Watcher in the Woods

Orria didn’t offer any more information about what she had in mind, and John felt no need to pry any further details out of her, so their journey down the valley was one of comfortable silence. Whatever she was planning, and whatever the reason for planning it, John was confident that Orria would explain herself in time.

Not to say the journey was uneventful. Orria did not speak, but as she walked, her magic was flowing through the land itself constantly, swirling and altering the terrain as easily as she took each confident stride. Her fingers brushed against the edge of the valley, the steep grassy incline that led upward, and grass faded into stone. Steep became sheer in a matter of seconds, the walls turning to vertical fortress walls that towered over them higher and higher the further the two of them descended. The sharp, jagged edges of rock that emerged from underneath the growths of grass faded and smoothed themselves out, becoming so uniformly even they appeared more sculpted than natural.

The path they tread was not left unaltered either. Orria was careful to leave them a path in the center, pointedly not sweeping the ground out from underneath John’s very feet, but underbrush and growths lined the edges of the path all the way into the midsection, until there was scarcely enough room for John to put his feet town without stomping on some new flora specimen.

And at the bottom of the valley, at the very lowest point before it began to curve upward once again, an expansion began. The rocky walls flinched away from Orria as she arrived, spreading out with a great noise of crumpling and each bit of stone seeming more eager than the next to clear the way for her. In moments a clearing nearly a hundred feet wide at any point was formed, largely empty save for a single ring of trees and shrubbery around the outer rim.

“Impressive as always, Orria.” John’s voice held no insincerity – his abilities may have created the valley, but it was with no effort on his part. He simply selected a few options, pressed a button or two, and his magic took care of the rest. And when he used a spell like his Elemental Infusion that required conscious effort, he couldn’t move anything near what Orria could.

Orria’s spells may have been a bit louder than John’s worldly creations, filling the air with the churning of rock and stone and the cacophony of thousands of branches growing and mingling in a handful of seconds, but they were far more vast and impressive than anything he could do on his own. She reshaped the entire valley in a fraction of the time it took them to walk down into it, and never once showed the slightest fatigue from her efforts. Hell, she never even appeared to be concentrating any harder than normal for her.

Once Orria led the way through them and into the clearing’s center, John could barely imagine that they were in a valley at all. The trees at the outer perimeter were sizable and thick, and each was nearly as tall as the valley was deep, obscuring the outer walls completely above chest level by the trees, and by the brush and bushes below that. Orria continued on until they stood directly in the nexus of it all, their view consisting entirely of plants and the sky above. They felt strangely isolated, so cut off from the rest of the world that it may well have been another one altogether.

“Your other grove felt a lot more, uh, natural than this one seems like it’s going to,” John commented as he glanced around. “Though it does have a certain coziness to it.”

“It’s meant to be a bit of a liminal space.”

“Sorry, what’s a liminal space?”

“A place in-between places, a crossing place. Somewhere between two separated places that joins them, existing in both spaces at once, and yet neither.” As she spoke, Orria knelt down, brushing a hand across the grass daintily and letting the short blades weave between her fingertips.

“Ah. So a place between worlds?” John glanced around, unsure now of what Orria might have in mind. “If it’s meant to be for me, I’m guessing you want to make this a place between my new world and the old one?”

“Right on the mark. So, how do you want to decorate it?”

“Decorate? Ah, I’m, uh, I’m not really much of a flower guy,” John admitted, grimacing slightly. “I don’t have your talent for arrangements, and I don’t even know what exactly you can make. You’re always coming up with such amazing new creations.”

“Thank you. But this isn’t about complimenting me, and this isn’t just about making pretty flowers.” Orria giggled as she spoke, gesturing at the large empty space surrounding them. “Don’t worry about rushing things. We have all day, John. I can show you what I can make, I can give you tips on floral design, and if you change your mind, I can even tear it all down and start over. But you shouldn’t dwell so much on perfection and what’s right or wrong about your designs – at the end of the day, this is about making a place together. All that matters is that when we’re here, you think about me, and I think about you.”

“Reassuring… but you might be underestimating just how bad I am with color coordination,” John teased, stepping a little closer to her. Orria rolled her eyes as she straightened herself up, reaching out to boop John on the nose in mock annoyance.

“Less hesitation, more greenery, John!”

It took a bit of time, and a lot of prodding, but John did eventually come up with something resembling an idea. Orria started off by suggesting a bunch of themes – a desert oasis, a jungle rainforest, an overgrown valley, even an alien planet filled with entirely new creations. For all that she pitched, though, she seemed delighted when John came up with something on his own.

“Something like a hidden sanctuary from a lost civilization,” John finally said when he had something resembling a picture of it in his mind. “A place that feels older than time, preserved and hidden away in this little space. A running stream with a pond in the middle of it, stone paths that are barely visible through the underbrush, with trees, and vines, and moss, and- well, all that stuff kind of overgrowing the place like it’s been hundreds of years since anything was there, just a couple of old pillars and crumbling walls left in the place. But with… I don’t know, a happy vibe? It shouldn’t feel like something that was lost and rediscovered. More like a place of safety that was left to slumber until it was needed again.”

“Interesting. Is that supposed to represent your new world, or the old one?” Orria asked, her eyes alight.

“Not really either of them, I’m just kind of a nerd like that.” John laughed at the admission, gesturing around. “This place is cut off enough from the outside that it feels a little like that, and I think it’s far enough from the house I don’t have to worry about the Nekos coming and playing around and ruining all your hard work on the plants.”

“I will ensure that they don’t. I intend to spend a great deal of time here. Let’s see what I can make of this grove. I won’t be able to make a stream, of course. Water only flows down; there’s nowhere for it to go in this valley since the center is the deepest part. But maybe I could make a nice holding pond.”

Orria’s eyes scanned the area purposefully as she spoke, a rough vision of what she wanted to accomplish already forming in her mind. By the time she finished talking, the first new growths were already forming, an arc of verdant new growth sprouting up and rising above the grassy ground.

“You will? I mean, I assumed you would tend to it since I’m not all that great with plants. But why a ‘great deal’ of time?”

Orria sighed, falling largely silent for a moment. Her raised hand fell away and the world came sputtering to a halt, plants halting mid-growth and holding there as Orria turned her head to face John.

“I know that you want me to stay here when you go off to war. And I understand why.” Orria hugged herself tightly, hands wrapped around her sides as her gaze fell to the ground. “I know it’s probably the right thing to do, but you also know I’m not happy about it. I wish I was going with you.”

“I thought you didn’t have any interest in the old world? I offered to let you come with me shortly after I Purified you, you said you never wanted to leave this place.”

“You were leaving for a grocery trip, not a war.” Orria gave John a haughty glare that quickly faded into a taunting displeasure. “I don’t have any interest in your old world. I just have an interest in you – and making sure you come home!”

“I’ll have a lot of people protecting me. Though I wish you could be there too. I’ll miss you,” John said, crossing the distance between them and tentatively placing his hands around Orria’s own arms, a question of a hug that she answered by eagerly leaning into his chest. “But I need you here to keep my mind at ease. You can trust the others with protecting me, but while they’re with me, I need someone I can trust to take care of things here. After what happened with the Albidians-”

“It’s okay, I know. I know I can’t convince you to let me go with you, that’s not what this is about.” Orria gently placed her hands on John’s and pulled them away, freeing herself from his grip and turning to face the rest of the clearing. Her palms raised again and the countless new growths resumed their rapid development, growing and encompassing the entirety of the grove. “This is about doing what I can for you. And for myself. I can’t go with you, but I can be with you all the way up to the moment you leave, and I can be waiting for you here when you get back.”

“I might be gone for days at a time if they need me over there,” John reminded her. “I know that you’re more comfortable out here anyway, but I wouldn’t feel great if I knew you were just… waiting for me.”

“It’s for both of our sakes.” Orria held up a finger as if adding a physical jab to her verbal one. “You told me that you need me to do this. That I’m the only one you can trust to watch over this place. Well, this is how I do that – by being here in this spot whenever you leave, until the moment you come back.”

“You could do that at the house. I already leave to return to the old world from there plenty.”

“And as I said before, you’re going on grocery trips, not going to war,” Orria said, twisting around just long enough to poke John on his nose again, a little more forcefully than before. “Remember, I told you when we went to meet Vallya that the plants I’ve grown and shaped are easier to reach with my magic – and the same goes for their strength. Your abilities forged this valley, but barring the grass, everything alive within it is born of my being, my nature. When you go to war, John, I want you to promise me you’ll always depart from this place. Even if I’m not with you, this place will protect you, and…”

Orria cleared her throat as she paused for a moment. Her chastising tone faded a little and a blush colored her cheeks when she finally continued, in a much softer voice than before.

“If I’m allowed to be selfish for a moment, I want you to always be reminded of me. This grove will do that not only because we created it together, but because it is a part of me now. I want to be the last thing that you see when you leave your new world, and the first thing you see when you return.”

“It’s your day, you can want anything your heart desires,” John whispered. Orria gave him a grateful look before she turned and began to work again, this time raising pillars of stone from the earth, monuments that she rapidly began to shape and transform, covering them with cracks and scratches and endless overgrowth until they looked as if they’d been there for an eternity.

“You don’t object to my idea, then?”

“No. It’s brilliant, as I’d expect from you. I’ve been considering having a dedicated place to leave this world from, the same way I have a dedicated place to arrive back in the old one. It would make things a lot safer and more predictable, and I can’t very well use the training dojo during a war – if something does go wrong, it’s basically next door to where everyone is sleeping.”

“Then in that case, tell me what color you want these vines to bloom in!” Orria half-exploded, bouncing on the heels of her feet as she pointed to one of the pillars she’d raised, now formed into a decorative column with a chunk of some ancient, fallen ceiling still partially connected at the top. “I’ve got the best idea for how to weave this all into a maze that’ll make it seem way bigger than it actually is! And wait ‘til you see the seaweed tendrils I’ve got planned for the pond in the center!”

“You really are something amazing, you know that?” John asked, grinning as he stepped closer to the fey woman. She didn’t turn to face him this time, too busy eyeing the pillar and sprouting fresh buds along the lengths of each vine. John’s lips brushed the back of her neck, and for just a moment, Orria lost her concentration. Flashes of emerald and azure light danced under her skin, pulsing and dimming with the flow of mana through her body. John could feel the flashes of hot and cold against his skin as the fey woman shuddered, though her smile never broke.

“I’m trying to concentrate here,” Orria murmured. “You’re going to make me lose the vines or my control, one or the other.”

“I could probably make you lose your control in more ways than one. You’re always so worked up when we’re out like this. I think it’s where you feel most at one with nature. You know, I’m thinking about becoming one with nature myself right about now…”

“John,” Orria whined, even as her body pressed and rubbed back against him, “the flowers?”

“Yellow. A dark, glistening yellow. The color of gold, the lost treasure hidden in the ruins.”

“Y-you’re such a nerd,” Orria teased, even as metallic yellow petals were blossoming from the buds she’d grown. “But I guess you’re my nerd.”

A chuckle rumbled through John’s chest.