The storm came out of nowhere causing them to quickly get shelter near the Duchy peaks. The cave they found was large, cold, and echoed but thankfully dry.

Their stomachs grumbled, and Easton looked into the stormy landscape.

“I will go out and find some food.”

He left before she could say anything in response, or think something for that matter.

The wind whipped around him and the rain pelted him. He had been foolish to go out into the dark with no source of light. He didn’t very well like going back either with nothing. Easton wasn’t sure how long he had been out in the swampy terrain. He’d fallen several times, his slacks covered in mud as he made his way back up the slope to the cave only to stop at the entrance entranced by the firelight’s glow. A whiff of cooking meat flooded his senses and he entered to find the cave transformed. Sleeping bags were placed on either side of a fire built at the center. Rhea sat and turned the roasting meat over the fireplace. Her sky beast curled around their encampment eying the meat.

“How…?” Easton wasn’t sure what he meant to say.

Lady Rhea looked up from the cooking meat and gave him a little smile, her eyes twinkled with a secret he couldn’t read.

“I had some provisions in my pack. I always carry essentials just in case.”

There was a lie in her words but he couldn’t decipher quite where it was. Easton eyed her satchel in curiosity. How did all the goods she had laid out fit in such a small bag?

He hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud until Rhea answered him, “It’s impolite to ask to see a lady’s carry-on, Lord Iris.” She rose and bent forward taking a blanket from the bag before handing it to him. “You’ll get a cold if you stay in those wet clothes.”

Shivering Easton went behind the skybeast and checked to see that Rhea’s gaze kept looking toward the cave’s entrance before he began to change out of his wet clothes and wrapped the large blanket around his person before coming back to the fire to see somehow Rhea had made a rack before the fire for his clothes.

“Thank you.” He nodded toward her only for her to shake her head.

“Think nothing of it.” She glanced at the clothes and noticed they were muddy and her thoughts confused him.

‘If only it wouldn’t be suspicious, I could get him new clothes.’

How? He wondered.

It was late in the night wrapped in the blanket and sleeping bag that Lady Rhea had somehow procured that he leaped at the crash of lightning and thunder. A strangled cry escaped from his lips. Rhea mumbled in her sleep, before raising her head. Her hair was mussed and curled around her chin.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, please go back to sleep, Lady Rhea.”

‘He’s shivering. He’s frightened. Look at his eyes.’

Easton clenched his fists, was he that obvious?

He glanced at Lady Rhea only to see her mumbling something to her skybeast who rose and shook its body before moving to block the entrance of the cave with its long silver body.

The rumble of thunder was still heard but the flashes of light were dulled, causing his shaking to settle down.

“I used to be afraid of white light.”

It was an oddly specific thing to be frightened of. Easton brought the blanket closer to himself but glanced at the maiden only to notice he’d at one point lost his glasses. Quickly his gaze lowered worried she’d see the gold in his usually silver gaze.

“White light always meant pain.” Lady Rhea curled into a ball, her sleeping bag wrapped around her like a cocoon but her head upon her knees her gaze looking into the dying firelight.

Easton remembered the first time he saw lightning strike, no storm came before it, only the moving hands of a bully with sadistic glee.

His voice whispered, “How did you overcome it?”

Rhea gave him a weak smile, “What gave you the impression I overcame it?”

The rest of the night was spent in quiet reflection. Her thoughts were mostly quiet as well.

‘Why do I feel relief knowing he is not impervious?’

Easton couldn’t help but wonder the same but about her.

The next morning with the dawn came the end of the storm.

Easton looked over the supplies that Lady Rhea couldn’t fit back into her pack. A suspicion rose in his mind, as he remembered a legend. He would have to read about it again to sate his curiosity.