“This is actually my bed, you’re just in it,” I mumbled.

“Your bed is my bed, Elena,” he gritted.

I could argue that.

I just didn’t have the energy.

“Cassius, maybe we should go to sleep,” I suggested.

He did not acquiesce to my suggestion.

He asked, “Why did you ask me to go see the pixies with you?”

By the mercy of the goddess.

“Elena,” he prompted.

I’d had enough.

He wanted to know?

I’d tell him.

“Their flight is beautiful,” I whispered, and felt his body go still over mine when he heard the reverence in my tone. “The pixie dust that soars from their wings, the contrails they leave, it’s breathtaking. Especially in the dark. The magic of the forest…it’s always the strongest magic. It feels like home.”

I took more of his weight into me as his body relaxed into mine in a way that was less relaxing and felt more like it was…melding.

I needed to ignore this, and how good it felt, and I did it by carrying on speaking.

“They’re this world within a world. This beautiful culture with their own clothes and music and traditions. I wished to share that with you. And we would be away. Away from the camp. Away from all these people. I like to be social, but I also like to have quiet times, to think, to reflect, to meditate. I do this in nature, staring at the moon or the sun filtering through a canopy of trees. And I thought, if you went with me, I might not be alone, but there wouldn’t be so many people around. I could introduce you to the magic of the pixies and we could talk, away from the activity and all the company of the camp.”

Cassius was whispering too, when he queried, “What did you wish to talk about, my princess?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“It does.”

“It doesn’t.”

“You’re very wrong.”

“All right then,” I said quietly. “It did matter. But you made it so it doesn’t matter any longer. Now will you slide off so I can go to sleep?”

“We’re not doing so very well, you and I,” he stated pensively.

“I do not wish to broaden the distance between us, but I’m uncertain that has much to do with me.”

As he had on earlier occasions, he shared his wisdom.

Wisdom learned from his time with his dead wife.

The problem with this was that I was not his dead wife and what he’d learned in his time with her didn’t necessarily hold true with me.

“Between a man and woman, both need to take responsibility when things are not going well.”

“Yes, and when one does just that, even if she’s uncertain she actually should, the other should listen and not drive her into the night to commune alone with pixies.”