"Can I ask something?" I spoke out as we both stared up at the glistening night sky.
"Of course, Princess."
"Can I know more of what you were telling me about earlier?"
"And what was that?" Mulan asked with hesitance.
"About the trees." I silently whisper looking her way now, scared if she would shut me out from her past. Mulan, surprised, glanced from the sky to the fire, then looked up from the blaze kindly. Her eyes were gleaming from the fire's embers as she spoke on.
"I thought I had made trouble with my stories." She replied a bit flattered from my curiosity.
"Not at all! It was different, it made me think." Mulan smiled genuinely from my interest being peeked with this, so she continued with her explanation.
"Well, as I said before, we believe that trees can contain one's soul. It's an old folklore that may or may not be true. I just remember my mother always telling me to talk to the trees whenever I had the chance, because sometimes you could hear them talk back." Mulan began to laugh a bit from her answer. Her eyes gleamed with thrill of her memories from her childhood.
"What is it?" The corners of my lips curling into a smile wanting to join Mulan's flurry of joy.
"I just remember," she chuckle between words reminiscing in past memories, "I used to talk to the trees in our garden every moment I had! Of course I have never heard anything being spoken. But, sometimes I really felt that whoever possessed the tree listened to me." Mulan's genuine happiness and the talk of her past made me feel the immense delight and made me want to know more about this woman. This woman I felt a deep connection with.
Suddenly, I felt a strange air upon us. I looked at Mulan and saw her deeply thinking as her eyes darkened with somber. "And I remember all the times I had cried in that garden..." Mulan sat slumping a bit, remembering hardships she had in her past. I saw her countenance become troublesome just in these few seconds of her past. I saw the pain that her eyes harbored for all these years, all this agony being hidden.
I wanted to embrace her fragile body. She may have been a Warrior, but she was also a person with emotions. I tried so hard to keep my hands at my sides as I tried to thinking of something to lighten the mood.
"Maybe Phillip's soul is in a tree?" I grinned trying to show humor, wanting her depressed mood to pass. Her eyes lifted up slowly, toward mine. Her countenance changed and her lips curled into a beautiful smile.
She shrugged back, "Maybe."
As I laid in the bedroll Mulan had fixed for me, I began to realize the feeling that brewed within me. That these past few days with Mulan had awakened a deep love I wouldn't feel for Phillip. That she is more the woman I had originally thought she was. Mulan had opened up so much and smiled more often after we met. I started to really contemplate of telling Mulan to stop our search because I thought to myself that night.
This would be enough.