Serpent In Love (🔞) - Completed

5. A Snake's Special Gift

"Hydrina, has anyone ever told you, you're beautiful?" Themiste asks me after placing a flower wreath on my head.

Today is easily our twentieth picnic in the wild flowers' meadow, but it's the first time Themiste has paid such open compliments on my looks.

Yes... I answer in my head, but remain quiet as she seems to want to say more.

At present, her light blue eyes explore my blushing face before fixing on my amber ones.

"Actually, in an unconventional sort of way, I say you are very beautiful. And your eyes. They appear to alter colour in different lights...are you a nymph?"

I laugh shyly and touch both hands to my flushed cheeks. "No, I certainly am not a nymph! But, I'm very flattered by your upfront compliment even though my beauty is incomparable to a certain princess I know!"

"That's not true," Themiste answered in a matter-of-fact tone, "and you know it!" Then she playfully flicks my high brow with a forefinger.

"Ouch!" I wince and pout at her while feigning displeasure.

After a short pause, we both burst out laughing. We hold each other's hands, our foreheads touching.

A thought crosses my mind; time does pass very quickly when one is having fun...

When our giddy laughters die down to mere smiles, Themiste pulls away and draws my right hand to place it over her heart.

"Hydrina, I am in love."

She tells me softly. Her voice sounds so faint that I ask her to repeat it.

"I said; I am in love!" She shouts to the hushed meadow at the top of her little lungs. "Do you hear me? I am in love!"

Somewhere, a bird squawks, breaking the vacuumed air.

For a split moment, I can only stare at Themiste's rapturous face, aghast.

Toward her bold, declarative statement of love, I feel an indescribable tightness in my chest. No doubts, my heart recalls a familiar acute heartbreak that in turn causes my body temperatures plummet from sudden horror and dread.

This was when a horrific vision of the bestial pecking scene foretold in the mirror of fate surfaces in my mind's eye. That same ferocious vision in which Aquila, in his true beast form, viciously shredded a dying man with his knife-like talons and beak.

Instinctively, my gaze drifts toward the old oak posing just ten metres to our right.

When I turn back to look at Themiste, my face is a colorless mask.

Witnessing the abrupt change in my facial complexion, Themiste quickly reassures me that it's a man that she is in love with, not me!

I feign a look of relief at her worried expression. Regaining my thoughts, I offer her my well-wishes and sincere congratulations with a revived smile.

Afterwards, without much prodding, Themiste reveals that the man she is in love with is Capys, her cousin.

Of course, I already knew this.