ORCHID

  On bare feet and with joy in her heart, Orchid danced outside in the morning sunshine. Laughter bubbled up from within her at every delight the swamp had to offer this gorgeous day: flowers, blue sky, birds singing, grass tickling her bare toes. Everything felt brighter, more beautiful, and more colourful than ever before. She felt so alive!

  She cupped a purple mud crocus in her hands and inhaled the delicate floral scent. She giggled at the py of busy bees and butterflies bouncing through the air. She sang along with the long-beaked fisherbirds wandering through the shallows, looking for food and mates. She admired a mother gboo, a dark green, hippo-like creature, as it herded its rowdy young through a channel in the water. For the first time in a very long time, Orchid wondered what it would be like to be a mother herself.

  She smiled at it all, smiled at every happy thought, smiled as she remembered the night before — with him.

  There was a new joyful light where there had been lonely darkness and apathy for so long. It was exciting!

  She’d told him at breakfast that she needed to work, but the truth was, she needed time alone to think, to feel, to celebrate this wondrous change that had come into her life, but also to ponder it. So she’d wandered outside the castle and into the swamp, her swamp, alone, to let her heart glory and to let her mind drift amongst future possibilities.

  For more years than she cared to admit, she’d felt alone, even when she had been with others. She couldn’t remember the st time that she’d been this moved, this thrilled about anyone in a romantic sense. Normally, she avoided thoughts of the future outside of her research; too much introspection about the state of her life was depressing and best avoided. But when she thought about the future now, instead of the usual bitterness, she tingled with nervous excitement in a very pleasant way.

  There was something about the way that he wrapped his arms around her. Something about the way that he looked at her that made her feel special. Something that made her want to be desired by him more than any other.

  It made no sense, of course. She was many times his age and experience. They were literally from different worlds. He knew nothing of magic, which was her entire life. And yet…

  She pictured him in her mind and giggled like a teenager.

  She ducked under weeping cypress trees and spshed through muck and puddles, the mud cool between her toes. She felt like a young woman again.

  She had doubts — fears, really — buried under her growing excitement. She wanted to push them aside, but she couldn’t entirely ignore them. She had a long history of being hurt by others in various areas of her life. She’d rarely had serious lovers before, and nothing romantic since the death of the woman Orchid had given everything to for the best decades of her life. She’d taken lovers since, but no matter where her lust led her, her heart had never followed. As time had gone on, the painful moments with others had seemed far more common than happy ones. Magicists she’d colborated with had tried to steal her work. Royals and nobles had invited her to balls and events they said were designed to rehabilitate her image, but their true motivation had only been sexual conquest, breaking into her castle while she was away, or assassination. Tired of so much betrayal and pain, she’d become locked into resentment and bitterness, giving up hope of ever finding friendship, let alone love.

  She’d done her best to convince herself that she would be better off alone than in a retionship she wasn’t committed to. She didn’t need friends. She was fine, always working alone. This was safer. Real love was for young people only. Real love was something she would never find again, so she was better served growing beyond such things and reaching a different stage of her life. After all, she could focus more on her work without anyone else interrupting her time.

  Arwin’s arrival had shaken those deeply rooted fears in her core. She couldn’t believe how excited she was. These feelings seemed to spring out of nowhere. She couldn’t believe she was still capable of feeling this way.

  But long-held doubt niggled away at the edges. Could she trust him? Did he really want her, or was he only pying with her, leading her on? Was he like all the others, or was he different? The fact that he was from Drearia, a foreigner, gave her hope that he wasn’t locked into the same prejudices and selfish goals as those in Heartstone.

  A faint, distressed mewling carried to her on the breeze.

  As Orchid walked, she gnced up in curiosity but saw nothing in the swamp forest around her.

  There was silence. Then the pained sound came again, closer this time and from above.

  She halted and tried to zero in on the sound, waiting a few minutes between each heart-rending whine. Finally, she spotted the source.

  High up a towering swamp oak tree on a branch too small for it clung an immature swamp linx. The feline was not fully grown, only twice the size of a housecat, with olive and emerald fur, tall ears with tufts of fur on top, and a shaggy coat with bearded moss growing in it to aid camoufge. Desperately trying to remain in the crook of the branch, the poor cat was missing most of its right front leg, which now ended in a bloody stump. Blood ran up the length of the tree trunk and down the branch the cat was perched on.

  Orchid searched around but saw no signs of whatever had mutited the linx. Whatever had done it must have gone away, and now the injured cat was stuck up in the tree, unable to get down. Her heart squeezed at the poor animal’s plight.

  She approached the tree and pced her palms against the bark. She concentrated, then climbed up the tree truck with her hands and bare feet. Not being fully human, she was much stronger than she looked, and the climb was no trouble.

  The linx understandably grew agitated at this new threat coming its way. It pressed its back against the tree trunk and weakly hissed. The cat must have already lost a lot of blood and energy.

  Orchid slowed as she approached. “Hey there. I’m not going to hurt you. Look at you. Such a beautiful green, aren’t you, my pretty?”

  The linx swiped at her with its one remaining forepaw.

  She looked at the reduced limb and tsked. “Poor girl. That must hurt. But maybe I can help?”

  Of course, the linx didn’t understand her. It only glowered with heavy-lidded eyes.

  She knew the feline was dying. If she was going to help, she needed to quickly act. Her first spell closed the wound to prevent further blood loss. Her second put the cat to sleep. Before it could fall to the ground, she climbed close and plucked it up, carefully tucking it under one arm as if it were a pet. “Got you. Let’s get you back to the b and see if we can’t do something to save you, hmm?” Looking down, she quickly but carefully descended. Even with one hand occupied, she had little trouble. It was times like these that she appreciated her mixed ancestry. It would have been even easier in her arachne form, but she never ever became that where anyone might see, only in the other realm.

  Reaching the ground, she gently carried the linx in her arms and hustled towards the castle. She only made it a few hundred meters before a rustle sounded from the branches of a nearby tree. This one did not come from a stranded cat.