Okay. Sure. That happened.
I spot Boone in the distance not long after, deep in conversation, posture alert, attention divided. I stop without meaning to, just watching him.
He’s beautiful.
Not just physically—though yes, that too—but in the way he holds space, the way others defer to him without question. The way his presence anchors the area around him.
I don’t know how I got so lucky. How I stumbled into this world of legends and somehow found a place in it.
I spot a stall of flowers nearby—huge, vibrant blooms with thick stems and broad leaves. The vendor is a friendly cryptid with bark-like skin and eyes like polished amber, who explains the plant’s adaptive resilience with pride.
I buy one. It’s overly large with orange petals and a yellow center. Structurally, it’s fascinating—perfect, in fact. My fingers itch to take a photograph, as I haven’t quite seen anything like it before.
As I head toward Boone, he looks up—easily a hundred yards away—and locks eyes with me instantly. My pulse stumbles as he takes me in, his expression softening in a way that makes my chest ache. When I reach him, I rise onto my toes, gently urging him to lower himself.
I tuck the flower behind his ear.
He doesn’t blush—at least, not visibly—but the embarrassment is there, sweet and unmistakable. I smile, murmuring reassurance, and finally, finally, he relaxes.
He kisses me softly. We ignore the cheers.
And together, we head toward food, the festival opening up around us like a promise.
I can see it in the way his shoulders finally ease as we move together through the festival grounds, in the way he lets me pull him toward stalls instead of steering me away from them. He even laughs—actually laughs—when a group of small, foxlike cryptids challenge him to a game of skill that involves weighted rings and an alarming amount of heckling.
I win a carved wooden token from one of the games. Boone pretends not to notice when I slip it into his bag like a trophy.
For a while, the wrongness fades into the background.
We eat—too much, probably. Creature-safe breads that taste like rosemary and smoke. Human-safe stews thick with vegetables I don’t recognize but immediately want to catalog.Boone samples a fermented drink and grimaces so hard I nearly choke laughing.
“Never again,” he declares solemnly.
“You say that now,” I tease. “But next year?—”
He pauses, and I’m pretty sure he’s holding his breath. It’s subtle, just a second too long, but I feel it. The weight of time presses in, uninvited.
“Next year,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I like the sound of that.”
Music drifts across the grounds in layered waves. A group of stringed instruments I can’t identify produce a sound that vibrates somewhere between melancholy and joy. Nearby, a cluster of drummers have synced themselves to a geyser’s cycle, the rhythm building until steam erupts and the crowd cheers.
Boone watches it all with a careful eye, cataloging movement and energy even as he tries to be present with me. I know that look now—the one where he’s split in half between duty and desire.
I brush my thumb over his knuckles. “You’re allowed to have fun,” I remind him gently.
“I am having fun,” he says, then pauses. “I’m also… watching.”
“I know.”
The honesty in my voice seems to surprise him. He searches my face, then nods once.
We wander through the enchanted crafts again. Boone stops at a stall run by a pair of horned cryptids arguing cheerfully over the proper way to inscribe a stabilization rune. He weighs in without being asked, and the relief on their faces is immediate.
I watch him work—focused, precise, respected—and feel that familiar swell of pride and affection.
He’s called away briefly after that, intercepted by Bob with a crackle of static and a flurry of gestures. Boone squeezes my hand before leaving.
“Thirty minutes,” he promises. “Stay where it’s busy.”
