The Day They Knew Love

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Sophia eyed him with a bit of a dangerous gleam in her eye as she stepped toward him and slipped her hand in his so he could help her back down the mountainside. "It's a good think you didn't tell me about marshmallows before we left, or I'd have never left the place." The small traces of weariness starting to show on her face vanished, and she was at once ready for the journey back. She was grateful for his support on the steep pathway, but when they got to the more level ground, she did not release his hand, but kept hers held loosely in his.

As they walked, the cool night air was pleasant enough at first, and she enjoyed the sounds of night insects coming to life and the soft breeze stirring the branches and long grasses. As the dew settled however, and the wind picked up, Sophia shivered, and walked a bit closer to him to shelter from the wind. "Well, I can't say I really know any. But it sounds like fun, a fire and a scary story and marshmallows." She smiled, looking up at him. "I hope you don't mind telling them."

She was surprised by how quickly they returned to the fireside, and Sophia could not help sighing in relief, stretching a bit and slowing her pace to amble up to the cold pit, sinking down next to him with rather ungainly movements. She pulled off her pack and dug around inside, pulling out a bottle of over-the-counter medicine for pain and measuring out a dose to help with the strain on her muscles. She lay back, relaxing with a sigh of pleasure as the welcome heat of the flames washed over her. Just as Konstantine had predicted, instant drowsiness stole over her. She groaned as he directed her to the cooler, and sat up, grumbling good-naturedly.

She shuffled over to the cooler and poked around, digging out the bag of marshmallows, and was pleased to find a box of graham crackers and a couple chocolate bars too. S'mores were doubly as good as marshmallows on her own, and she grabbed it all, plopping back down at the fireside. The sound of horse whickers and crunching caught her attention, and she glanced over to the man and horse, smiling at the silhouette of moonlight on their shadowed forms as Konstantine fed him the apple. She stretched with a yawn and lay back again, basking in the warmth until Konstantine returned, then sat up as he sat beside her. "Thanks," she said, taking one of the sticks from him and reaching into the now-open bag of marshmallows to skewer a couple of the treats and thrust them into the fire before passing over the bag. "How's Aethon? Did he do alright today without us?"

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"Wow, that's pretty neat," she said, and laughed as Aethon stamped his hoof in approval, and turned to call out to him. "Yes, Aethon, you're quite impressive!" She grinned to herself, turning back to the fire.

Sophia cast a sideways glance at Konstantine as he began his tale, idly turning the marshmallows over the fire for an even heat with one hand, and reaching over with a mischievous smirk to snag a chunk of chocolate off one of the crackers when he wasn't looking, and laughing when she was eventually caught out. As the first couple of fat browned mallows finished, she lifted the stick near so Konstantine could smash them between the crackers, then shoved on more marshmallows.

The story gave her goosebumps, and when it came to the part about the bodies still hanging, her shoulders rippled as a shiver crept down her spine. Her attention wavered from the firelight, fixing on Kousta as he continued his tale, and as he began to tell of his own personal experience in the forest, a wafting scent of burnt sugar brought her back around to realize the marshmallows had caught fire. She cursed, and lifted them out, blowing out the flame. Only the outside was really affected, luckily. These too were given over to Konstantine, and she set the stick aside for now, watching curiously and with a crooked eyebrow as he unbuttoned his shirt.

She leaned in close to see the scarring he was pointing out, the firelight casting a weird light on the pockmarked scar, the flesh raggedly healed. She stretched out a finger, lightly tracing the path of claw marks across his shoulder. As she straightened back up, taking a s'mores for herself, it was clear by her thoughtful expression that she was undecided how true this tale was. He had, after all, just admitted to her that he and Aethon had come across tree cats often enough, those marks might easily have been from that. Still, it was a good story, and she'd not doubt him overmuch. "There are enough stories of strange happenings in the world for me to not believe some sort of spiritual power lingers. Some veil shadows most people's eyes from seeing it, but I've felt things from time to time. I wonder what sort of strange malevolent force lives there that would convince people to commit suicide?"

She seemed thoughtful as she munched on the treat, and sat up as she finished, licking the sticky remnants off her fingers as she picked up the stick again, spearing a couple more marshmallows and thrusting them in the fire. "I'd not mind going to see it someday. I don't know that I'd be brave enough to go that deep in, but just to walk under the trees would be interesting."

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Moreso than anything about the story, the dark ominous tone in Kousta's voice as he spoke of never seeing the place again gave Sophia a chill, as though she'd sank into cold water. She shifted in her seat and moved almost imperceptibly closer, snagging a few more logs to toss over the fire and busying herself with adding more marshmallows to her skewer and thrusting them into the flames. She waved off the wine, however, feeling that it's flavor mingled with chocolate and sugar wouldn't taste very good to her. She reconsidered a moment, her eyes slightly narrowed, and with a grin she reached for it anyway and took a long swallow.

On the matter of higher powers, she nodded vigourously. "Oh, beyond certainty. Too many coincidences for me to feel they are not by some design. Who's, I could not say, but something certainly takes a hand." She sat back, growing somewhat drowsy with a belly full of chocolate and the soft glow and radiating warmth of the fire at hand, and took another drink

"I do believe I agree. It was a rare great stroke of fate that brought you to my corner, I think. I only just moved to that corner the day before yesterday, you know, and now I couldn't tell you what made me choose that spot." She eyed him, a langorous smile on her lips where she lay back on one elbow, passing back the bottle of wine, and glanced at him. "Why would she be laughing?"

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She eyed the second cigarette as he lit up, but didn't say anything. She sat up, and took the bottle, taking another drink as he began his story. Something in his tone and actions bothered her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. At first, the story he told sounded much like the ghost story, and that was all she took it as, but as the tale progressed, a chill crept over her, and she drew her own parallels. Likely the same conclusions Konstantine had come to, but too many of the words were cryptic for her to make much sense of them. When he finished the tale, she sat in thoughtful silence, broken only to take another drink of wine.

At his last question, she shook herself out of the reverie, and summoned up a brave attempt at a teasing grin. "I told you already, you're barking mad and completely off your rocker. I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. I stand by what I said earlier though, the people who aren't tend are too boring to bother with."

She busied herself with reaching for the long stick they'd been using. Her hands fumbled with the bag of marshmallows though. "I never got to meet my grandparents, at least not since I was too little to remember. My mum says I'm the spitting image of her mother though, my grandma Sophie. My grandpa on that side died before I was born, and my dad doesn't speak to his parents, so I don't know if they're alive or dead. You're lucky you got to know yours. I'm sorry your grandmother passed like that. Alzheimer's is...never easy."

She pulled the well-toasted mallow out of the fire, delicately eating it right off the skewer. She sat a little straighter when it was finished, and set the stick aside. She cleared her throat with a little nervous cough, as though to dissolve the tension, and seized her abandoned pack. "You never showed me your work from earlier. Do you want to see mine?" she asked, a little too brightly, as she dug in without waiting for an answer and pulled out the binder. She handed over the ink painting from earlier, showing Konstantine sitting at the base of the fig tree, head bowed as he played the bouzouki. The graphite sketch of the valley from the mountaintop was there too, and a few quickly-scribbled poems and song lyrics, most merely a line or two. The longest and most notable piece went thus:

moon drunk monster
beautiful and strange
howl your melancholy question
and tell me
which you dread more
the echo
or the answer?

She stood up, and strode around the fire, moving off into the dark on a personal matter. She passed by Aethon on her way back, patting his neck and feeding him a graham cracker she'd smuggled out. When she came back, she ambled slowly around the fireside, wringing her hands slightly as she came to sit back down. It was hard to disguise her sudden departure as a simple bathroom break, by her actions before and after, but she still tried, giving him a half-smile. She chewed on her lower lip, mulling over her thoughts before turning toward him, taking a hesitant breath. "Did she...really say those things? And you think...they're about me?"

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The advice to seek out her father's parents was met with a half-hearted and non-commital shrug. It was hard to feel any connection to family she had never met. She had uncles and an aunt on that side of the family too, but it had never occurred to her until now that she had never met any of them, either, and it was only through her mother that she even knew they existed. She had not thought about that before, but now it seemed passing strange.

She cleared her throat and pulled his offered drawing into her lap. She smiled, bright and warm, running her fingertips lightly over the curve of a branch, the harp in the figure's hands. "You're too hard on yourself. This is lovely work."

She leaned over him, nudging the binder open and sliding the page carefully inside to keep it safe. She settled back, right beside him this time, close enough their legs nearly touched, and at his question, leaned in again to see the passage he spoke of, and considered. The words now, it seemed, had much more significance than they had in the bright noon sun when she had written them. "Well, I'm not sure. I would probably say the echo. A question asked could be a terrible thing, and words once spoken cannot be unsaid."

She could only agree with his interpretation of the prophetic words, though the comparison of her eyes to the majesty of the ocean brought a heat to her cheeks that was certainly more than due to the heat of the fire. She was barely recovering from this fresh compliment when his next question rang out, and she blinked rapidly, taken aback both by the question and her instant, unwavering answer: "Yes. I do." The words surprised her more than the question, and she stared slightly wide-eyed into his eyes, aware now of their closeness as his hand lay warm against her cheek, her ears drinking in the silence surrounding them but for the crackling fire, the chirping of insects.

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Her own eyes flitted as Konstantine stared into them, her own studying his face as he leaned in with a purposeful slowness, giving her plenty of time to back away. But she didn't. Sophia held steady, her long pale lashes lowering over her eyes as his lips drew near enough to touch hers. The singular, typically tame act of displaying affection seemed more to her akin to a sealing of a pact, an affirmation of some primal connection between them. It was not so much a moving-mountains sort of overpowering bliss, but something of finality, and rightness, lingered in the simple gesture that Sophia could not have explained even if she cared enough to think about it.

Konstantine would find his light, chaste kisses returned in kind, though no effort to escalate their newly established closeness. No, the simple act of two compatible souls finding one another, acknowledging their newfound bond, revelling in the simple return of one another's affection, seemed to be the fitting and almost prophetic conclusion to the day's events. As they broke apart, a soft smile curved Sophia's lips ever so slightly, and they were bright from their recent encounter. Her eyes fluttered open, bright pools behind pale fans of her lashes, but for the briefest moment confusion darkened them as she felt more than saw him draw apart from her. As he spoke, however, understanding came, and her briefly confused eyes quickly narrowed as a swift and sly grin took over, though she tried to hide it, working hard to shape her face into a stoic expression.

"Definitely. No girl in her right mind would expect the absolute horror of a first kiss after a man asks her out on a date, shows up on horseback, and whisks her off to a very private campsite in the depths of the wild."

She looked around, realizing that it was likely quite late, and shivered as a cool breeze kicked up, rubbing her arms. She scooted closer to the fire, sitting cross-legged with her back to the flames to get warmer, gazing at him to make certain he hadn't taken her seriously. "We really ought to head back soon though, the last bus leaves the station at three-fifteen I think, and I'll need to change to look a bit more presentable for your party tomorrow." She glanced skyward. It felt quite late to her, but certainly it couldn't be so late as to miss the bus. She'd always been quite skilled at telling the time, especially at night.

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Sophia gave him a blank, innocent look, with eyebrows raised and eyes bright and blank of guilt. "I certainly didn't use that word. I don't know what you're talking about." She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging a few tangles out as she shoved the mass of pale strands out of her eyes. "Nah, I wouldn't have anything to compare it to. What's it matter, anyway, how "good" anyone is? Nobody's ever good at anything...." she glanced sideways at him, the sly mischief lighting up her features once again. "....until they've practiced at it."

She sat back, leaning on one hand, and exaggerated rolling her eyes. "So cheesy! All we're missing is the car ride to a Moonlight Hill or Lover's Lane or some such. Though without a car that'd be rather difficult." She chuckled softly, taking the offerred canteen and taking a couple swallows. She set it aside to pull the blanket he placed over her more tightly around her shoulders, thanking him with a smile. Before she could voice her concerns about changing, he made the offer to take her shopping. That had her eyes rolling again.

"Buying me lavish gifts to win my favor?" she teased. "And dragging a school-age girl off to the woods without garnering permission from parents? That could be considered kidnapping you know. How do you know I'm not underage?" She stuck her tongue out at him so he'd know she was joking, if it wasn't obvious enough from her tone. "Not that there would have been anyone home to ask permission of, in any case," she added offhand.

She sat back and pulled off her shoes, getting comfortable, and set her toes close to the crackling flames as he added more wood on. She shrugged, yawning. "No, it's alright. I don't mind. A night under the stars sounds nice. I'd rather not rush home, especially to run the risk of missing the bus anyway. It sometimes goes early."

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"Me? Lie? Never. How dare you accuse me of such a heinous act." She laughed, and sat up. Setting aside the nearly-empty canteen, Sophia rummaged in the box and broke off a chunk of graham cracker, munching on it absently. "You've done nothing that needs an apology. And for what it's worth, I am of age, and wouldn't have had a first date go any other way, personally. I've had a lot of fun today.

She paused with the last bit of cracker halfway to her mouth, watching with some confusion as Konstantine got up and moved over to the pile of blankets. Sighting the makeshift bed she got up herself, popping the last bite in and chewing as she picked her way over to lie next to him, sighting a couple more blankets and tossing the heavier of the two down right beside him. She flopped down rather unceremoniously, pulling the second blanket up to her chin and stretching out on her side, facing this endearingly romantic soldier boy.

"I don't know about that. I don't have much experience dealing with over-protective mother bears. I don't think I'm all that much of a siren, either," she said with a laugh. His suggestion to go to sleep was met with a shrug. "I might drift off here soon. I'm tired, but still too awake for going to sleep." She turned onto her back, gazing skyward at the scattering of bright starlight overhead, smiling as she heard him light up another cigarette beside her.

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