First Forest - Viola Grace Page 0,5
slow, deep voice wasn’t threatening; it was as if he was trying to be helpful.
She shivered. “Was that you in my dream last night?”
He chuckled. “And in the temple, at your side, and in your lap.”
“Aw, no.” She wailed. “Maku was such a good friend.”
She started to kick and hit him on the thigh. He ignored her. He might have been entertaining himself, but she had just lost a friend. She was mad.
His steady steps slowed, and he set her up in a tree while he sat below. He leaned against the trunk of the tree she was in, and she finally got a good look at him.
“I am not insane, right? You are Kiloh?”
Smooth fawn-colored skin, a wide jaw, bright liquid gold eyes surrounded by thick black lines. His horns would have done credit to any stag. The rest of him was to scale with the width of his head. One of his hands was larger than her entire head.
He smiled. “I am.”
“Ah. Pleased to meet you.” She inclined her head and smiled.
“We have met many times before. As Maku, I knew how upset you were about your father’s illness. I encouraged the elders to let you leave with him.” He huffed. “I did not think that you would not return once he was gone.”
“And yet, here I am.” She swung her legs slightly.
“You left me.” He was irritated.
“I came back.” She sighed. “I have tried to come back, but my mother didn’t want me here.”
He looked at her, and his expressive lips turned in a grimace. “What? When?”
“One year after my father died. I tried to get her permission to return, but since I couldn’t come through without an invitation from the village, I wasn’t able to come back.” She shrugged. “As soon as I had a solid invitation, here I was.”
“Is that what you meant by freedom?”
She looked at him and blinked. He was Priest Garo as well. Wow. “Um, yes. There are a lot of people out there who would love for the opportunity to learn here, but they can’t come in. They would wear the clothing and adhere to the traditions, but they can’t even have the chance to try because of the regulations. Even a lottery that allowed twenty people per year would be a better idea. It would certainly help to shore up the failing genetics that is occurring.”
“That is why your father was allowed in.”
She chuckled. “That much, he told me. Our mother was the villager and a calligrapher. Her work complemented his research, but they were done with each other when I was ten. When I left at sixteen, it was clear that she considered me my father’s daughter and not hers. The outside world was fun, but I think if I hadn’t had my dad with me, I would have been terrified.”
Abiha looked around and noticed a few things that she hadn’t seen before. “Wait, this is where I first met Maku.”
He chuckled. “It is. You had managed to attract one of the bears in the vicinity, and you needed a defender that would not scare you. So, I shrank into Maku. It was snug, so Priest Garo came into being at the same time.”
She blinked. “I remember that. All I saw was fluffy tails, and then, Maku nudged me all the way back to the temple.”
“Which is where you met Priest Garo. The community accepted that I would be there for festivals and that sort of thing. If they wished to speak to me and I wished to speak to them, it was that form that they spoke to.”
She looked around. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because you are the one I have chosen.”
She shifted on the tree branch. “Chosen for what?” The words were out of her mouth before he looked at her with a bland expression.
“You are an adult now. What do you think?”
She leaned away from him and ran out of branch. She yelped as she fell. He caught her easily and pulled her across his thighs. He sighed. “You are not getting away, Abiha. I have waited too long.”
He leaned in toward her, and she pressed her fingers to his lips. He stopped, and then, an amused warmth was in his eyes. He mumbled. “You are made entirely of nerve.”
She blushed. “You have never done anything to injure me, and you have waited this long, so why not a bit more?”
He licked her fingers, and she shivered before trying to pull her hand away.