Aurora looked at Andrew in complete fear and was frozen with shock, the silence which ensued seemed to last for decades and we could see that Andrew seemed to be loosing hope as every second passed. "YES!" Aurora screamed breathlessly in utter happiness and excitement as she launched herself at Andrew knocking him to the ground with a crushing hug which winded Andrew, however he seemed not to care as he returned the hug and was laughing. At this acceptance both me and Sky started clapping and cheering. After Aurora had let go of Andrew and gave him a long kiss she picked up the velvet box, which she had knocked out of Andrew's hand, from the floor and took out the fine gold ring and placed it on her left ring finger.
"It's beautiful." Aurora said in awe as she looked at the ring on her finger. The ring had a pink gem, which shone even in the dying light of the evening, in the shape of a rose flower encrusted into the ring at the top of the rounded gold ring. Along the sides of the ring coming down from the gem were smaller golden flower heads which stopped halfway down the ring. "This must have taken ages to make." Looking at Andrew in a questioning way.
"Ask Steven about that, he was the one who made it." Andrew said with a quick approving look my way, he then moved up to Aurora and put his arm around her and held her close, Aurora then placed rested her head on his shoulder. "I almost thought you were going to say no after you sat there silent for a while, I was getting really worried." Andrew said obviously wanting to know what was going through her mind at the time.
She looked up at Andrew and said. "At first I was just completely shocked at what you had just said and then I suppose my mind quickly went through my options and saying yes was the biggest and best option that I could have chosen. How long have you been planning this?" She answered the question before quickly following it up with one of her own.
"The proposal I said to myself I would do it since a few days after the battle, the things I said was completely from the heart right there and then, I needed no planning or time to rehearse what we both knew to be true. All I needed was the courage, or madness I suppose, to do it." He admitted without much shame or embarrassment as he still held her tightly, not wanting a moment lost without her.
"Well congratulations to you two finally getting together I suppose, even if we all knew it was coming." Sky said with a laugh and a big smile, she seemed not to look to surprised at the turn in events. "So Andrew, do you have any idea when the wedding is going to take place or how its going to be organised?" She asked in a wondering tone.
"Sky, I have ideas but nothing certain as I literally just proposed to her haven't I." Andrew answered in a slightly irritated yet patient tone, he then laid down with Aurora still close to him and stared up into the shining heavens above.
"I suppose you two would want to be left alone then?" I say quietly realising that Andrew had turned to the sky for a reason.
"Would be nice." I hear Aurora reply in a tired voice. At this I got up from the ground and began to walk back towards the cobble road which led back near to my house. Sky looked at a loss to what to do, but she soon got up with a great sigh and a shake of her head and walked quickly to catch up with me. The lakeside had emptied of fishermen and the dark water glistened in the bright glow of the brilliant white moon which hung low in the sky.
"You've known about that for a while now haven't you?" She asked me in an accusatory tone once she had caught up and we were out of ear shot of Andrew and Aurora.
"Yup, but he wanted to keep it secret so I did. And yes, before you go moaning at me, the reason we went to the forge was so I could pick up the ring, some how got it without you seeing as well." I started in a serious tone but ended slightly smug.
"Jesus, you're a sneaky bugger aren't you." She said in fake annoyance understanding why I had kept this from her. "Anyway we had better get back to the front line tomorrow, the 56th floor has a mad worm field boss which no one seems to know how to take down."
"I heard about that GeoCrawler, nasty piece of work. Not really surprised no one's taken it down, I mean we only took out the last boss about a week ago and I don't think everyone's been up there fully yet. But yes we should get up there, try map out some more areas or just train on some of the monsters, unless someone comes up with a plan for the boss." I say as I remember that I hadn't done much on the front line for a few days now.
"How long do you think this is all going to take, to get up to and clear floor 100?" Sky asked in a slightly defeated and tired way, it had taken just over a year to get to this point but we still had 45 more floors each of them harder than the last.
"I honestly don't know, I don't know when we're getting out of here, I don't know who will get out of here back to the real world. But I know that we wont be trapped in here forever, there's too many dammed stubborn frontliners for us to loose this game and I bet people on the outside are trying to end this almost as much as we are." I answer truthfully as I looked up at the canopy of leaves which revealed a narrow crack of the dark sky which held shining stars and faintly glowing cloudlike galaxies.