Minutes flew. Something was swirling through her, like some astonishingly sweet emergency. His touch grew firmer, swifter, surer. Her eyes closed, her breath came faster, and her spine began to arch. Then her breath caught, and she went rigid, silent, openmouthed, as the sensation burst from her, climbing up to white out her brain, to rush like a tide to her fingers and toes, and ebb.

Her back eased, and she lay shaking and amazed. “Oh.” When she could, she raised her head and stared down over her body, strange new landscape that it had become. Dag was up on one elbow, watching her in return, eyes black and bright, with a grin on his face bordering on smug.

“Better?” he inquired, as if he didn’t know.

“Was that some…some Lakewalker magic?” No wonder folks tried to follow these people to the ends of the world.

“Nope. That was Little Spark magic. All your own.”

A hundred mysteries seemed to fly up and away like a flock of startled birds into the night. “No wonder people want to do this. It all makes much more sense now…”

“Indeed.” He crawled up the bed to kiss her again. The taste of herself on his lips, mixed with the scent of chamomile and clover, was a little disturbing, but she valiantly kissed him back. Then brushed her lips across his enthralling cheekbones, his eyelids, definite chin, and back to his mouth, as she giggled helplessly. She could feel an answering rumble from deep in his chest as she lay across him.

She had brushed against him, but she had not yet touched him. It was surely his turn now. Hands should work two ways. She sat up, blinking against dizziness.

He stretched out straight and smiled up, his crinkling eyes now resting inquiringly on her, downright inviting, in an unhurried sort of way. He lay open to her, to her gaze, in a way that astonished her anew. All but his mysterious ground, of course. That was beginning to seem an unfair advantage. Where to begin, how to begin? She recalled how he had started.

“May I…touch you too?”

“Please,” he breathed.

It might be mere mimicry, but it was a start, and once started, acquired its own momentum. She kissed her way down and up his body, and arrived back at the middle.

Her first tentative touch made him jerk and catch his breath, and she shied back.

“No, it’s all right, go on,” he huffed. “I’m a little, um, sensitized just at the moment. It’s good. Almost anything you can do is good.”

“Sensitized. Is that what you call it?” Her lips curled up.

“I’m trying to be polite, Spark.”