Hushed Willows as spring opens (touching, skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

✹☾❂

 

He followed her once more, their small game of cat and mouse, and Eleuthera welcomed him to her side again by tilting her chin up and pressing the fine features of her face back into in sinew of his neck. The sprite held him there for a moment, finally satisfied that he knew some version of the truth — and he was sticking around despite her departed family, and besides the mountainous strife. She came with a lot of baggage, for someone who hadn’t spent a day in their life not nomading for nearly two years.  

Still smothering herself in the creamy fur along his throat, she remembered to say something that she had wanted to expand upon since she first mentioned it, at the beginning of their conversation. It had felt so sublime to be on the road, traveling, even if she had been all by her lonesome. “You know, it felt so good to get out there again. Feel the earth beneath my paws." She spoke as if it had all been a dream; she could not help but be thrilled by it, after nearly a month of staying in the same place.

Eleuthera pulled away, big lavender eyes blinking up at the brackish cowboy, before nuzzling right back in. Now that she had started, she found that it was impossible for her to stop. “I was terribly lonely, though. I missed you." Eleuthera inhaled, then exhaled through her nose with a deep purr, then forcibly plucked herself from his side and sauntered over to the nearest rose bush. She pressed her nose into the bosom of the plush, sun-ripened bloom and inhaled the succulent perfume that emanated from within. 

The roadworn scent of Kincaid, mixed with the saccharine scent of the roses, was a heady concoction. “Smell this," the woman instructed, pushing the scarlet rose bloom towards him.