[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

21| Beauty in Silence {Part Three}

Lancelot sorts out some of his feelings but is left even more confused when Ari crosses the line between them.

They rode the horses south following the river's path through the morning and into the afternoon, stopping to allow them to drink. Lancelot wandered off into the forest to go about his business. He took the bow with him, just in case a lonely creature tried to get in his way.

"Where's Ari?" Lancelot asked as he came back without an unfortunate creature.

"She's over there," Squirrel didn't look up at him, pointing over around the rock towards the river. Lancelot's heart beat a little quicker at the thought of her being by the water. His feet picked up before he knew it and he started walking in the direction the boy had pointed. Lancelot caught onto her scent, following the strengthening notes of wood violet until he found her.

He had noticed how her scent had changed. When he pulled her from the river it was non existent which terrified him, a sign that she was almost lost. Then as she started to heal it became stronger in his senses, cutting through above all the others, but it was... different. The tones of violet were still there but there was something else, he couldn't put his finger on what it was. It was pleasant, enticing, something he had never sensed in another before. He'd noticed it ever since they had attempted to cross swords and she had fallen into his steadying arms.

He slowed when he heard her voice, singing quietly a soft song to the water in the distance, her fingers tapping at the last of the snow as she knelt at the river's edge. As he got closer her voice became louder in his ears and he did not recognise the words, it was not the common tongue of the kingdom. Then her tone changed into something lighter, heavenly almost, and it stopped him in his tracks. He had never heard such a voice in his lifetime, it transfixed him, rooted him in his place.

Her hand pushed into the ground and it was like she was calling to the earth, beckoning for her to come forward and make herself known. The familiar golden glow came once more from her palm, he had seen it many times over the last week as she pulled the life from the earth to help her heal, but this time it looked different somehow. Perhaps it was his weeping eyes deceiving him, but the streaks and hues seemed to make shapes in the thin snow, he couldn't see quite what they were.

The glow from Ari's palm grew brighter as it danced but then an energy in the ground caught her attention and she turned suddenly, her hand pulling away from the earth to hover over where her dagger was laced within her boot. She almost gripped the blade before she recognised that it was Lancelot who had approached her. Her heartbeat calmed back down at the realisation but she shouldn't have let her guard down in the first place, not after her last unexpected encounter. She cleared her voice.

"Ahh, I did not know you were standing there," she said slowly, practically embarrassed as her words almost blended into one.

"You have a voice," Lancelot's brows and voice lifted as he attempted a compliment, another thing that he wasn't quite used to doing.