Chapter 21 #2
I kiss his jaw. “I wasn’t thinking at the depth I should have been.
You aren’t reacting because of superficial reasons.
In the world I know, danger has human faces, so it feels quieter.
The horrors are elsewhere, ignored because that could never happen to me.
And, if they don’t happen to you directly, it can sometimes feel like they don’t happen at all.
But, here, they have happened to you directly.
” I wrap my arms around his neck, sink my fingers into his hair.
“I am so sorry for being insensitive to that. It was selfish to assume you are someone I need to prove something to. Being petty shouldn’t be in my character description because I know being irrational isn’t in yours. ”
His head turns, pressing his lips to my throat.
Sparks soar into me from the connection, and I commit the hard kiss to the very memory of my soul.
His mouth moves against my flesh. “I care deeply for you, Lemonade. Please know if you don’t already, I have never let anyone else get this close.
I’m still trying to figure out why you’re the exception, but just know that you are. ”
I love him.
I’ve hurt him.
The pain of that crushes my heart and my lungs, and all I can utter again is, “I’m so sorry.”
“Shh.” He kisses my throat. “I forgive you. I’d forgive you for anything. Just please don’t scare me like this again. Anything trying to hurt you needs to go through me first.”
“I don’t want you to think like that, Samson. You’re important to me, too. I care about you, too. I hate everything about the idea of using you as a shield.”
He snuggles, nosing my pulse. “Then don’t put yourself in positions where you might need one. Simple.”
“I have a few more ambitions beyond tending farmland, Samson…”
“Being an adventurer sucks. Being a farmer is great. It’s only occasional that you get a testy rooster hellbent on trying to kill you.”
I let my lip jut, because if you pat all your animal’s heads once a day, they don’t do that.
Hopefully.
“I don’t want to adventure anywhere without you, but there are a whole bunch of cool things here in the Ridge that we’ll never get to see if we don’t leave our farms every so often. Like the rewards for defeating the Sky Dungeon—also known as, access to the Cosmic Mines and my future puppies.”
He sighs, and warm air coasts against me. “How dangerous are the Cosmic Mines?”
“Their difficulty is scaled to a point where the first level is similar to level one hundred of the usual mines.”
Samson reels back, meeting my eyes. “There are one hundred levels in those mines?”
“Um.” I press my lips together and fix my askew glasses. “Yes? Two hundred total, actually.”
He cusses. “That’s gotta be far enough down to hit lava pockets.”
“It is, yes. You hit the lava region at around one-twenty.”
His eye twitches. “I don’t even know if Lia knows heat protection blessings.”
Heat protection.
Right.
Because standing near pools of twelve hundred degree magma spells realistic disaster.
Samson’s eyes narrow. “There was no heat protection in your game, was there?”
I chuckle. “Realism mod strikes again?”
He sighs before untangling one arm from around me and smoothing the calloused pad of his thumb down my cheek. Eyelids heavy, he traces my jaw, my chin…my bottom lip. “Let’s plan a trip to Amecrest,” he murmurs.
Dazed, I lift my hand to his wrist, let my touch slip down along his tattoos to rest at the base of his forearm. “Why?”
“Ines doesn’t make armor, and you need something lighter than what Austin can shape without the proper equipment.”
My eyes widen. “Armor? Isn’t that expensive?”
“Aren’t the drops in the Cosmic Mines great?” He distracts my brain when his thumb swipes across my lip. Again.
I’m leaning into his gravity, hypnotized. “I mean…yes?”
“Then it’ll be fine.” He runs a finger down my other cheek. “Although…you could also not worry about it and let me spoil you.”
I very much like the idea of not worrying about something.
It is quite unfortunate that my astigmatism thus far has kept me from such pleasures.
Freeing a taut breath, he cups the back of my head and pulls me in. “Was I overcautious? Was everything painless today?”
I clear my throat as I tuck myself in the crook of his neck and let the torrents of peace consume me, one blinding wave at a time. “Slate laughed at me the whole time I was bonking the slimes.”
Samson mutters, “Of course he did.”
“I’ll have to take you to the enchanted lake sometime. It’s beautiful. And now that the sword is free, the spell enshrouding it has lifted, so you can’t get lost in the woods and die anymore.”
His body flinches. “What?”
“It’s fine! The code to get out if you take a wrong turn is keep taking lefts. Perfectly safe. If you know that. Anyway.” Knowing how unpredictable Slate can be, I, um, probably should have verbalized that to him in case he saw something shiny and ran off. Hindsight.
Samson’s fingers comb through my hair; I have never felt anything better. “Citrus.”
“Mm?”
“What compelled you to memorize the directions to a magic sword in your old world?”
Mental illness, probably. Instead of saying that, I hum. “I dunno. I’m special?”
His cheek tilts against my head. “True enough.”
I think…I could stay here forever. Safe. Warm. Secure.
I don’t know if this immense feeling of care is love or not, but it’s certainly the closest I’ve ever gotten to it.
“Your sword is very sparkly,” he says.
“Cozy farming sims have a majority female demographic.”
He begins rubbing my back. “I’m going to pretend I know what that means.”
Right. My gender norms aren’t a thing here. Slate and Pyro would kill for my sparkly sword, no questions asked. I murmur, “Do you like it?”
“It’s impressive. I’ve never seen anything like it. It reminds me of weapons from ages past, stories passed down around campfires. Legends of ancient blessings. The old world of magic.”
“What does that mean? The old world? Magic is still everywhere, isn’t it?”
Samson begins drawing circles over my wing bones.
“Magic is still everywhere, but these days people lack the ambition to find it. Even adventurers are no longer a guild built on camaraderie and a thirst for discovery. In my lifetime, they’ve been more like mercenary hires, outsourced to the nobility for protection or monster control.
As a society, we’ve lost the wonder for accessing things as dangerous as magic.
Children don’t spend their days trying to find out if they’re gifted or blessed anymore.
The blessed don’t search for new blessings.
It’s all somewhat…stagnant compared to tales of times gone by. ”
“That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”
“In some ways—unless you’re someone who would benefit from an insane weapon or an incredible protection blessing—it’s safer, calmer.
People naturally gravitate toward ease. As more communities become cities, wonder gets lost in the exchange.
There’s always an inevitable sacrifice with change.
Whether it’s better or worse is all up to individual perception. ”
What a statement.
Trying not to melt away beneath whatever Samson is doing to me, I say, “When you were a child, did you try to unlock abilities?”
He puffs a laugh. “Constantly.” He stretches his arm, peers at his tattoos.
“I wanted some kind of reassurance that whatever powers existed were looking out for me. As a teenager, I had the elements inked into my flesh, deluding myself into thinking that kind of commitment might be the devotion the unspoken agents were looking for.” His touch returns to my back.
“It wasn’t. But I’ve found my peace with it now.
” Sighing, Samson rises and places me on my feet.
“It’s getting late.” He cups my chin while I’m readjusting myself to the cold. “I need to feed you.”
Heat flutters to my cheeks. “Need is a strong word. You don’t have to do everything for me. I’m borderline competent at maintaining something like survival in this world by now. Promise.”
His brow arches with all the convince of not very. “I want to feed you.”
Okay. Well. My heart doesn’t know what to do with that correction. Semantics have never been so hot.
I literally teeter with all the instability of a newborn deer when he drops his hand from my face and sidesteps me.
“Put your sparkly sword away and come help me with the chickens. I’ll make an egg bake tonight with the fresh broccoli and spinach from your farm.
In another week, they’ll be out of season, so we should enjoy them now. ”
Reminding myself how to walk, I toddle after him, stuffing my sword into my backpack as I make it out the front door. “Another week? Isn’t Summer tomorrow?”
He casts an odd look back at me. “Yes? The calendar is based on our tilt toward the sun, which is very far from us. It takes a moment for the heat to stop crossing that distance and shift the weather drastically enough that Spring crops aren’t happy anymore.
What did you think would happen? Your entire farm would shrivel up overnight because a human-made calendar decided a new season had begun? ”
Innocently, I cough. “L-listen here, mister.”
“The absence of logic in your game is truly astounding.”
“Having only four sectors of twenty-eight days in a year is astounding. How fast is this planet spinning, anyway?”
“Pretty fast, probably. But also, we have twelve sectors of twenty-eight and three season cycles in a year. Prim, Mid, and Finel. We’re in Mid now, which hosts the most illustrious Spring and the more mild Summer. Winter is gonna be frigid. Was…this information not reflected in your game?”
It was not.
That makes so much more sense, though.
In…some ways, at any rate.
This planet must be pretty wibbly wobbly to get the seasons to cycle like that over the course of a full year-long sun rotation.
I murmur, “Maybe I should spend some time at Slate’s when he’s teaching the kids…”
A rumble starts low in Samson’s chest as he opens the gate to the chicken coop, letting me dart in before the hens bolt out. “I’ll teach you,” he says.
“You don’t have to do everything for me. I can rely on someone else every once in a while.”
“You did that this morning. I hated it.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He presents the basket. “Eggs.”
Pouting, I do as I’m told, and Samson makes me the best broccoli spinach bake I’ve ever had.