Emmaline and Robin stay up drinking and talking

“We can spend the night in,” Emmaline finally agreed. Though some sort of architectural enchantment stopped the sounds of festivities from reaching their room, she could still look out through the open window and cast her gaze out across the expanse of silvery beach below. Even in the moonlight, the sands seemed to sparkle as though they were laced with grains of platinum. Bonfires cast long, gyrating shadows across the sand and they danced and swayed and flickered in all kinds of alluring ways.

With a soft creak of springs, she rose to her feet, crossed the room, and drew the curtains shut. At once it was like they had been thrown through a portal to another world where the only thing in existence was the two of them and the prettily decorated room.

“But maybe we don’t need to go to sleep just yet,” Emmaline continued. She crossed back over to her own bed and sat down, pulling her feet up to sit cross legged on the edge of it.

Robin’s eyes flickered open. For all the tiredness she had professed a moment before, it only took a second to pull herself upright and scoot up to the head of the bed, facing Emmaline. “Oh?”

“I just wanted to talk, is all,” Emmaline explained. This sort of thing was never easy, but… maybe with Robin it wouldn’t feel quite so impossible. For all the discomfort it took to introduce the topic, Emmaline was certain her pretty features didn’t show it. “We’ll start with a question. When do you feel the most like yourself?”

“Hmmmm,” predictably, Robin was lost in pondering the instant Emmaline finished asking. There was something endearing about the way she cocked her head, the way her hair flopped to the side a bit with the motion of it, and how her bright blue eyes turned skyward as if she might find the answer written on the ceiling.

Emmaline couldn’t help but smile, and with the younger Bravo so thoroughly distracted, she rose to her feet and bent down next to the ice chest in the corner of the room, making no effort to hide the way her curves strained against her microbikini as she did so. The small, expensive food box had been affixed with long-enduring cooling enchantments, while careful crafting and insulation techniques ensured that the cool air only proceeded as far as the confines of the box itself. The refrigeration effect allowed it to store the rich wine inside at the perfect temperature, while also being worth enough gold to feed a village for weeks.

She poured a glass for herself and Robin and returned to her seat before the younger woman had finished thinking it over.

“It’s definitely when I’m helping people, I think,” Robin finally said. She accepted the glass of fruity purple wine from Emmaline’s outstretched hand and took a long drink before, apparently, deciding she had more to say just before she had finished swallowing it. Robin let out a half-cough as her over-excited throat struggled to swallow, breathe, and speak all at once. “O-or when I’m fighting evil--that works too.”

“That makes sense for you,” Emmaline agreed, matching Robin’s drink with a smaller sip of her own. It was as fruity as the scent suggested, though some sort of exotic equatorial fruit she wasn’t quite familiar with. The subtle warmth of **** flooded her body at once, bringing a soft heat to her cheeks. “For me…”

Robin waited patiently, alternately watching Emmaline, letting her eyes drift around the room to the various paintings decorating the walls, and thirstily finishing her glass of wine to pour a second.

“Well, it’s always been when I’m performing or teasing someone… or fucking,” Emmaline said. As she spoke, her body seemed to arch forward, her ribcage pressing upward so that her ample breasts were even more emphasised, straining against her bikini top, just begging to be ogled, fondled, and set free. Robin didn’t seem to notice. “But… lately, I’m not sure if that’s quite right.”

“How do you mean?” Robin asked.

“It’s just… maybe that’s not entirely who I am but just someone who I like to be?” Emmaline said. Robin cocked her head to the side, considering, though the words didn’t really seem to have hit home.

Emmaline swirled the wine in her glass and watched the way the purple liquid spun in on itself, then downward like a whirlpool. Dancing about, drawing in, captivating and seducing.

“I saw a fortune teller today,” Emmaline explained, eyes still on her glass. “And she… well I’m still not sure if I really believe her, but she said that I was running.”

“What were you supposed to be running from?” Robin asked, already well into her second glass.

“From my family, my responsibilities… myself maybe?” Emmaline said. “I’m… not sure. She didn’t really explain in that much detail.”

“Well… are you?” Robin asked. Emmaline looked up and saw those pure blue eyes staring back like two unblemished sapphires, polished to perfect clarity. It was like Emmaline could see right through her, pierce into Robin’s unguarded core, and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of malice to be seen. No double meanings, no deceptions or ulterior motives. Robin’s eyes shone with curiosity, unabashed interest, and absolutely nothing else.

Emmaline smiled.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” she shrugged. “That’s why I asked the other thing. About what makes you feel like yourself. Because, maybe all the things I do to feel like ‘me’ are just different ways of running away. Maybe I’m deflecting to different false versions of me, or pretending to be someone else, or…” she paused, frowning, and turned to look back into her wine.

It had stopped swirling, and she was met with only a purple reflection of her own narrowed eyes and pouty lips.

“Sorry,” Emmaline said. “I’m not very good at this whole… soul search-y introspection stuff.”

She tipped up the rest of the glass and downed it in a single gulp.

“Well I think you’re doing pretty okay,” Robin said, filling up another glass for both Emmaline and herself. “So… what if you are running? Would that be such a bad thing? It’s good exercise, I heard--especially for your heart and legs”

Emmaline let out a soft chuckle.

“I guess it is,” she said. She leaned back, arching her back to rest her hands on the bed and drawing up a long, bare leg so that it hovered lazily over the gap between the two beds, just an inch or two above Robin’s poofy white sheets. “I… I dunno. I’m probably overthinking things.”

“Maybe you are… or maybe you aren’t,” Robin said. Her cheeks were flushed a warm red now and her words slurred ever so slightly. And Emmaline didn’t miss the way her eyes had begun to drift from her face to appreciate Emmaline’s gorgeous lounging figure. “But it probably doesn’t matter. You’re a good person, Emmaline, and that’s what’s important.”