He feels somewhat different...

Domic holds Izabel tightly. He's hugged her many times before, but something feels different about this hug, with her arms wrapped his neck, his around her waist. She feels extraordinarily soft and warm. "I'll always protect you, Izabel," he promises to himself. They pull apart, still holding on to each other. Domic sees a sculpted oval face of warm sand, with deep blue lakes of eyes below a set of arched eyebrows and the dark forest of her hair. A cute hill of a nose rises above the flushed rose valley of her lips, and the lovely ensemble is completed by the faintest smell of wildflowers.

"Oh! Domic, you're finally taller than me," she chuckles, smiling sweetly, lips full. She moves a hand from the top of her head to a little bit below the top of his. "By a little bit," she says, cupping the side of his face. "I guess that means you're a man now."

"A man? A man...," he thinks, bashfully looking down to the floor. Izabel wears a loose apron that partially obscures it, but he can still see how her body curves beneath her pale cream dress. "Has she always worn such tight dresses?" the thought pops in his head.

"I love you," she says kindly.

"I love you too, Izabel," he replies, eyes snapping back up to look into hers.

"Now go," she says, as they release. She brushes some lint off his tunic. "Or else you'll be late."

Domic grabs his gear and with a final wave to Izabel goodbye, walks out the door, towards the town's guard commandery. He walks down Pael's cobblestone streets, echoes of a richer and more vibrant past, before the collapse of the Empire. Old houses hem each other in, with the occasional odd shop or eatery on ground level. Most businesses are located in the market quarter in the southern end of Pael, catering to the roughhewn farmers and woodsmen living in the forest, or to the pompous southern merchants who come north for the furs and rare lumber and run back south twice as fast. The commandery sits in the center, one of the few squat stone buildings in the town.