***
Kiethara stepped back and brushed her hands off. She spun on her heel, admiring her masterpiece. It looked amazing and the smell was marvelous! The combined aroma of a thousand flowers and hundreds of fruit was mouthwatering…
Yes, Camella would be blown away when she entered her clearing. According to her connection, she would be here in a few minutes, at the most. Kiethara recalled the relief when her friend’s presence had pricked in her connection only yesterday…
A feast she had promised Camella and a feast she would get. Fruit, vegetables, and beans were everywhere. The trees were laden with oranges, apples, and bananas, their trunks wrapped with vines of grapes. Plump tomatoes, large pineapples, peaches, potatoes, carrots, strawberries…Anything and everything that she could think of was ripe and in abundance.
Food was not the only thing she had focused on. The forest had plenty of natural beauty, of course, but she felt she had needed to add something more to the scenery. Perhaps she had gotten carried away, but it was not without good reason.
Garlands of flowers circled the clearing, hanging from the trees as they draped from branch to branch. The majority of them were white roses, but she occasionally spotted them with bright daisies. Vines swung between the trees, their trunks rimmed with tulips. She could not even begin to describe the rainbow of petals that she had dropped onto the emerald green grass.
It had taken her a good part of the week to imagine and plan out the scene before her, not to mention all of today to skillfully craft her vision into real life. She had no complaints, though, for it had kept her hands and her mind busy. It had been the necessary yet enjoyable, hard labor she needed to exhaust her and drive away any unwanted thoughts.
Kiethara let out a quiet gasp—Camella was only a few yards away. Quickly, she turned invisible.
Camella finally pushed her way through the vines and into the clearing. To Kiethara’s overwhelming relief, she did not seem to be injured in anyway. Her eyes popped wide as she laid them on the sight before her and her jaw dropped open. Silently giggling, Kiethara went to stand next to her.
“Kiethara,” she breathed, tucking a strand of her short hair behind her ear. “Unbelievable.”
“You flatter me,” Kiethara said promptly, turning visible. “It’s only fitting for such a hero!”
She let out a squeak in surprise, but then she threw her arms around Kiethara. “It looks wonderful!”
“Welcome back!” Kiethara cried in return, squeezing her back. “How did you manage?”
“Fair,” she said, stepping back to admire the clearing again. “It’s a great tale.”
“Grab something! Anything!” Kiethara told her when she spotted Camella’s preoccupation. “Then we can sit, eat, and talk.”
Together they walked around and gathered their favorites. Weighed down with their delicacies, they plopped into the grass.
They spent a few minutes eating. The silence was only broken by Camella’s exclamations of ripeness and satisfaction, which made Kiethara flush with pleasure. She had wanted nothing more than to please her friend.
“So you are not harmed?” Kiethara asked aloud. She could bear the suspense no longer.
“Harmed? Heavens, no,” she answered. “I enjoyed the journey immensely and, even though it was a little wearing, I ran into no trouble.”
Kiethara relaxed a little and took a breath. Camella laughed at her response, rolling her eyes as she bit into a juicy tomato, juice dribbling down her chin.
“You don’t take danger very seriously,” Kiethara noted.
“You could say it like that,” Camella mused. “I would say I just don’t worry about the ‘maybes’ in life.”
Kiethara only shook her head in response as she sucked on a piece of grapefruit.
“You worry too much,” Camella said almost sadly. “I met no one on my way there.”
“Where did you go?”
“The sea,” she said. “There were no lakes in reach and a river might wash the thing on shore. I decided to go all the way to Redawn, so I could drop it off one of the docks. I knew it would be a long way if I could not stop at Nikkoi, even with my horse, whom I always leave outside the forest. So I stuffed as much of the forest’s vegetation in my bag as I could before starting east.
“Like I said, I met no one along the fields. When I approached Redawn, though, that’s when I saw him.”
“Who?”
“I know not his name. When I stayed the night with you, we talked about our eye colors, remember? When I complimented your eyes, you said you knew a man with two different color eyes. When I asked, you told me about him, and how he was your enemy. Well, a man just as you described was lurking at the gates.”
“Sinsenta!” Kiethara gasped.
“Is that his name? Well, I knew there was something wrong about him the moment I came within ten paces! There was just something about…the air around him. It was heavy. Dark.”
Kiethara nodded. She understood the feeling.
“He was watching the crowd very closely and as I got closer, he started watching me. The necklace was hidden, of course. Still, when he pulled away from the wall I didn’t pause to check where he was headed; I bolted.
“I ran south, and then east. I finally reached the shore line, and for some reason, Sinsenta did not follow me. My only problem was figuring out how to toss the jewel far enough, now that I could not use the docks. Too close, and the waves would just wash it up on land again. So I went out for a swim.”
“A swim?” Kiethara asked.
“Mhm,” she answered around a mouthful of bananas. “I swam out at least a mile or so, as far as I could, and then I dropped the necklace. Swimming back was a dozen times easier, for some reason. I believe it was the necklace. It obviously has a dire effect on you—nothing as dramatic happened to me—but something in that device seemed to…weigh me down. I can’t describe it well, but it was strange.”
“That abomination goes against nature,” Kiethara growled. “I know exactly what you are trying to describe.”
“What does it do to you, exactly?” Camella asked timidly.
Kiethara was silent for a minute, chewing on her words. How should she say it?
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said quietly.
“No, no, I’m just trying to find the words. It…drains me, I suppose you could say. It takes my magic and my strength.”
Camella shuddered. “It looked, well, horrible.”
“It feels no better. It takes everything so quickly, too.”
“Why doesn’t it take my power?”
Kiethara raised her arm. Her green crystal glinted in the sun.
“You don’t have these.”
“Your bracelets?”
“My power comes from them,” Kiethara explained. “That jewel has a direct effect on them.”
“It’s a bit ironic that your bracelets make you the strongest of us all, but at the same time they’re responsible for your greatest weakness,” she pointed out.
“Things usually work out that way for me,” Kiethara sighed.
“But we have cause to rejoice! Your luck can’t be that bad if we managed to get rid of it!” Camella proclaimed.
“We did manage that,” Kiethara mused. She was overcome with a wave of relief. The necklace was gone, Gandador thwarted, and her friend was safe and unharmed. So what if her future was bleak with the promise of death? Her present was currently filled with joy and it would be nothing but foolishness to not enjoy it. Aaron was right; she needed to relax.
“Yes we did!” Camella bent over and plucked two strawberries. “Cheers!”
Kiethara laughed and took the little red berry. Together they ate them with mirrored smiles.
“I don’t think I can eat another morsel,” she complained, falling back onto the grass.
“We’ll sleep it off,” Kiethara said lazily, lying back as well.
“Thank you, Kiethara! That was wonderful!”
/> “Don’t thank me! I’m just glad your journey went well.”
“It is not the journey to be feared,” Camella laughed. “But the destination.”