No More Walls
Episode 68
ArisannalooksupintoCerian’s face hovering over her. What happened?
Did she fall asleep?
“You appear disoriented,” he says as he twines his fingers in her hair where she lies with her head in his lap again as their train clacks beneath them.
“I don’t remember going to bed.”
He shifts. Are his ears turning pink?
“You fell asleep,” he mumbles. “On...on top of me.”
Stars above.
“Well. I’m mortified now. I am so sorry. We weren’t talking, were we? I guess I was more tired than I realized. And you were so comfortable...” Now she’s rambling.
He studies her for a few moments without saying anything as she presses her lips together to keep from rambling even more, but thoughts swirl in his eyes as he looks at her.
With a sigh, she opens her mouth again. “What are you thinking?”
He doesn’t rush to answer, but she doesn’t prod him.
“You keep apologizing for...for things that make me happy,” he finally says.
“Me falling asleep on you makes you happy?”
“You make me happy, Arisanna. You’re...you’re like a light in my darkness.”
That was almost romantic.
Before she can manage a response, he rubs his face and gazes at the inky blackness speeding by outside their railcar window.
Is he thinking of Elowyn again?
“You look like you could use some distracting, my elven prince.”
At first, he clenches his jaw, but then he sighs. “It feels wrong to be distracted right now.”
“And yet here we are.” She pushes herself to a sitting position as she faces him on the velvet bench with her legs curled under her.
Brows knit, he turns back to her. “I don’t understand.”
“This place, Cerian. It exists to draw us closer, but it also exists as a place of rest. Right? When everything is too heavy a burden to carry in the real world, we have our heartlanding, where it’s just us. Where we can simply exist and let ourselves be distracted. We can go for a walk in the woods or have a snowball fight or...or enjoy the hot springs together. All the heavy burdens will be waiting when we return. We don’t need to carry them here, too.”
He studies her without speaking, and she breathes out slowly as she looks down at her hands.
“Here, I can forget everything I’ve been told to be my whole life,” she whispers, “and just be yours.”
When he slips a finger beneath her chin to lift her face to his, her stomach does a little flip, but he says nothing. He just looks at her with those brilliant emerald eyes. His gaze pierces something deep within her soul, as if he can see all the parts of her she shares with no one else. The fears, not of the dark or of creatures in the woods at night, but the real fears that permeate her core. Fears of not measuring up. Of not being enough. Of letting down everyone who’s depending on her to be perfect.
Unflappable. Dependable.
Words people always use to describe her.
There’s no room in her life to be anything less.
