Passion (Book 1 of "The Fantasy of Life" Series)

Chapter 12

York

Someone shook me lightly. A deep voice spoke. "York, wake up."

"Huh.." I rolled over but my eyes remained closed.

"We're about to pack up camp." I heard the voice speak very quietly and soothingly, it became a little clearer that it was Valen speaking.

"Five more minutes... Or hours." I rolled back over and curled up in a little ball.

I could practically feel the eye roll, then suddenly, arms slid under me and I was lifted up.

I opened my eyes, a little scared, but Valen was just carrying me out of the tent. I shrugged, put my head against his chest, and sighed happily.

"What's all this?" Ashanaya smiled at us and put her hands on her hips. Cullen was bent over beside her putting their tent into a bag.

"He's carrying York through the threshold, how romantic." Marhara gave a weak smile, though he also seemed deep in his thoughts. Romance probably made him think of his wife. Wish I could have met her.

I swung my legs a little. "It's also pretty fun, you should try it."

"Me?" Ashanaya raised an eyebrow.

"No, Marhara, I bet it'd be funny." I laughed, or giggled more so.

Ashanaya and Cullen laughed while Marhara just shook his head as he zipped up the bag that had his tent inside.

Valen sat me down next to the ashes and embers that used to be a fire. He began to take the tent down.

I tried once or twice to help but everytime I even touched the tent it seemed to screw something up so I decided to just let him do it. I stared into the embers, some of them were still a little bit orange. After about 2 minutes I got bored and decided do something I hadn't done since I was a child. I did it when I didn't want to be around water nymphs, they were always around and were very rude.

I waved my hand over the embers, bouncing it gently over them and then I took a deep breath, then blew, only for a few seconds but it worked. Dark, dark grey smoke rose, ever so slowly. At first none of the others noticed. It rose higher, and grew in size, it formed a bubble and the bubble grew bigger and bigger. It continued to rise and grow until it was 30 feet above us and about 17 feet wide, I couldn't tell how tall it was but I was going to guess it made an almost perfect circle. Nymphan magic is very thorough.

I noticed everyone else looking at the big grey bubble. It was dark around us, like the sun was suddenly covered. I suppose it was by the smoke.

"What.. did you do?" Ashanaya walked forward a little with her head cocked up looking at the smoke, seeming stunned.

"Just wait." I smiled.

The bubble shuttered and burst. A loud bang followed and grey smoke exploded, quickly rolling over us and over the hills and trees around us. After that it looked very foggy and it seemed much earlier than before because of it.

"What was that?" Cullen looked around at the fog arounf his feet.

"It's just simple magic I learned when I was younger. Water nymphs are afraid of fire and any type of smoke so I did that when I wanted to be alone."

"Could we use that for anything?" Cullen asked.

"Maybe, that could be a good signal, or to throw someone off." Marhara said, still looking up at the sky. "Could maybe even intimidate someone. Who wouldn't be scared of a ball of smoke looming over them?"

I smiled. "Yay, I help."

Valen smiled and bent over to kiss my cheek. "Of course you help."

I smiled a cute smile with my tongue between my teeth.

Valen shook his head and shoved a folded up tent into a bag, he threw it to Cullen as Ashanaya opened up the void. I jumped up and ran to her side.

"I wanna see." I was a little bit taller that her but I still put my hands on her shoulder and lifted myself so I could see the hole floating in the air. It was beautiful, the inside almost looked like a galaxy with no stars, a magnificent assortment of colours, from dark cyans and dark purples to blacks and dark blues. The outer edge was lines with a black ring that was much darker than the black on the inside, it had very rough edges, sort of like the edge of the shadow of a pine tree at midnight. I never would've noticed if I hadn't been paying close attention but the outer circle was rotating slowly, the rough edges slowly shifting and making different shapes like a moving crowd of shadows. "Woah. Elven magic is... dark, nymphan magic is all bright and colourful and ew."

Ashanaya smiled and Cullen started throwing all the things into the void.

"I wanna go in." I stepped toward it.

Valen's hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me back quickly. "Don't, going in there will kill you."

"Really?" I asked.

He nodded.

I started walking forward. "Welp, I'm ready to die."

He pulled me back again. His voice was stern this time. "No you are not."

"But it's so pretty!" I tried to move forward but he held me firmly in place.

He raised an eyebrow and Ashanaya closed the hole. I looked at Valen and saw the expression on his face. "Oh. You're pretty too I guess."

"You guess?" He seemed offended.

"I've never dated a guy who was so sensitive he got offended if I didn't call him pretty." I laughed. "Most wanna be called like, hot, or sexy, or big d-"

"Okay, I get it." He rolled his eyes. "And I am not sensitive."

"You are." I patted his chest.

"Wait," He said it slowly and got an evil grin.

"What?" I looked around worried.

"You said 'dated', did you just make it official?" His evil grin grew wider.

"And if I did?"

He crossed his arms. "I don't know if I'm ready for that kind of commitment."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh you a-"

His lips met mine. He slid his arm around my back and pulled me close, pressing my body tightly against his. He gave a very intense kiss, he tasted sweet this time, warmth spread through me and goosebumps brushed up and down my skin. I wrapped my right arm around his neck and pulled his head down, but just as I did he pulled away. I frowned and pursed my lips.

He smiled. "Does that tell you my real answer?"

I bit my lip. "Little bit."

He laughed a little and started to lean back down when someone started to clear their throat.

I looked over and saw that everyone else was watching us. I quickly pulled away from Valen's grasp, put my hands behind my back. "I don't know what you guys saw but I can tell you what it really was: rape."

Valen choked, Cullen started laughing, and Marhara started shaking his head and walked away.

Ashanaya laughed and patted my back. "Yeah, we could tell."

She followed short behind Marhara, Cullen jogged to get ahead of them so he could lead us to Hope.

I looked over to Valen who was blushing really bad and his eyes were wider than I've ever seen them. I skipped over to him and kissed his cheek, then I took his hand and drug him behind me as we followed everyone else.