“What are they?”
“Bugs, as near as I can figure it. The locals call them fairy lights. They’re nocturnal and reside in the flowers during the day, using its cover as protection against predators. At night, when the flowers open, they wake up and come out.”
Fallon caught one, gently cupping his hands around it. He held his hand out between them and unfurled his fist in a slow movement. In his palm, no bigger than Shea’s thumbnail was a miniature figure, almost humanlike with a head and arms and legs but no features, and wings that closed and opened in a lightning fast movement. As they watched, its wings flickered, creating the glow they’d been watching.
“How does it create light?” Fallon’s face was intent as he tilted the fairy light in his hands, this way and that as if he could find the mechanism it used just by observation.
Shea shook her head, the movement visible by the fairy light. “The villagers don’t know, and my people haven’t spent enough time in this area to study it. There’s a story the villagers tell about a race of people so tiny that they are almost invisible to the eye unless you look very closely. That the race was once so plentiful throughout these lands until the cataclysm, which forced them to retreat into obscurity to avoid annihilation. The fairy lights only come out at night when they feel safe, chancing the light only when predators or enemies aren’t close.”
Fallon looked up for a moment, the fairy light’s wings opening and closing, its light turning off and on with each movement.
“Watch.” Shea lifted her hands and clapped once, the sound a crack in the night. The lights closest to them winked off, including the one in Fallon’s hands.
“It reacts to danger.”
“Yes, which means the light can be controlled. Its reaction to threat is to hide, using the natural camouflage of the night as protection.”
When Shea made no other movements, the fairy lights gradually drifted closer again in a slow meandering movement. Fallon slowly lowered his cupped hand when it became clear that the light he’d held was no longer there.
“The villagers harvest the fairy lights’ waste to create artwork and ceremonial dress. For the summer solstice, they always have a celebration that they call the Joy of Light. It looks like a dance of the sun. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Shea said.
Fallon’s hand covered hers on the blanket. “I would like to see that someday.”
Shea leaned her head against his shoulder as they watched the fairy lights move in swooping patterns over the pond, its water reflecting their light.
“When we have children, I’d like to bring them here,” Fallon said, his statement startling in the quiet.
Shea lifted her head. “We’re to have children, are we?”
“Of course. I must have someone to pass what I’ve created to—someone to take up the legacy and make something better, something stronger out of it. I’ll sit them down here and tell them the story of how we met, how you exploded onto that platform like a goddess of old, like the stories my grandmother told me when I was a child.”
“What if I don’t want children?”
His shoulder shifted as he peered down at her. “Do you want children?”
Shea rubbed her chin against his shoulder and sighed. “Truthfully, I’ve never thought about it. I’ve been so focused on making a place for myself—and then when the Trateri caught me, on surviving—that the thought never crossed my mind.”
“I think you would make a good mother, teaching our children how to read the trails and track beasts.”
“Like my mother taught me.”
“Not your father?” Fallon voice curious. “You so rarely talk about them.”
Shea was quiet a long moment. Her first instinct was to clam up, to ignore the question and make it clear there were some things she didn’t want to discuss. It’s what she would have done not so long ago.
“My father did teach me some, but he was gone so often. He’s a pathfinder; my mother is too, but her duties required her presence at the Keep more often.”
“Was that difficult?”
She’d never thought of it in terms of difficulty or not. It simply was the way things were. “No, our family was happy. My father brought me trinkets from his trips, and my mother was the firm hand of discipline, teaching me the skills she thought I’d need when I took my place as a pathfinder. Turned out it was a good thing as it gave me an advantage over other initiates when I began my formal training.”
“You speak as if they’re dead.”
She sighed. “They’re very much alive, though they probably wish I’d done them the service of dying in the course my duties.”
“That sounds harsh.” There was no judgment in his voice. He was simply making an observation.
Her laugh was rough and ugly, hurting her throat as it left. “To them I’m a disappointment. Long before I was captured by the Trateri, I knew I hadn’t lived up to their expectations. Now, I doubt they would want me to darken their doorstep. I’m the round peg among a world of square ones. I never quite fit, and once that cost the lives of other pathfinders, they made it clear I wasn’t welcome.”
Some of the peaceful feeling she’d had after viewing the night sky and seeing the fairy lights threatened to dissipate. She wasn’t ready for that, wanting to hold on to the good while she still could.
“And you, what was your childhood like?” she asked, wanting off the subject of her past.
Fallon laid back, pulling her down so her cheek rested on his chest and his arms wrapped around her. It made her feel safe and comforted.
“You know some of it,” he told her, staring up at the stars. “My father was a great man, grandson of the man who first united the clans. When I was a child, I would watch him fight. He was fierce; no man could beat him in a fair fight. He was able to take on five men, and they couldn’t even land a single blow.”
Shea was quiet, knowing that his father had not had a happy ending. She rested a hand on his chest, her fingers rubbing lightly along his pectoral muscle in a soothing caress.
Fallon continued without prompting. “He couldn’t be defeated in a fair fight so when it looked like he might succeed in reuniting the clans, his uncle resorted to trickery to stop him. My father’s allies used deceit and false promises to lure him from his stronghold. They attacked him with over thirty men, and even then lost two thirds to his blade, before several archers were able to put ten arrows in his body.”
Shea’s fingers stilled, and she closed her eyes at the pain in his voice. Her family might have its problems, but her childhood was nearly idyllic. Or as idyllic as a childhood in the Highlands could be. It was only because of her own mistakes that the divisions in their family took hold.
“My mother was forced to flee and take shelter with Henry’s clan. He was one of the few who did not take part in the betrayal.”