Fion

Sebastian leads me away from the makeshift camp banquet table, silencing the lewd comments being called after us with a menacing look. I follow him quietly, not sure what I am expecting to come of our walk, really not sure of anything, just at the moment.

We slip away together beneath the light of a nearly full waning moon and shelter ourselves beneath the canopy of nearby trees. In the distance we can still see the fires of the camp and hear faint sounds of merrymaking. Even in the dark my feet find their way automatically to a stream, nearly dried up after the long summer, but still trickling quietly. The sound of it, the faint scent wafting up from the forest floor, fills my soul with delight.

With my power I summon more water from the mountain so the sluggish stream turns into a powerful creek, rushing with frothy white runoff. Bending gracefully, I dip my hand into the icy liquid and bring it up for a drink.

The cider from the banquet was delicious, I think as I drink my fill. But there is nothing more lusciously satisfying than this.

Then I recall my companion, and turn to find him watching me with wonder.

“You truly are the sleeping maiden of legend,” he remarks with reverence.

I rise slowly to my full, stately height, and watch him from this short distance.

“Are you thirsty?”

Recalled to himself suddenly, he goes to his knees to drink.

“It’s so sweet…”

I wait for him to finish before letting the stream dry up to its former trickle, leaving the innumerable gallons of water that flowed past this point only moments before to continue their long trek down to the sea.

Sebastian wipes his mouth on his sleeve, still watching me with wonder. Even in the moonlight, I observe silently, his eyes are still so blue.

“You’ve had a long day,”  I remark, noting his dark circles. “You must be weary.”

“I am,” he admits. “But I would not pass up this moment alone with you for the world.”

He’s so straightforward, saying everything in his heart so unreservedly. Unlike Victor, I think, unconsciously finding myself comparing the two once again.

But if I’m being honest, this knight’s straightforwardness intimidates me a little. It’s a bit much for me to be hit with the full force of his feeling so suddenly.

Yes, this is love, I think, as I consider the emotion that emanates from Sebastian’s entire being while he continues to stare down at me. But no ordinary love. It is a force of emotion similar to worship and obsession. He has held me as his ideal perhaps for many years. How will he react then, when he sees the real me is far more ordinary than the rumors seem to claim? Will he be disillusioned, I wonder? Or will that great love of his only deepen?

“They tell me you searched for me for seven years.”

He shakes his head. “I was knighted seven years ago, at age nineteen, at which time my quest to find you became widely known. But I have searched for you my entire life. As a young boy every day I would run into the forest with tales of the sleeping maiden burning in my breast, believing beyond all doubt I would be the one to wake you.”

“Once when I was eight years old,” he continues, “I searched too far and became lost in a part of the forest I did not know. It became dark and I was afraid, until I beheld the white light of a glowing butterfly, a forest spirit. I followed it, and it led me deeper into the forest, down ancient paths no one had trodden in centuries, till at last it alighted at the base of an enormous tree. That’s where I found you.”

My eyes widen at his story, but his gaze does not falter, neither do I sense a lie.  

“I’ll never forget the way you looked that day,” he recalls. “Your fairy beauty frozen in time, illuminated by the glow of the forest spirits, with hair so long and coiling all around you… I couldn’t help but think of the other fairy tale about a sleeping maiden who was awakened by a kiss… I was determined to try, but Azariah forbade me from touching you.”

My breath catches. “You spoke with Azariah?”

It’s true children sometimes can hear the trees, though it is a gift often lost as they age. Still, to think Sebastian actually heard my guardian’s voice and learned his name…

“I asked if I could take you back with me, and he said only your true love could wake you. I told him I was your true love, but he told me to return when I was old enough, and challenge him for you then. I swore to him I would. Then,” his smile is pained, “the world around me began to fade. I was transported magically back to the edge of the forest. In the distance I saw the lights of my village; I could hear my mother calling me home anxiously.”

“I went home,” he continues, “I told my family of what I had seen, but none of them believed me. They said my head was so full of that old tale that I must have fallen asleep on my walk and dreamed up the encounter. But I knew it was no dream. Though no one believed me for nearly twenty years, I knew what I had seen.”

“After that my parents forbade me from searching for you, but it did not stop me. I went every day of my childhood and faced many perils. I became lost more than once and one time nearly starved to death before a hunter found me.”

“When I turned fourteen I became squire to Sir Casanto and could not seek you as I wished. The next year my dragon form manifested, so I had a little more freedom to leave and search for you in my spare time, but for the most part I remained rigidly bound to my duties. At age nineteen I was knighted and became my own man, though still beholden to my Lord Boyd. Nevertheless, he understood my quest to seek you, and permitted me a single day each week that I might go in search of you. Like this, my quest became common knowledge in the north, and many mocked me for my dedication. But I was deaf to them. They called my quest foolishness, a fable, but I knew you were real. So real that I turned down every offer of marriage brought to me, in the hopes of one day… finding my true bride.”

He looks to me earnestly, but I say nothing, still reeling with his story, and from the force of his emotions as they spill out of him.

This man, if nothing else, he is very sincere, I determine. So sincere, it’s almost bad for my heart.

“You can’t imagine,” he says with a sudden rush of exasperation, “what I felt when I heard the rumor only last night that you had been awakened and were being held prisoner in that foul place. In my anger and my desperation to rescue you, it was all I could do not to rush in and trash a whole month’s worth of careful strategy. But you’re here now,” he says, and he sighs with audible relief. “Here, with me. At last.”

Sebastian startles me by lifting his hand to caress my arm. I swallow, tingling with his touch, not hating it, but still not sure I want to let myself be caught up in his pace. Somehow I get the feeling that if I go along with this man, we’ll be married before the night is gone.

“You are fair, my lady,” he says, swallowing me up in his gaze, drinking in my whole being with the look of a man that could never be satisfied, even if he were to gaze upon me for a hundred years. “Perhaps I see you differently because I am man now and no longer a boy… But you are even more lovely than I remember. So beautiful I keep asking myself if I’m dreaming.”

“I thank you for your compliment, Sir Shrike.”

“Bast,” he reminds me softly, and I swallow again.

“Thank you, Sir Bast, for your kind words.”

“And how do you find me?”

“I’m sorry?”

He colors faintly, and I do too. “Was that too direct?”