Gilded Bay Sweet Memories, Make them

They had filled the space between the sea and stone circle with conversation. But now that the ocean spread like grassland before them, he let the silence speak.

Inkeri gasped, and Turmeric chuckled - pleased at her reaction, pleased at the awe that rimmed her seafoam eyes. Do you like it? He still wanted to ask, feeling a strange bubble of nerves despite the clear signs that she delighted in the sights he had led her to.

He held his questions and settled in beside her, risking the same closeness they had shared on the day they had first met, despite being free and in a more spacious place than the alcove of trees they had settled under back then on the windy plain. This moment felt just as monumental — and indeed, though he had spent more time away from Inkeri than he had together with her, he didn't think much on the time in between. He hardly thought on his life with the Saints - except on his mother now and again, and on the realization that he would never have found this friendship if he had never left.

He was glad he’d left. Glad to be sitting here now, and unable to decide which was more beautiful: the rolling waves which danced in the sunbeams, or the gentle girl at his side.