“So,” Iuen asked, “what do you think?”
Ealia looked over at Iuen. Part of her wondered absently if he would ever get the grass stains out of his grey officers robes. Maybe he’d get ribbed for it back at the officer’s mess, interrogated to find out who his mysterious lover was.
“Think of what?” she asked. She looked up, staring into Iuen’s blue-green eyes, trying to work out the thoughts that lay behind his face. She could have read his mind, if she had wanted to, but that removed the fun of it.
The humanity of it.
Of this.
Of them.
“Of us,” he grinned, pressing a kiss impulsively to her forehead, “an officer of the Xyen Court and a Mage of the Forests.”
Ealia snorted.
“I’ve not been called one of those in a long while,” she remarked.
“Better than Goddess,” he said.
Ealia rolled her eyes. That was one cult in one area of the Southern Rivers that believed that. All because of one lost bet a hundred years ago.
“I’m not that,” she said, snuggling into Iuen’s embrace, “none of that. Just Ealia.”
Iuen grinned.
“So what do you think of us then, immortal Goddess of the Forests,” Iuen teased.
Ealia paused, tapping the ground with her finger. A flower burst from the soil, delicate yellow petals unfurling open to the sunshine.
She plucked it out of the ground and carefully placed it behind Iuen’s ear.
“I think we’re perfect,” she replied.
This flash fiction was first posted in 2020
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Alex.J.Cobalt 