Rowans Choice

Chapter Thirty Six- Willow

I wake in our bed.

Our bed.

Would that ever not feel thrilling to say?! I roll onto my side and come to a stop, nibbling my fleshy bottom lip with a lopsided smile to find Andy asleep on her stomach. Her long locks are strewn messily over the pillow, her lips smushed against her forearm and her right leg having just fallen off of my waist has escaped the sheets revealing her soft and firm thigh. I can't help the smile, she looked adorable, beyond adorable... uff she looked too good to be true.

Deep in my belly though, was a seed of fear, that Andy wasn't fully here with me yet and that we could still come unstuck. I knew we had a lot to work through, clearly there were issues that had not been resolved. How can you fix something though, when you still don't know what you truly did?! Until she confided it in me, I would be lost at sea without a paddle or a way to navigate my way back home. To her. I just wanted to help, to make it better and bring her right back to me, a place that at sixteen was solid and sure. For a whole year we had been perfectly happy, and confident that what we had was the real thing... and then the night our magic came in... we ended. I wish more than anything I knew why. I can't even tell you how many nights I spent crying myself to sleep when she vanished for that year. I remember going to her home and asking her father if she was coming to the Oak like usual, since she had missed a whole week by my side, unheard of, to be told by her overly apologetic father that she would be gone with her mother for a while, gone to assist her mothers sister who was Ill. I remembered not being able to make sense of that, how she had never told me she was going anywhere or that her aunt was even sick.

Sycamore confirmed she had left, so I knew it was true. My father told me that I had Cricket and Robin and shouldn't be so emotional about it. He of course didn't know the extent of our relationship, so I imagine to him it was teenage girl hysteria and nothing more.

Over time I began to harden my heart to her. I felt like I had completely gotten over her, naively. A year was a long time to yearn for a lost love, and without word it was heartbreakingly clear she didn't think that much about me. The day that Andy returned though, that moment I saw her, it all came flooding back... and once again I was drowning in her and all she meant to me. Andy though... she didn't come back the same. I feel that still, less so, but still there's a part of her that's not returned to me... and I want it... I want all of her back.

I reach out and kiss her cheek, she stirs slightly at the contact and turns away, not waking from her slumber quite yet. I couldn't blame her, the sun was only just rising.

I rolled out of bed and walked to my wardrobe, today I would dress myself, because I knew one person who always woke with the dawn, my beloved Aunt, Willow.

She always told me "Nothing terrible ever happens at dawn. Wake with it Rowan and live in the peace with it before the world wakes up and ruins the day"

And I always had, when I wasn't days out of a month long coma anyway.

I had to see her before she left for Windlere.

***
I threw on a simple day dress, it was still somewhat formal, let's face it as the Queen I didn't own anything casual. Casual was naked for me.

My guards Jay and Gladiolus assist me down to the guests branch, there is more guard activity here as soon as you exit the lift. I'm sure Mirren and Sorcha must have been aware that eyes never left them, they were watched like a hawk. My first orders as the Queen was to have them watched by our own eyes in Thistle, and again here ... not a second missed. That was the thing with fairy's, if we treated it with respect and love, the natural world around us worked with us. Unlike Sorcha who treated her land like a servant and didn't care for it... I had always loved our forest, and all creatures great and small, and in return for my loyalty they swore theirs to me. I had eyes in the trees, eyes on the ground, in the skies, and in the Oak.