“Ugh,” said Ursula, plopping onto the ground.
“Cloud berries are quite coquettish, as far as fruits go,” said Arris, hoping that might comfort her. “I don’t think they can be knocked to the ground, I’m afraid. They can only be harvested by touch. Everything else bounces off or goes through them.”
Ursula glanced at him, bemused.
“Did I already curtsy to you?”
“No.”
“Did I speak with the appropriate amount of deference and all that?”
“Uh, well—”
“My mother would throttle me,” said Ursula, shaking her head. “Can we pretend I did all those things?”
Arris laughed. “Yes. Let’s.”
Ursula pointed at the canopy of white berries. The wisp willow she had hit a moment ago was slowly beginning to reform and gain solidity.
“Cloud berries are annoyingly hard to find in the markets of the Ulva Wylds,” said Ursula. “You have to rely on travelers and merchants, and oftentimes the berries are bruised beyond recognition or are simply glass berries painted with mallowmill to make them look like cloud berries.” Ursula made a sound of deep annoyance. “Have you ever tried them?”
“Only once, I’m afraid,” said Arris. “But I’ve never forgotten the taste of them—”
“Or how a single bite lets you rise up a few inches in the air,” said Ursula excitedly. “My mother had a few jars of cloud berry jam. They’re all finished now, but she always let me take huge spoonfuls of them. When I asked for seconds and thirds, she never said no… I didn’t even know how precious they were until I tried to find them again.”
Arris eyed her. “Sounds like you have a generous mother.”
Ursula made a face. “Yes. It sounds like that.”
Arris waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. Arris remembered her reticence about her parents during the talent trial, and it made him curious. The longer he looked at Ursula, the more he felt as if he’d seen her somewhere…
“Here’s our chance!” said Ursula, pointing.
Arris followed her gaze and saw two cloud bears floating into the tunnel of wisp willows. They were diminutive creatures, no taller than a child, and their fur was gray and smoke-soft. They moved gracefully, oblivious to Arris and Ursula on the ground far below them.
Ursula clapped her hands happily. “Excellent. We’ll just wait for the bears to take them and then we’ll have some for ourselves.”
“I really wouldn’t do that,” said Arris. “They’re mostly tame but when it comes to their food, they’ll fight you. They have extremely sharp teeth, you know. It’s why the palace cooks only save cloud berries as a treat.”
“So they’re scared of nothing?” she asked.
“Well, I imagine they’d be scared of other bears out in the true wilds, but they’re the only ones of their kind in this pavilion,” said Arris.
“Excellent,” said Ursula, standing. She started waving her hands up and down, trying to catch the cloud bears’ attention. One of them, with a tangle of cloud berries already in its paw, looked down at Ursula. A low snarl filled the air. Alarm raced through Arris’s veins. A mauling would be a poor precedent for marriage, and while Ursula struck an imposing figure—
Arris blinked. One moment she was standing in front ofhim, golden-haired and sharp-toothed. The next, she had transformed into a huge blonde bear loping under the arcade. She bellowed and the cloud bears scampered away with frightened yelps. Ursula nosed at something on the ground, and when she turned around, she was not only a girl once more, but also carrying an armful of cloud berries. She grinned at Arris.
“Want some?”
For the next half hour, Arris and Ursula gorged themselves on cloud berries. He kept thinking—rather arrogantly—that everything was a pretense for a kiss. But Ursula made no move and neither did Arris. For a moment, they were both lost in the small treasure of the cloud berries, laughing as their feet lifted off the ground with each bite. The berries tasted of pure delight, like the daydream of eating a cloud come true in the way only a child could imagine. Fleeting and innocent and achingly sweet.
“Thoughts?” asked Ursula, patting her belly.
“I was thinking of how refreshing it is not to smell sandalwood for a moment,” said Arris, rubbing his mouth. All that kissing had made them chapped.
Ursula blinked. “I meant in the sense of how you would use cloud berries in a sweet or savory dish.”
“Oh.”
