered, "Yes," he breathed, "I – I think – I mean – I have to come to the realization –" he exhaled, frustrated. "Oh, dear, sweet Luna! Will you accept my hand in marriage?"
He outstretched his hand. He hoped to the God above them that she would take it.
To his relief, she beamed.
"I believe I would."
And, for the first time, he smiled at her.
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
A/N: I'm such a sap for stuttering men. I honestly don't know what came over me. This is actually the first time I explore this relationship. I guess I just needed an outlet. Anyway, enjoy.
Review!