The Hearts of Goblins

Chapter VII

Didymus hopped around gathering up twigs and leaves. His fox night vision did come in handy at times he would admit. The little fox gathered up bundle after bundle of kindling that he would bring back to Gwen and toss onto the small fire she had made. Didymus paused to watch as Gwen cared for and nursed the boy she had called Lee. Didymus shook his furry head, his black lips curling back as he sniffed the air. Lee didn't smell like any boy Didymus had ever smelled before. It must be because he's sick, thought Didymus, but that didn't change the fact that Lee smelled more like a sick old crone than he did a young man. Didymus scurried off again to get more firewood. He felt obligated to protect the two young ones that had stumbled into his vine home. He had to keep them warm. Didymus shoved large sticks under his small arms and scurried back to the fire again.

Gwen checked the pocket watch in her hand. It had only been an hour since Lee had collapsed but it felt like much longer. Lee's head rested in Gwen's lap as she stroked his short black hair. Lee's hair was as thick and as black as nighttime. It was beginning to curl slightly at the ends, as it did when Lee went a while without smothering his scalp with hair products.
Lee snored lightly, giving Gwen some sense of relief. His long thick eyelashes would flutter every so often.
Gwen carefully examined Lee's soft features as she imagined bitterly what her life would be like without Lee Kholi's antics and incessant ravings filling up every moment that would have been another lifeless boring minute without him.

Gwen pushed her hair back only for it to fall back over her shoulder again. She desperately wished for something to tie back the mass of wispy burgundy.
Lee groaned as his eyes fluttered open. Gwen's heart lept with joy. He mumbled something incoherent, his voice slurred from sleep.
"What?" She asked. Lee reached out and pushed Gwen's hair away.
"You're hair tickles." He said more clearly. His voice was thick with sleep and his Indian accent. Gwen giggled with elation.
"Your roots are showing too." He added.
"Oh shut up." She laughed.
"What happened?" Lee asked.
"I'm not quite sure. You just sort of passed out. We set up camp here and let you rest." She explained.
"We?" Lee said, "Who else i-"
"MY! When didst thou wake?!" Came the high barking voice of Sir Didymus.
Lee raised his head to look at the fox before letting his head fall back into Gwen's lap.
"Oh god, he's real," He whispered, "I thought I was dreaming."
"Nope." Gwen sighed. She turned to face Didymus. "He just woke up. He still needs to rest and take it easy." Lee grumbled in protest but Gwen silenced him with a single look.
"Hush." She said. Lee rolled his eyes and removed himself from Gwen's lap. He laid back onto the stone ground.
Had it not been for the stone tiles beneath them, Gwen would have likely forgotten that they were in the Labyrinth at all.
"How doth thou believe he will fair?" Didymus asked quietly.
"He's tough. It'll take a lot more than this to bring him down." Lee was soon snoring again.
"He is a strange one," Didymus said, sniffing the air.
Gwen grinned.
"That's true." She said.
"Thou must rest soon, my lady," Didymus said. Gwen glanced down at the glow of embers with a pile of kindling arranged in a nice stack next to the little campfire. She looked up and saw little glimmers of stars peeking through the thick ropes of green. She didn't bother to check what time it was but wondered briefly if stars would have been shining above the clearing that night. That clearing by the park with the black stump, Gwen held onto the thought of that place. As sleep tugged at her eyelids, she imagined that's where she was. She thought she could even hear the music of rowdy college students in the distance as she drifted into slumber.

Lee woke long before Gwen. For a moment he studied the way the green tint of the foliage made her pale skin glow a pale jade color. The way that at first glance, Gwen's numerous freckles looked like tiny copper seeds poking through the surface of her glowing plant skin. Her burgundy hair splayed out around her head like dark brown tree roots. In the midst of the nature around them, Gwen's sleeping frame looked to be apart of it.
Lee had always associated Gwen with nature. He remembered when he had first met her on their school playground. Lee had been a simple second-grader playing on a swing set when he had noticed a short pudgy little girl being shoved down by a group of third or fourth-graders. Lee, being the same social justice advocating soul that he was now, of course rushed to help the girl.
'Back off' he had yelled at them. After a brief skirmish that resulted in Lee being sent to the nurse while the group of bullies had gotten away with a couple of red handprints on their cheeks and maybe a bruise or two.
The next day when Lee found his way to the swing set again, there was the short ginger-haired girl he had stood up for. She had held out her hands producing a small bouquet of small flowers. He recognized them as Nila Chitrak flowers although they probably were known by a different name there in America. The flowers, which he later found that she had picked from the shrubbery in her mother's backyard garden, were the same light blue as the sky and the girl's eyes he noticed as he looked more closely.
Something about the small, freckle-faced redhead didn't seem real. Maybe it was the way that she somehow knew about the flowers that he'd always seen looking out the windows of his old home in India, or maybe it was the way that she had looked as if she had been offering him a gift fit for gods. She just didn't seem like a little first-grade girl that got bullied on the schoolyard, but instead, she looked like a flower herself. Lee knew then that he could trust her. He could see some wisdom in her eyes that he himself hadn't yet found. His young mind was bewildered by the trust that they had for each other almost instantly.
He remembered the secrets they had told each other in whispers under the slide, in the safety of their nearby park, or walking home together.
Lee remembered that Gwen had never questioned whether or not Lee was a boy. Although all the other children never believed him when he told them. His long hair and feminine features had kept people guessing until the point when he chopped off his hair (even then most people thought that he was just a masculine lesbian) it wasn't until he was finally able to grow a decent amount of facial hair did people stop asking. Gwen had known first and had never doubted him. She was always as gentle and peaceful as a flower.
Lee chuckled to himself. A flower with a good amount of thorns.
"Where's Didymus?" Gwen yawned as she woke. Lee giggled to himself and pointed behind Gwen. She turned to see the valiant little fox curled up in a sleepy ball, pressed against her back.
"I think he was trying to keep watch," Lee said. Gwen chuckled before looking up into Lee's dark eyes.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better I guess." He said, "I've been aching like I just got out of a Biggest Loser level workout, though." He paused. "And I'm still pretty dizzy."
"Can you walk?" Gwen asked.
"Maybe. I might need some help."
Gwen opened the silver pocket watch that Jareth had given her.
"It's almost morning." She said.
Lee groaned as he carefully got to his feet.
"Let's finish this quest of ours."
Gwen got up and gently nudged the sleeping fox beside her.
"C'mon Sir Didymus." She said softly. Didymus shot up immediately, waving around his tiny scepter blindly.
"WHAT HO! WHO GOES?!" he cried out.
"Just us." Lee laughed.
"Ah. Sir Lee! Hast thou been healed?" Didymus asked, embarrassedly gaining his composure. He quickly used a rock and a fist full of dirt to smother the smoldering embers of their campfire.
"I'm good enough," Lee said. He looked over, meeting Gwen's eyes. As soft and as blue as the Nila Chitrak flowers from so long ago. Gwen took his hand in hers as they walked on.