Lake of the Moon

*For those of you needing a somewhat cliche romantic scene at the moment. This was in my novel but I am pretty sure I will delete it as it does not fully fit with my characters.* ***NOTE- please do not nitpick misspellings, punctuation, or redundancy unless very serious and distracting. I am looking for feedback on writing style, clearness, logic, timeline, etc. Thanks.***

They tramped through the woods, over and under branches and around trees on their way to what Micah had called “The Lake of the Moon” somewhere within the forest. The storm of images that Onyx had pressed upon her still swirled around inside of her head and so she remained quiet as they walked.

Three days, then they would be gone. Three days, then she would be on her own with Onyx attempting to earn the allegiances of creatures she had never met. Three days.

And then there was Micah. Where would he be when the war drums sounded? Would he survive this?

Will I even survive this? She asked herself. Then again, what was this? What was any of this? How had she gotten herself here to begin with?

Stop thinking so hard, Micah said.

“What would you know about it?” Kastia retorted.

“More than you’d know.” He stepped aside and offered his hand for help over a rather large fallen tree, but she brushed it off and hopped over it on her own.

“I can’t be touched now Micah, I can’t be confused, I can’t be distracted. I can’t feel for anyone, let alone myself, and it will only hurt more in the end,” she said, stalking past him, unsure of exactly where she was supposed to be going, unsure of exactly what she was supposed to be feeling. She felt empty like a desert waiting on the dam to break and let flood her tears of which she had all and none. She focused on the sound of the leaves constantly crunching beneath her feet and on the sound of rushing water not too far away, but another sound soon entered her thoughts and it was not something that she around her.

It was in her, in her mind and coming from something not her own. She turned around, astonished to find Micah grabbing her hip and her hand. He proceeded to swing her around as if they were in the ballroom at the castle as he played a waltz inside of her head. He hummed aloud as well, but Kastia heard only his mind in hers.

You, he said, looking down at her. You will always be who you are. You will never be able to change the past, but you can always alter the future. You will always be mine and no one else could ever take that from me. Not even Death himself can separate us for I will find my way back to you when that day comes.

Kastia shook her head. “But you don’t know that, Micah,” she whispered. “You can’t know that.” She attempted to take a step away from him, to separate and not let this become more than it was. The closer she was to him, the more pain she would feel in the end. But he held fast onto her and he would not let her go.

“But I do know that, Kastia, because you are the only thing I have left worth fighting for,” he said, leading her around and between trees, leaves swirling at their feet not by any amount of air, but by his imagination.

An unwanted tear slipped down her cheek without permission. “I will lose you,” she said, again she tried to pull away from him and this time he let her, only with a spin. However, just as she reached the end of his arms, he grasped the tips of her fingers and pulled her back into his embrace.

“You can’t know that,” he smiled sadly down at her, repeating back her own words. She shivered as he wiped her tear away with his thumb and traced the contour of her cheek. The back of his forefinger then trailed to underneath her chin where it lifted her face towards his. “You are the daughter of Death Himself. You ride on his mighty Warrior and you have a power within your mind that is stronger than the universe. Do not think for one second that I will not fight for you.”

“But you will die-”

Micah put his finger to her lips. “You mustn’t speak like that. It isn’t very becoming of a lady. Come on, the moon is getting high, we should have been at the lake by now,” he said, taking her hand and leading her another while through the woods.

Finally, though, he paused and pushed through a wall of fir trees, holding their branches up so that Kastia could slip underneath behind him. On the other side, Kastia discovered a moon glistening pond with a small waterfall leading into it. The pond held the shadows of minnows which floated above the river stones. There were several jagged boulders that stuck up from the water with moss and algae growing up their sides. However, the most admiring feature was the reflection of the smiling moon which shone up from the center of the waters. This was indeed the Lake of the Moon.

“Come,” Micah said, pulling her around to one of the sides by a tree that was wider than three of herself together. Its roots were gnarled and large enough to sit on where they traversed the ground. The clear waters lapped at the edge where Micah’s boots stood, but soon his feet were no longer in them and he was taking his shirt off of his back.

“What are you doing?” Kastia asked incredulously, watching as he threw his shirt into an alcove that the tree had at the base of its trunk. He unbuckled his sword belt and threw it into the crevice as well and did not answer. Instead he stepped into the shallows and waded out further before he turned to face her. He tread the water like an expert, and when she quirked an eyebrow at him, he only smiled and repeated into her mind.

Come. Only it was not simply the word that he spoke, but the command that came with it that brought her to remove her boots and follow into the water after him without further thoughts, all of which she had squashed down again out of her poor habit.

She felt the cold water rising as she took each step. It soaked through every ounce of her, but it matched her emotional state and so it had no effect to her. Before she knew it, she had hit the drop off and was forced to swim out to where Micah floated.

She was, like any other Mikalidan, an excellent swimmer. Since the Anglur Ocean bordered their north-western region and was their most prominent market, many of the richer folk would spend their summers there on the coast. Her nanny had made a point to bring her and teach her how to swim during one of these summers when she was only six. It was a faded memory, but a memory all the same, and one that disappeared as Micah grabbed her hand and kissed it. He winked at her with a smirk on his face before diving under the water and swimming like a frog to the boulders by the waterfall where he popped up again just as she thought he might have run out of breath. “Coming?” He asked.

She shook her head clear of any thoughts of warning of what she should and shouldn’t be doing at the moment. He was distracting her.

And she liked it.

She felt a small smile find its way past all of her previous emotions and onto her lips where it stayed as she gracefully moved through the water to meet him. He wrapped his fingers around her hand again and brought it to his lips to kiss. Yet once again he let her hand go and he ducked underneath the waterfall to the other side. She dove after him, felt the water pound on top of her head and then breathed the air again on the other side.

It was almost completely dark inside of the alcove, but she could feel Micah with her mind stronger than ever before and he called to her again, close to her right. She moved in that direction, but she didn’t have to go far before his hands caught her around her waist and drew her in close.

He was standing on the rock bottom again, although the water still came to his chest, she could feel through his mind. She could feel him, the pulse that was quickening from his heart and the shape of his skin over his muscles in his arms which her fingers now trailed over. His forehead bent to touch hers and she could feel his hot breath on her lips. “Jaeia,” he whispered. A word that Kastia would have asked the meaning of had the water not suddenly lit up in hues of blue and green, revealing a cave that went back much farther than she had thought with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and glowing moisture dripping down the walls.

Then he kissed her and parted her lips with his, dragging her attention back to him where he wanted it to always stay. “Why are you doing this, Micah?” She asked as he broke away, between his kiss and hers. She forced him to think without speaking by taking his breath away before she allowed him to answer. She finally released him.

“Because,” he began, whispering nearly inside of her mouth. “The tighter I hold you, the more I forget why you shouldn’t want me, why I shouldn’t have you, and that is the most blissful feeling, I believe, any being could ever have.” His lips met hers again and this time she slung her arms around his neck and kissed him back because that seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Yet, not a single thing about this was appropriate and so she paused for a moment, then decided to push him away.

The feelings which she had done her best to crush began to spring up to life inside of her, as she stared into his sparkling eyes, but Micah’s mind came and he took them away. In replacement, he filled her head with the same waltzing music that he had played before and he took her swirling along the rock shelf slowly in the water.

As much as his consciousness tried to persuade her that he was holding her for himself and his own selfish desires, she knew it was otherwise. He had other intentions behind what he was doing, as he always did. She picked through his vulnerable mind playfully to find out. She pushed aside memory and thought, feelings and emotions, until she reached his core of intention. Inside there, she found that he did this for her. He caressed her lips for her. His hand lifted her leg to his hip and trailed down her tingling skin for her. All for her.

So that she would forget.

He wanted her to leave behind her fears of war, her fears of losing him in death and her fears of losing herself in that black depressing chaos that would always follow such an event in time.

Yet he did it for another reason too.

He did this to give her something to remember him by, something to hold on to if he did ever pass through that unknown void and into Death’s hands. He did this so that she would never forget him, and she knew. She knew now that she wouldn’t.

She kissed him back all the harder for it. She could forget the fears, the worries, the regrets, but never him. She would always remember the way his heart felt against her body and the way his breath always managed to taste somewhat like wild mint leaves. She would never forget this.

She would never forget him.

He spun her through the water which seemed to be growing warmer rather than colder as it should have been. Perhaps it was the glowing light, perhaps not, but she would not care, for Micah was giving her something to remember; something to hold on to, and that was exactly what she planned to do.

His lips stole hers away again and again as he pushed her up against the cave wall. It was rough and cold on her back, but Micah was soft and warm everywhere else and so she did not let it bother her. Opening her eyes, even only for a moment, she realized that he had done the same. She looked at the starry universe within that called her, sighing into his parted mouth and leaning into his chest. Her fingers found their way through his hair as he breathed the air she breathed.

His hands moved and he cupped her face, forcing her to listen with her eyes at what he was trying to tell her. She felt the pulse in his fingertips as he brushed his thumb across her cheek bone and placed his forehead against hers. It was then that she accepted who she was, the unknown struggle inside of her finally settling. And he impressed upon her mind that it all made her and that she was no single one. She was not only a lady of Mikalivier, a Rider, a daughter, a fighter, but she was- “Mine,” he whispered, almost so quietly that she might not have caught it had she not been this close to him, with his lips brushing hers and his hand sliding to her waist again.

“You are mine and that is all that I care about,” he said. There was barely a space between them and he braced a hand on the wall behind her. His other slid to her waist as he stared back at her, unblinking. Then, he lowered his heaven-struck eyes to her lips, but he only waited as her own hand moved to splay on the center of his chest. She felt the strong beating of his heart under her fingertips and felt his lungs expand and contract there too.

“And if I die in war, what will you do then?” She asked, but he did not let her think further, for he took her lips for his own and prevented her from saying such things.

If you continue to speak like that, then I will kiss you until you do otherwise, he said into her head.

How romantic, she thought back sarcastically, sliding her hand up to his lips so that he stopped. But I do believe that we are supposed to be Training.

I will Train you when you promise to not fear Death... Not for me. Not for you. Not for the king or anyone else. He took her hand and splayed her fingers out so that their bodies matched. “Promise me,” he whispered. A small kiss, a brush of the lips, then a silent staring into the universe.

Kastia looked over at where he held her hand poised in the air. The waterfall roared in her ears, but it did not match the tranquility of her sea of thoughts. “I promise,” she said, going to interlace her fingers with his, but Micah gently clasped hers and kissed it with a small, sad smile playing on the outskirts of his mouth, and then he unexpectedly dove off the shelf and into the blue-green water.

She sighed and fell back against the wall. The sea that had just been so calm began to rage once again inside of her. Was it the ghostly impression of his lips on hers or the feel on his hand on her waist? Or perhaps, it was the simple fact that she had kissed him back, of her own accord, without feeling as though she was forgiving him for something or trying to gain anything. Yes, maybe, just maybe, it had been that. His lips parting hers with a lightness that she had not known to exist in her world, in a world that previously would not have found that appropriate at all.