A garden that stops at the cliff that drops right into the sea.
This is where it ends for him.
Every time.
Not once in all my time with him has he finished the damn garden.
Still, watching him sketch is sort of relaxing.
There’s zen in it.
It’s like I can hear only the chalk scraping gently over thick, coarse parchment—and it tunes out the murmurs and the laughs from around camp.
It’s meditative.
It draws me into a sort of daze.
Fires crackle all around me, a welcoming heat swelling against me, and the world’s most uncomfortable pillow supports me.
It lulls me.
I think I’m about to fall asleep again when he hesitates.
The cottage is drawn, the cliff, most of the garden with pavers and garden beds and a pond and wildflowers.
But the left side of the garden is blank.
Just clean parchment.
So, as he presses the black chalk to the page—and draws, slipping back into his flow, it surprises me.
It almost startles me.
But there he goes. Stroke after stroke, he soothes me with a lullaby of art, of charcoal against parchment, and my lashes are growing heavier by the time I realise the outlines of what he’s drawing.
Rows of small flowers, like wild daisies, separated by stone statues… and pews.
A smirk slips onto my lips.
My idea.
“It’s good,” I say, soft, and my voice must be swallowed by the song of the campfire, because no one around the flames look at us.
Mika is asleep.
Arwyn watches over her as he usually does.
A pair of fae I don’t know are planted on the right of the campfire, playing a game of cards. Not the sort of cards I recognise.
These ones have symbols (like the strange kind on the map) and pentacles painted onto them, and they are about half the size of our playing cards.
The tight space of the clearing has pushed us all together, and that means being pushed closer to warriors I’m not familiar with.
Samick’s presence eases me.
There are less fae packed around this fire than the rest—and I get the idea that it’s to do with Samick and Arwyn, and how most of the other warriors seem to go out of their way to avoid them.
But not him.
