The Tree of Seasons, Part 2

Author's Note: Sorry about the lack of images in the last few chapters, between work and an internet outage I've been uploading chapters via phone the last couple of days. I'll update the chapters when the 'net comes back!

The Forest of Beginnings was quiet now, the grape war truce sealed in laughter and sticky juice. Emi and Andy lay side by side in the pillowy moss, the glass trees forming a gentle, silent circle around them. The stars overhead weren’t just points—they pulsed and shimmered, shifting in constellations Emi had named for the girls, every pattern a living memory or a secret held in common.

One of Emi’s right hands was curled in Andy’s left, their fingers tangled. The other five arms arrayed in various states of rest: one propped under her cheek, one tucked behind her head, two laying atop Andy’s stomach, and the last tracing slow, idle loops in the moss. She didn’t need to look at him. The hush of the forest was thick enough to make conversation seem almost illegal.

It was Emi who broke the spell. Her head tilted, hair falling over one eye, lips curving in a half-smile that said she’d been thinking about this for a long time.

“You know,” she began, her grip on his hand steadying, “You haven’t told me how you are doing, harem aside.” She looked sideways at him, pupils huge in the twilight. “Not about the logistics—the real you. How are you now?”

Andy took a second before answering. He tried to let go of the tightness behind his ribs, but it just reconfigured. He focused on the shape of Emi’s hand in his, how even after everything—transformations, upgrades, games—her skin still felt exactly like hers. Warm, faintly cool on the fingertips, like a page pressed between leaves.

“Honestly?” he said. “I keep waiting for it to feel like a trick. That she’s back, but it’s temporary. Or that I’ll blink and…” He shrugged, too embarrassed to finish. “I don’t know.”

Emi squeezed his hand, soft, then a little firmer. “That makes sense,” she said. “Anyone would feel unsteady after that. That’s not what I meant, though.” She rolled onto her side, bringing the rest of her hands into play: two anchored on his shoulder, one splayed over his heart, one brushing a stray blade of grass from his eyebrow. The touch wasn’t exploratory; it was bracing, as if she were helping him stay where he was. “How are you with her, now? Not the memory—Laura. The girl you wouldn’t let you go even when the whole world told you to.”

He felt himself blush. “It’s a lot. It’s everything. I feel… more like myself when I’m around her than I have since we were kids. I love her. But it’s not like everything is perfect. She’s still the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. And it’s not just picking up where we left off.” He looked up at the constellations—his, hers, all of theirs—and felt the truth click into place. “I think I’m still learning what it means to have her back. Not as a ghost, not as a legend, but as a real person who needs as much from me as I need from her.”

Emi nodded. She traced a line down his arm, slow, like she was smoothing out the tension. “You sound like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Always,” he admitted.

She smiled, not with pity but with recognition. “If it does, we’ll pick it up together.”

He snorted. “Is that how this works now? You, me, and a twelve-way shoe collection?”

Emi rolled her eyes, but her smile lingered. She shifted closer, her hair falling in a pink gold sheet, and planted a kiss on the hinge of his jaw, right below the ear. “You did something impossible,” she whispered. “You brought someone back from the dead, and not just anyone. I hope you let yourself be happy about that.”

He closed his eyes. For a long moment, the only sound was the distant hum of glass trees singing to each other.

“It’s hard,” he said finally. “To be happy, I mean. The night I lost her—”

He stopped. But Emi didn’t move, didn’t urge him on. Just let him find the rest of the words himself.

“It felt like the universe had made a mistake. Like if I just waited long enough, or wanted it hard enough, she’d come back. But it wasn’t real. I knew that.” He rolled his head, so he was looking right at Emi. “Then I come here, and you’re here. And the others. And then Laura is here too, and it’s like… someone flipped a switch. Like the part of me that got stuck finally caught up to the present.”

Emi listened, eyes wide and shining. When he finished, she held his face in both hands, gentle but absolute. “I’m proud of you,” she said, and it didn’t sound like empty comfort. “You didn’t just bring her back, you brought yourself back.”

He wanted to disagree, but she silenced him with another kiss, this one firmer, laughing at first, then slower, all six hands anchoring him to the moss. She did it with a thoroughness that felt like a dare, as if she was seeing if she could fit all six hands on him at once. Two cupped his face, fingertips splayed gently across his jaw; two more pressed flat to his shoulders, pinning him softly into the moss. The last pair found his wrists, wrapping them together above his head and holding them as if she’d just caught a dragonfly and was deciding whether to let it go.

The first kiss was bright, laughing—a “gotcha” sort of affection that made Andy want to roll his eyes and never stop smiling. But the next was slower, a deepening pressure that made his lungs freeze for a second, as if she was trying to breathe him in. Her lips tasted of sugar and wildflowers, and she kissed him until the last shards of doubt lost their hold on his bones.

When she finally pulled back, Emi grinned down at him, eyes dancing in the starlight. “Just so you know,” she whispered, “if you ever get stuck in your head again, I will deploy this technique without mercy.”

Andy exhaled, feeling lighter than he had all week. “Do I have to file a consent form, or—”

Emi cut him off with a nuzzle, her nose brushing his. “Please. I’d need at least three arms for paperwork.”

He couldn’t help it—he laughed, hard, and Emi drank in the sound, looking so proud of herself that Andy thought his heart might break a little from how sweet it was. She loosened her grip, but didn’t let go, instead nestling in against his side and pillowing her head in the crook of his arm. The other hands settled wherever they fit, some on his chest, some around his waist, and one twining itself in his hair as if staking a claim.

The silence that followed was easy, even as the world shimmered around them. Andy felt the moss cradling his shoulders, the weight and warmth of Emi pressed along his side, and the soft, rhythmic glow of the glass forest as it responded to the changing colors overhead.

“I think about it sometimes,” he said quietly. “What I would have done if Laura never came back. Or if the game never happened. If I’d just… kept waiting.”

Emi listened, still as a fox in the grass. “What do you think you would have done?” she asked, not challenging, just present.

Andy hesitated. “I think I would have gone on pretending to be fine. But I’d always be looking for her in every face, every place I went.” He swallowed, then added, “I think I would have ended up alone, even surrounded by people. Or maybe with someone who didn’t know there was this huge Laura-shaped gap in my heart.”

Emi’s arms tightened, as if she could hold that pain herself. “That would have been a tragedy,” she said softly. “You deserve more than a ghost. And she deserves someone who can love her so much that he couldn’t let her go after sixteen years of pain.”

He looked at her, struck by the clarity of her words.

“Grief doesn’t get erased by a happy ending,” Emi said, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “It just means you get to carry both, at the same time. Love and pain. Sometimes in the same breath.”

He blinked, and something in him unlocked. “You should run workshops,” he murmured. “Grief counseling for hopeless romantics.”

“Only if you’ll TA for me,” she quipped. Then, a beat softer: “You don’t have to fix it, you know. Or fix her. Or fix you.”

He shook his head. “Old habit.”

“I like your old habits,” Emi said. “They make you, you.” She kissed his cheek, lingering there until the words set. “But you’re allowed to feel lost sometimes. That’s what we’re for.” She meant the girls, the harem, the whole weird family, and he felt it in the bones of the world.

For a long moment, Andy just let himself be held. He memorized the feeling of Emi’s skin, the way the glass leaves overhead bent the starlight into rivers of color, the soft susurrus of moss as she shifted closer.

It was only after the night’s hush thickened that Emi spoke again, voice a little dreamy. “If you could wish for anything, now—anything at all—what would it be?”

He didn’t have to think about it. “To keep this,” he said. “Not freeze it. Just… keep moving through it.” He gestured vaguely at the moss, the trees, the warmth between them. “The happiness, sure—but also the mess, the sadness, the way it feels to hold someone for real and know they’re here. That feels like enough.”

Emi considered, then nodded, as if he’d given the only correct answer. “It’s a really good wish,” she whispered, and kissed him again, this time with a gentleness that felt like an anchor thrown to the heart of the world.

The next time Andy blinked, Emi had arranged them so that his head was pillowed on her lap. Her skirt had been transmuted into a quilt of petals and moss, and her hands—all six—were busy at different stations: one smoothing the hair at his temple, two intertwined with his fingers, and the rest fidgeting with her own bracelets or picking imaginary lint from the moss. Her eyes were half-closed, but he knew she wasn’t asleep.

Lap Pillow! +1 VP

He let the quiet fill him for a minute, then asked, “How’s she doing? Laura, I mean. With everyone.”

He felt Emi’s breath catch a little. “That’s complicated,” she said. “Some of the girls are… trying. Really trying. Some are just afraid. Some are waiting to see if she’s for real, or if she’s going to break apart and take you with her.” She shifted, pulling one of his hands over her heart and letting it rest there. “It’s not perfect, but it’s not a disaster. It’s like a weather front—sometimes clear, sometimes stormy, but you know the sun will be there after.”

Andy nodded. “Anyone not doing so great?”

Emi bit her lip, thinking. “Erin’s having a tough time. She wants to be happy for you, and she is, but… I think it’s hard, when someone comes back from the dead and you realize you’re not the main character in the story anymore.” She said it gently, without judgment.

Andy absorbed that. “She’s always been good at acting like she’s fine,” he said. “Sometimes I think she’s waiting for me to mess up.” He stared up at the glass trees overhead, their branches fracturing the sky into improbable rivers of color. “I’m trying not to.”

Emi laughed, not unkind. “You’re not going to mess up. You’re the only person in the whole universe who actually tries to be fair, even when it’s impossible.”

He shook his head. “I wish that were true.”

“It is,” Emi insisted. Her voice was the same dreamy hush he remembered from their childhood, back when she’d curl up in a beanbag and tell him stories about the sky. “You’re not the only one who’s learning how to do this. Erin will figure it out. She always does.” Emi paused, considering. “The ones I worry about most are the girls who want to matter, but don’t know how to say it.”

He smiled, just a little. “That’s almost all of you, you know.”

She giggled, hair falling across her cheek. “Even me?”

He nodded. “You just hide it better.”

For a while, the silence grew around them, moss swallowing up any words that didn’t seem worth the effort. Andy let himself drift. Emi’s arms were everywhere, her hands making small, gentle gestures—adjusting the fold of her skirt, smoothing imaginary wrinkles on his shoulder, brushing a lock of hair from his face and letting it fall again, soft as a memory.

Finally, Emi said, “Can I ask you something?” Her voice was lighter now, as if the weight of their last conversation had already evaporated.

“Of course.”

“You know how Arabella added the Committed paths this round?” She rolled onto her side, propping her chin on her lowest hand. “Do you think anyone else among us will actually take it?”

Andy considered. “I don’t know. I suspect I could see a few of you going for it.” He pictured Dawn, Chloe, maybe even Marissa. But it wasn’t lost on him that Emi had asked the question without hinting at her own answer. “But I don’t think it means the same thing to everyone.” He turned his head to look at her. “What about you?”

Emi gave a noncommittal shrug, three arms in perfect sync. “I like the idea of it, but I don’t love the label. I don’t want to be pigeonholed.” She smiled, a little crooked. “If I ever picked a path, I’d want it to be because I wanted to. Not because the game made it sound brave.”

Andy let the logic soak in. He liked it. “I don’t think anyone would ever accuse you of being pigeonholed, Emi.”

She laughed, full and bright. “You never know. Some days it feels like everyone here is fighting a war just to be seen.”

He nodded, then turned the question over in his mind. “If you had to pick a path, which would you want?”

She thought about it, serious now. “I want to be yours,” she said, “but I want to choose how. Not just win it, or have it handed to me because I’m good at following instructions.” She hesitated. “I think I’d rather stay with you even if I lost, than win by accident and wonder if I ever deserved it.”

He blinked at that. It was so honest, so precise, he didn’t know how to answer for a minute. He settled for holding her gaze. “I’d rather have you here because you want to be, however you want to be,” he said.

Her smile softened, and for a long, real moment, Andy felt the world slow down. Not in the Velvet Hours way, but in the way that sometimes happened between old friends who understood each other well enough not to need explanations.

“I like you,” Emi said, low and sure. “Just like this.”

He laughed, feeling the tension in his chest loosen another notch. “Me too.”

She curled herself tighter around him, and for a moment, Andy felt like he could just exist without having to solve every problem at once.

Above them, the constellations Emi had invented flickered and shone brighter. The forest, alive and awake, seemed to lean closer to listen in.

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Emi said, six hands squeezing just enough to be felt. “But if I ever do, promise you’ll find me?”

He grinned. “It’s a small universe. I think I could manage.”

She laughed. It was a sound that lingered, soft and shimmering, well after the words themselves had faded.

They watched the constellations change, the moss beneath them radiating with the memory of warmth. After a while, the silence grew thick enough to set roots. Andy found himself tracing the lines Emi’s hand made in his palm, following the gentle ridges of her knuckles, and thinking of all the times she’d been there for him—never at the center, always quietly circling, a planet that knew its place.

He cleared his throat, but kept his gaze fixed on the stars. “I’ve been thinking about the Garden of Glass,” he said. “Not the challenge, but… what happened in one of those visions. A vision with you and Laura, when you were fourteen. I didn’t want to bring it up if you didn’t—” He stopped, searching for the rest. “If you didn’t want to talk about it, but...”

Emi didn’t flinch. Her fingers tightened around his. “You mean the fight?”

He nodded.

For a long beat, Emi didn’t move. Then, with deliberate gentleness, she propped herself up, six arms forming a tripod, and looked at him in profile.

“I think that was the first time I ever really told Laura what I felt,” she said. “I mean, truly said it out loud. Not the fighting—anyone can do that. But I was always just a shadow in your story, and I thought that meant it wasn’t my place to ask for more.” She paused, picking at the moss with her lower right hand, as if weaving her thoughts into the fabric of the world. “But then I realized I wanted more. Not all of you, just as much as you would be willing to share. And Laura, she didn't know how to share, back then. I... I never wanted to hurt her, or you, but I wanted something more, I wanted not to feel like an extra. It was always you and Laura, and then me. I loved being with you, but I wanted it to be you and Laura and me. I... I wanted to belong. When she asked me why I never fought for you, I wanted to say—‘Because I loved you both so much I was afraid of breaking everything.’ But I didn’t. I just… let her believe I was fine letting you go.”

Andy felt the ache, familiar and sharp. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

Emi shook her head. “No, but it was real.” She exhaled, and the hand on his heart pressed down, warm and grounding. “That was the crack, I think. The place where I started to slip sideways into my dreams, when I lost you and Laura. But it didn’t break until she died.” The last part came out matter-of-fact, no melodrama, just the undeniable truth.

He tried to picture that day from Emi’s side. “You vanished,” he said. “I always wondered if that was because of us, or because you couldn’t stay.”

Emi’s lips curled into a sad smile. “Both,” she admitted. “I didn’t know how to grieve someone who left a Laura-shaped hole in my life. The world just felt wrong. Like a story you’re halfway through, and suddenly you can’t read the language anymore.”

Andy let that sink in. “I’m sorry,” he said, not because he thought it would fix anything, but because he needed her to know he’d finally heard her.

Emi’s upper right hand cupped his cheek, thumb brushing the ridge under his eye. “I don’t want you to be sorry,” she whispered. “I want you to know that even then, I didn’t hate you. I just couldn’t find a way to stay, not when everything hurt so much.”

He could see it, now—the gentleness Emi wielded like a shield, the way she let herself be drawn into other people’s orbits because it was safer than crashing them. “You live here now,” he said, almost to himself.

Emi nodded. “I do. It took me a long time, but I learned how. That’s what the Forest is about, for me. Making a place where I can stay present, and not just escape when it gets too hard.” She gave him a look—direct, bright, fierce in its honesty. “I built it because I wanted to remember what it felt like to want to live in a world with you. Not just as a memory, but for real.”

Andy blinked, feeling something sharp and electric in his chest. “I wish I’d known.”

“I know,” Emi said. “You weren’t the only one who thought the universe could just be fixed by wanting it hard enough.” She laughed, low and a little bitter. “But that’s not how it works, is it?”

He shook his head. “Not for us.”

The hush that followed was deep, but not empty. Emi lay down again, this time pressed so close he could feel the subtle shiver in her every breath. Her hands—six of them—enclosed him with the kind of steady warmth that never asked to be repaid.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, after a long interval. “Of losing this again?”

Emi considered. “Sometimes. But less now than before.” She exhaled, eyes half-lidded, content. “I know it can go away in a blink. But that just makes it more precious, you know?”

He did. He really, really did.

Achievement Unlocked! Through the Looking Glass +5 VP

They stayed that way until the stars overhead blurred together, until the moss beneath their bodies grew so warm and thick it seemed to lift them into the canopy itself. Time didn’t move right in the Forest, but Andy felt the world shift, the moment crystallizing into something solid, beautiful, and wholly theirs.

He kissed her, slow and sure, and Emi responded with the easy certainty of someone who’d spent a lifetime dreaming about this exact moment. Her arms wrapped around him—one on the back of his neck, two across his ribs, three more anchoring them to the moss as if she was afraid the world might let go.

It didn’t, and neither did he.

They kissed for a long time, and it wasn’t just mouths—Emi used every part of herself to map Andy’s body and mood. One hand twined in his hair, another ran slow circles along the ridge of his spine, two more anchored his hips to the moss, and the last pair drifted over his chest, one tracing the old break in his collarbone as if she could knit it together with touch alone.

Andy let himself float. The air was full of glassy hush, the only sound the distant call of birds and the low hum of the trees. He didn’t know how long they stayed like that; the world felt suspended, unmeasured, all velvet edge and soft skin.

When Emi finally broke away, her lips were red and a little swollen, but her smile was serene. She rolled them both so that Andy was on his back, then perched atop him with a practiced, easy grace that spoke to a thousand days spent in her own, secret gravity.

She kissed his throat, then his chest, her hair falling in a warm veil that tickled his nose and cheeks. One of her hands peeled his shirt away; another worked at his waistband, gentle and teasing, as if savoring the act of undressing almost as much as the promise of what came after.

He tried to help, but Emi only giggled, batting his hands away with a gentle, six-armed barrage. “Let me,” she whispered, and it was clear she meant it—not as command, but a gift.

He lay back and let her work. Emi made it into an art: each button opened was a new surprise, each inch of skin revealed a fresh canvas for her lips or her fingertips. When she had him bare to the waist, she paused, all six hands splayed across his chest, a hush of awe in her expression. “You’re beautiful,” she said, and didn’t flinch from the truth of it.

Andy didn’t know what to say, so he just reached for her, burying his hands in the bob of her hair and pulling her down for another kiss. It was Emi’s turn to be breathless; her hands all tightened at once, clutching at him with an urgency that hadn’t been there a second before.

She broke away only to laugh, and Andy felt the sound vibrate all the way to his bones. “Don’t get greedy,” she teased, but he could tell she loved the way he clung to her, the way he couldn’t get enough.

Her own top—soft, stretchy, a thin wrap that suited her small frame—was off in a blink, peeled away with a double-hand flourish. Her skin glowed in the half-light, smooth as silk, every curve and hollow an invitation. Her breasts were small and sweet, the areolae almost perfectly round, the nipples already hard in the cool air.

Andy ran his palms up her sides, and Emi arched, pushing into his touch with a shudder. “You always knew how to touch me,” she said, voice a low hum. “Even before either of us knew what it meant.”

He didn’t answer. He just flipped her, gentle but insistent, and pinned her to the moss. Emi laughed in delight, six arms flying up as if in surrender. Andy lowered himself to her belly and kissed it, slow and thorough, then kissed his way up to her chest.

He lingered there, mouth and tongue paying tribute to her, and Emi’s hands all found their way to his hair, his shoulders, his back, pulling him closer with every breath.

“God,” she said, and then again, louder. “God, I missed this. I missed you.”

He looked up, lips wet, eyes shining. “You have me.”

She smiled, dreamy and wild. “Forever?”

He nodded. “If you want.”

Emi’s answer was not words but a hungry, insistent kiss, deep enough to leave him breathless, slow enough to make his hands tremble—though whether from want or reverence, Andy couldn’t have said. For a second time, she pressed her mouth to his, all six hands in motion: one cupping the back of his skull to draw him close, another raking through the short fuzz above his nape, two more pressed flat against his pectorals, and the last pair finding his waist and, with a delicate, unhurried confidence, tugging his pants lower. Emi broke the seal of their kiss only when she had him exposed and fully hard, her breath coming in a hitchy, delighted gasp at what she’d revealed. She caught his cock in one hand, sizing it with the ceremonial gravity of someone who’d just been handed a sacred text, while the other five hands made a choreography of support, caress, and sly, ticklish torment.

He felt it in every nerve: the grip of her, the warmth of her palm, the feather-light teasing of her nails along his thigh. There was only the mossy bed beneath them, Emi’s hands, and the long, loose spiral of their memory together—every sweet, weird moment from childhood to now threading itself into the present. Andy let out a shaky laugh, then caught it in his teeth when Emi, with a magician’s sleight, switched from stroking to a slow, deliberate pump, her wrist rotating as if she was winding a music box.

She was a little magician, and Andy was helpless under her spell.

“You’re not fair,” he managed, but she only smiled, her expression a study in mischief and pride.

“You’re not supposed to fight fair in dreams,” she said, and before he could answer, she bent to kiss the underside of his jaw, then traced a line with her tongue down his throat and collarbone, until she reached his chest. Her hands continued their campaign: one at his cock, another testing the edge of his hipbone, a third tracing lazy patterns up his ribs. The sensory overload was dizzying, but he managed to push up on his elbows, and when Emi looked up at him, she was grinning, all teeth and fierce affection.

He didn’t want to just lie there, didn’t want to be a passenger to her want. Andy grabbed her by the hips—she was light as a wisp—and rolled her so she was beneath him, all six arms flung wide in mock surrender. There was a competitive edge to her laugh now, an old, familiar sense that every touch was both invitation and challenge. He leaned over her, kissing her softly, then harder, using his whole body to cage her in. She returned it with interest, twisting her legs around his, her foot catching on his calf to keep him close.

It was effortless, each movement frictionless and new yet somehow as old as the first crush of childhood. He kissed her lips, her neck, then down to the freckle at the hollow of her collar. He wanted to worship every inch of her, but she wouldn’t make it easy: Emi’s hands found the sensitive places on his sides and tickled mercilessly, making him twitch and gasp, then laugh until he had to stop and growl her name, while two hands stroked his cock insistently, driving him mad.

She twisted his hair between two fingers, pulled him down until their lips were almost touching. “You want to win?” she whispered. “Then don’t stop.”

He didn’t.

He kissed his way down, paying homage to her belly, the soft dimple at her navel. She watched him with a kind of greedy awe, six hands alternating between clutching at the moss and curling over his body, both greedy and giving. By the time he reached her thighs, Emi was shivering, the anticipation in her every breath.

He pressed her knees apart, kissed the inside of her thigh so gently it made her squirm, then ran his tongue up the seam, tasting her heat, the salt-and-sweet of her skin. Emi’s hands all found his head, some guiding him, others just hanging on for dear life, and Andy felt an electric animal pride at how purely she wanted him. He licked and sucked, slow at first, then faster, and soon Emi was gasping, her body arching up into his mouth, the fingers at his scalp trembling with every wave.

She came once, then again almost immediately, and Andy didn’t stop—he kept at it, gentle and relentless until Emi was shuddering with oversensitivity, one hand flapping in the universal gesture for “please, mercy.” He slid up her body, kissing away the tears that had pooled in her outer eyes, and met her mouth with his, letting her taste herself on his tongue.

Master ate her out! +3 VP

“Okay,” she gasped, after a long, dazed blink. “Okay, you win. You win all the things.”

He caught her lower lip between his teeth. “Maybe I just want to share the prize.”

She grinned, and with a flex of her surprisingly strong arms, flipped him again so he was beneath her, flat on the moss. Emi straddled him, knees wide, her palms braced on his chest for leverage. She reached down and positioned him at her entrance, her eyes never leaving his. “Then don’t let go,” she said, and pressed herself down, slow and intentional.

The sensation was almost too much—hot and impossibly soft and so wet he thought he might lose it right there. But the look in her eyes kept him grounded: a mix of triumph, glee, and something so raw and honest he felt his own breath catch.

Emi set the pace, rocking her hips slow at first, then grinding down in tight, insistent circles. Andy reached up, his hands on her waist, then her back, then up to cup her face; her own hands joined his, six palms cradling his head from every direction, as if she could anchor herself inside him. She leaned forward, and they kissed, open and deep, Emi moaning into his mouth every time he hit her just right.

He could see her beginning to unravel—her rhythm tightening, her eyes going unfocused, the little hiccup in her breath that always meant she was close. One hand found her breast, thumb circling the nipple, and she gasped, clutching at him with all six hands at once. She came again, a full-body tremor that almost knocked him over the edge, but Andy held on, not wanting to let this moment go.

When she collapsed onto his chest, spent, her skin sticky with sweat and the pressed-glass humidity of the air, Andy wrapped his arms around her and just held her for a while. The Forest around them seemed to pulse with their heartbeat; above, glittering lights shifted hue from gold to blue and back again, as if the constellations themselves were calibrated to their breath.

Emi’s hair fanned out over his face, and he inhaled the sharp, green scent of her—like cut grass and honeysuckle, only more alive. She kissed his throat, then his jaw, then, with a playful nip, his earlobe.

“I could stay like this forever,” she whispered, and Andy believed her. But there was more in her eyes—a hunger that wasn’t just about sex, a need to be seen and wanted in every possible way.

He rolled her, gentle but insistent, getting her underneath him again. Emi’s legs opened for him without hesitation, her whole body pliant and eager. He lined himself up at her entrance, but paused, looking down at her, memorizing every shift of her expression. “Tell me what you want,” he said.

For a moment Emi went completely still. Then, in a voice so small it was almost lost in the hum of the Forest, she said, “I want you to make me feel real.”

He pressed into her, slow and deep, and Emi’s head fell back, her mouth open in a silent O. He moved inside her, steady, letting each thrust land with the weight of a promise. Her arms reached for him again—always reaching, needing more—and Andy met her, palm for palm, mouth to mouth, letting her know with every inch of his skin that she was not just real, but irreplaceable.

Time stuttered. The velvet dusk of the Forest wrapped around them, and Andy lost himself in the rhythm: the squeeze of her, the wet heat, the way every gasp from her lips seemed to resonate in the world around them. He could sense the trees bending closer, their leaves trembling in the updraft of their pleasure, the moss beneath them thickening, softening, cradling their bodies as if the ground itself wanted to savor this.

They moved together, not in a hurry, not chasing anything but the comfort and chaos of each other. Emi came again—this time with a low, keening sound that seemed to rattle the sky—and Andy followed, burying his face in her shoulder as he pulsed inside her, both of them clutching so hard it bordered on pain.

It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced: not just the way Emi’s body responded to him, but how the world itself seemed to dilate, time stretching and bending around their entwined forms, until what was minutes became hours, what was an hour became forever. The Forest around them, shaded in its perpetual dusk, became a prism for their pleasure, every sense sharpened, every color more vivid, the air thick with the resinous sweetness of moss and blooming wildflowers.

He lost himself in Emi—her limbs a latticework of need and generosity, her skin slick where it met his, every touch a conversation between old friends who’d finally learned a new, secret language. Her first climax hit so quickly that she startled herself, biting his shoulder to muffle the noise, and Andy had to laugh, the sound muffled in the tangle of her hair. She bucked against him, all six hands clutching at any part of him she could reach: his shoulders, his back, his ribs, his hair, his ass, two of them curling around his wrists as if daring him to pin her down.

He obliged, catching her by two wrists, and for an instant she went perfectly still, eyes wide and misted, her breath ragged with anticipation. He pressed both her hands above her head and leaned down, capturing her mouth, and as he thrust into her—slow, deliberate, the way she’d once told him she liked best—she moaned into him, her tongue moving against his like it was a second, more urgent conversation.

The next orgasm came slower, a rising tide that built through the length of her body, Emi’s hands now free to chart new territory along his arms and chest, her nails leaving crescent marks that glowed in the shadowed light. It hit her in ripples, small aftershocks following the first wave, but this time she didn’t try to hide it; she arched her back, head thrown to the moss, four hands gripping the ground for purchase while the other two fisted in Andy’s hair, holding him close as if she could fuse their bodies together through sheer **** of will.

Andy felt it, too—the craving not just for release, but for some more permanent connection, a way to burrow inside the moment and never have to leave. He tried to memorize everything: the way the air vibrated each time Emi choked out a gasp, the way her eyes rolled back with every peak, the sound of his own heart battering against his ribs, as if it wanted to break free and join hers.

Then the world seemed to pause. For a long moment, they just lay together, Emi’s head tucked under his chin, her breath warm on his sternum, the steady pulse of her heart slowing back to a manageable rhythm. He stroked her hair, his fingers idly counting the paired braids she’d woven into it earlier, before the two of them had made such a mess of each other that the plaits had given way to chaos.

She looked up at him, eyes glinting with mischief and something softer, and then, with the gravity of a queen bestowing a knighthood, ran one finger down the length of his nose. “You’re so much better than you think,” she said, not a question or a challenge but something closer to a blessing.

He tried to answer, but she’d already kissed him again, this time gentle, almost chaste, but with a finality that said, for now, they could rest. Neither quite believed it, and in a few minutes they’d start again, but Andy let himself float in the afterglow, Emi’s body draped boneless over him, her arms and legs tangled with his, so that it was impossible to know where he ended and she began.

They went again, this time slower, lazier, as if they both knew they had all the time in the world. Emi straddled him, her knees pressing into the thick moss, her palms braced on his chest for leverage. Her hair hung in a curtain, brushing his face each time she leaned forward to kiss him. Andy ran his hands up her thighs, marveling at the strength and softness under his fingers, at how Emi took charge of the rhythm, rolling her hips with a deliberate, practiced confidence—and at how much she seemed to enjoy watching him watch her.

The Forest responded, as if the world here was tuned to their pleasure: the moss deepened, sprouting tiny blue flowers that glimmered with a cold, starry light; tree trunks shimmered with a faint, golden phosphorescence, and every exhalation of breath seemed to stir the air into visible patterns. Above them, through the gap in the branches, the sky churned with slow auroras, streaks of lavender and emerald lighting the world with a supernatural twilight. Andy could have reached up and grabbed hold of it, and for a moment, he truly believed he could.

Emi’s hands were everywhere—one at his jaw, thumb stroking under his ear; another tracing idle circles around his navel; a third digging into his shoulder when he thrust up to meet her. He felt himself losing ground, the heat building in his core, and he tried to hold back, tried to savor it, but Emi was merciless, her laughter turning to moans, then to breathless, pleading whispers of his name.

When he came, it was with a **** that made him see white, every muscle in his body tightening all at once. Emi followed, collapsing over him in a trembling, gasping heap, her face buried in his neck. They stayed like that for a long time, Andy’s hand stroking the curve of her back, Emi’s fingers tracing lazy graffiti over his ribs and shoulder blades.

The Forest was different afterward. He felt it in the hush of the air, the way the branches overhead seemed to lean in protectively, the moss pillowing their bodies as if giving them a soft place to land. There was, for just a second or two, a sense of being watched—not by any person, but by the world itself, a gentle and approving gaze. Andy didn’t understand it, not fully, but he wasn’t afraid.

5-Time Combo! +3 VP

They lay on their backs, Emi’s head pillowed on his chest, her lower arms tucked under the small of his back, the rest draped over him or splayed to the side. They didn’t talk for a long time, just watched the constellations overhead shift and swirl, as if the universe was eager to show them new patterns. Andy traced shapes in the stars with his finger, and Emi guessed at the stories behind them: a fox and a rabbit racing, a lioness curled around her cubs, a kite flying so high the string just barely touched the earth.

“You’re really good at this,” Emi whispered, a tease but also something more. “Like, Olympic-level.”

Andy laughed, brushing a kiss into her hair. “I have several good coaches.”

She snorted, but her eyes shone with pride. “We should make this a standing appointment.”

He nodded, drawing her closer. “Whatever you want.”

They watched the glassy sky for a while, breath synced and bodies still intertwined, as the Forest glowed gently around them.

“Thank you,” Emi said, and for the first time, it was clear she meant it not just for the sex or the moment, but for seeing her—for wanting her, now and always.