"It's beautiful," I murmured, barely above a breath.
The ocean below had been transformed by the falling sun — the surface turned to hammered gold in every direction, light lying flat across the water in broad, warm sheets, the horizon a soft bleeding of orange into the pale gold of the sky above it. It was the kind of view that made you want to stand very still and not say anything unnecessary, in case the act of speaking broke the quality of light.
"It is," Rei agreed, and then cleared his throat. "But that isn't what I wanted to show you."
I turned to look at him.
He gestured behind me.
I turned.
I smelled it before I saw it — something sweet and faintly herbal, carrying a warmth in it that reminded me, in some distant way, of the particular scent his magic produced when he was actively working it. But this was more natural, more alive, untouched by any human making. An ambient sweetness rising from something growing.
Then I saw it.
The whole of the peak's far side was covered in flowers. Not scattered, not occasional — covered, in the way that a hillside in full bloom covers itself, every available surface given over to the same small, densely packed blossom. Five petals each, round-edged, delicate; the outer edge of each one a clear, vivid pink, the centre shifting to gold. In their individual form they were simple, unremarkable almost. Together, in their thousands, cascading across the hillside in both colours simultaneously, they were extraordinary — a pink and gold landscape that had no equivalent in anything I had seen on land or water.
The breath left me.
"Is this the Heilan flower?" I asked, and the question came out barely above a whisper. The silence here felt important. Like something that deserved not to be broken.
"Yes," Rei said, equally quiet.
A pause.
"I wanted you to see it," he said. "I thought you would like it."
I nodded, then wasn't sure he could see it, and turned to look at him to give him something more definite.
That was a mistake, in the particular way that certain things are mistakes not because they cause harm but because they produce effects you haven't prepared for.
He was looking at me.
Fully, directly, without any of the managed composure he typically deployed when he remembered to deploy it. The sun had found his eyes and lit them from the inside, or that was how it appeared, the azure of them warm in the golden afternoon light. He was not looking at the flowers. He had not been looking at the flowers for some time, it seemed. He was looking at me with the specific quality of someone who has found the thing they consider most worth looking at and has no particular interest in pretending otherwise.
It was not a comfortable thing to be the subject of, in the way that things of significant intensity are not comfortable.
I looked away.
"Thank you," I told him, with as much sincerity as I could put into two words. "For bringing me here."
"I'm glad you like it," he said.
His gaze remained on the side of my face like a hand held close to warmth.
---
We stayed on the peak for most of the evening without either of us formally deciding to. The light changed around us — the gold deepening into something richer, then beginning to fade at the edges, and neither of us said anything about leaving until the descent had to be made in the last of the usable light.
The bonfire reached us first, its smell and warmth arriving before the clearing came into view. Then the sounds — laughter, conversation in several registers, the particularly busy happiness of a group of people sharing an evening around food and fire. The island's residents and the ship's crew had evidently found common ground in the universal language of a well-cooked meal and sufficient beer.
Benedict had positioned himself at the centre of things, as he generally did in situations involving drink and company, and was engaged in animated conversation with one of the island's elders with the comfort of two people who had found an unexpected point of connection. Ivanna moved between groups with a tray and a smile that seemed genuinely attached to her face rather than maintained there. Phoenix and Sheriya had located the meat and appeared to be addressing it with their full and undivided attention.
"You're back!" Benedict called when he spotted us, with the uncomplicated enthusiasm of someone who has had several beers and is finding everything agreeable. "How were the flowers?" He directed this at both of us, requiring nothing specific in return, and answered his own question by returning to his conversation before either of us could speak.
Rei turned to me.
"Would you like to eat something?"
I shook my head.
"I think I'll rest," I said. "I'm more tired than I expected to be."
I stood there for a moment, watching the bonfire and the people around it, the easy warmth of the scene, and felt — briefly and without warning — a wave of something that was not sadness exactly but was adjacent to it, pressing in from somewhere I couldn't locate and retreating just as quickly. There and gone, leaving no clear explanation.
I looked down at the bracelet.
The stone at its centre was dull. Not dark, but diminished — the particular quality of something that has been running on the last of its reserves and has nearly reached the bottom. The soft shimmer that normally lived in it was absent.
I should have it refilled. I could attempt it myself now, having worked through the basic technique that afternoon, but the consequences of an error felt significant. If I overfilled the stone, if the channels were overwhelmed, if the enchantment broke — whatever was on the other side of this bracelet would come back without preparation or warning.
I wasn't ready for that. Not tonight.
"Are you alright?"
I looked up. Rei was watching me with the focused, quiet attention he brought to things he was genuinely concerned about.
I lifted the hand with the bracelet toward him in answer. The dull stone caught the firelight and returned almost nothing.
"I think it needs to be refilled," I said.
---
The house the islanders had given me was simple and entirely sufficient — one of the structures around the clearing that still bore evidence of regular maintenance despite its emptiness. The bed was not what I had grown accustomed to in Arpa or Draga: a single plane of wood, solid and even, with a sheet laid over it in the practical fashion of people who have what the island provides and have made of it what they can. It was honest, in its way.
I sat on it at Rei's direction. He settled on the tree stump positioned in front of me — someone's practical furnishing for a room that saw visitors sometimes — and held out his hand, eyes level with mine.
I placed my wrist in his hand.
Outside, the bonfire continued. Laughter moved through the walls in warm, muffled waves, and the lamps placed at the clearing's edge sent a low, amber light through the window that barely outraced the dark at its edges. The room existed at the boundary between firelight and shadow, neither fully bright nor fully dim.
In this quality of light, with the outside sounds reduced to something distant and comfortable, I became aware of everything in the room with unusual clarity. His breathing — steady, controlled. The small adjustments of his posture as he oriented himself toward the work. The silence between us, which had a texture to it.
I had not anticipated being this aware of the whole thing.
His magic began to gather — I could smell it before I felt it, that distinctive rose-warm sweetness that always preceded his active workings. The first thread of it reached the bracelet's outer channel.
I flinched.
He stopped immediately.
His eyes came up to mine, and whatever he saw there apparently required reassessment of several things simultaneously.
"You shouldn't move while I'm—" he began, and then stopped, and looked at me more carefully, and his expression reorganised itself into something between confused and amused.
"Are you alright?" he asked. "You look like a particularly ripe tomato at the moment."