I felt like I was a ss all through dinner. I had already pulled Ery aside and told her I wanted to talk. That was a great start. But more importantly, it stopped from chickening out of talking to her.
We were back now, and our pressing tiline had been addressed. We no longer had the demonic sect in the Dying Lands breathing down our necks. We could finally take so ti and work on other things.
Like our feelings.
I internally laughed, imagining how Ery would react if I walked up to her and said, 'We need to talk about our feelings'. I was almost sure she would burst into laughter at the notion, though she had certainly surprised before. I had to admit, I honestly had no idea how she would approach feelings of like, love, or lust. At least, not when they no longer needed to be put on the back burner to save lives.
I tried to keep myself focused on the chatting around the table as we all ate. We all sat at a lovely round table, with the younger girls between Ery and I. Cierra and Stena had acted as only children could, and already looked like they were as friendly as could be. They were even sharing food between their plates, and it was so cute I couldn't help but smile.
More than once throughout the al, I had t eyes with Ery while smiling at the girls. Every single ti, without fail, she would smile at before turning back to her food or the girls, and my stomach would flip.
It was more difficult to keep myself concentrated on the al and conversation around this table than it was to keep myself together against the demons we had just fought. Ery just had so kind of hold on I couldn't shake - probably because of the recent danger and heightened emotions. And even though I knew that, it didn't help stay in control.
The worst part of it all was my inability to read how Ery felt. Sure, she smiled at regularly, but that could be entirely unrelated to , especially given the adorable little girls currently being cute sat between us.
As dinner drew to a close, I drank nearly an entire glass of water because my mouth kept going dry. Eventually the conversation broke up and people started getting up to clean the dishes and do other after dinner chores.
"I'll help!" Cierra shouted happily, as Vale carried a stack of dishes into the kitchen.
Vale laughed, happily accepting the girl's assistance. "I swear, Cici, those must be your favorite words." And as Cierra trotted off behind Vale, Stena was trailing on her heels holding onto the back of Cierra's top.
Before Talya got up to do whatever it was she was going to do, Ery stood and walked over to . She gave a little tug on the shoulder of my shirt while addressing Talya. "Sorry, Talya. Avuri and I need to go do sothing really quick before we do anything else. We'll be back in a bit to grab Stena, and maybe Cierra too, for a bath."
"Sure, that's fine." Talya said, looking up at Ery confused. "Just make sure you do wash, because all three of you stink of sweat and travel."
Ery chuckled as I nervously got to my feet. "Trust , I plan on soaking for a while tonight. No need to make ."
And then Ery gently ushered out of the room, down the stairs and to the outside. She finally stopped just outside the doorway to the house.
"You said private. How private? Want to go sit on the playground?" Ery asked with a smile.
The sun was beginning to set, and the way the last rays of the day filtered through the canopy of trees and hit Ery made her look absolutely epheral, complete with a beautiful halo of light. I caught myself staring and had to force myself to look away. "Yeah, the playground is fine." I said, and started to walk off in that direction.
Ery, the infernal woman, decided that would be a good ti to step up beside and hook one of her arms through mine. I glanced at her, but she was just watching ahead of us with a faint, content smile. If she had had any other expression, I would've sworn she was purposefully ssing with - but that serene expression felt so genuine that I just let it go.
She eventually led to the far side of the playground, where we had fashioned a couple of cut logs into benches. Through the magic of Ery's unnaturally sharp weapons, they had been carved and sanded down to perfection and were far more comfortable than wooden benches had any right to be.
Ery deposited in one seat, then sat next to . We sat in silence for a minute or two, looking up at the fading sunset. She didn't push to talk and just sat waiting patiently.
I leaned back on my hands and kicked my legs like a child. "I honestly don't know how to begin. There's a lot that I feel like we need to talk about." I said, trying to sound chipper.
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Ery snickered. "I have a pretty good idea of so of what you want to talk about." She said, smiling into the distance.
I took a really deep breath and let it out slowly. "I figured you might." Another short silence followed while I tried to decide where to start. I figured starting with a vague statent would do.
"So…we did what we set out to do. There's no more Dying Lands sect for us to focus on."
Ery snorted, holding back a bit of laughter. "Mhm, that's true."
I gave her a flat stare. "That's not helping, Ery." I said flatly.
"You're right, sorry. Please continue." She responded, still watching the sunset.
I eyed her for a mont more, took a deep breath, and said, "I think we should discuss where we go from here. As a couple, I an." I added, just to clarify.
A warm smile appeared on her face then. "I've told you before, Avuri. I'm a very straightforward person. I'm bad at keeping secrets, and I don't like dealing with nonsense drama." She turned to then, and her smile showed genuine affection. "Talking about what's next after all that was always the plan."
"Right. Yeah." I said, looking down at my hands as I nervously poked at my nails. "Don't suppose I could convince you to start?"
"I could, but I thought you wanted to talk first? Considering that you're the one who called out here."
"Dug my own grave there, didn't I?" I said ruefully, and Ery laughed. I let out another breath in a single puff of air.
"Alright! Alright." I said, finally. I turned in my seat to more fully face Ery. "We don't need to focus so single-mindedly on advancent anymore. The threat we were working on has been dealt with." Another deep breath. "Ery, I really like you. But given our current living arrangents, I don't really know what we should do from here."
"Just to be perfectly clear, I really like you too, Avuri." Ery said, her smile still radiant.
"Well that's good. I'd be rather lost at this point if you didn't." I chuckled. "But I still don't know what our next steps are."
"Well…" Ery began, then paused to think about it a mont. "For starters, I think we should stop doing Paired Cultivation for a while. Maybe even stop connecting our Domains for a bit." She paused, then clarified. "I don't want the emotions from Cultivation to play a part in whatever might co next."
I nodded. "That was always the plan."
"I would also like to ntion that I would very much like to Cultivate together again down the line, if things go well." Ery said, very matter-of-factly. "But, yes, I do think we should stop for the ti being."
"Right. So, the next order of business then." I said, trying to order my thoughts. "Where does that put us right now? We've done everything up to now so wildly out of order, I'm not sure where we stand with one another."
In a slightly awkward effort to further explain, I added, "Like I said, I like you a lot Ery. But we've also been living closely together - even sharing a bed - for months now. Cierra - who is technically only your daughter - also calls Mom. And then together we just picked up another kid." I sighed. "I won't lie to you, my mind is all kinds of jumbled up right now."
Ery giggled as the words tumbled out of . "Well, let's see if we can't put so things straight, yeah?" She reached over and placed one of her hands over mine. "I realize that our situation is certainly unusual, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Far from it, really."
"Hm…" Ery thought for a mont, a thumb brushing over the back of my hand tenderly. "Avuri, I know I've told you I'm not great at talking around things. Can I be blunt?"
I fought against my stomach bottoming out at those words, but nodded. "Yeah, sure. That's how all this started, anyway."
Ery nodded and grinned. "Open book, no bullshit." She said quietly, and squeezed my hand. "Yes, we've definitely done things out of order. But I haven't been thinking about it that way for a while now. Us living together, the way you treat the girls, all of that - for a while now, I've been considering it as a dry run for the real thing."
"I've learned a lot about you along the way. All kinds of important stuff. Like that we can live together without getting on each other's nerves. I learned that you would be a great mother to any kids that we might pick up along the way." She laughed a little awkwardly, as I just continued to stare at our entwined hands, and her thumb gently stroking the back of my hand as I listened. She took a breath to say sothing else, then stopped. I looked up at her face then, and t her eyes.
Without warning, she popped up to her feet with a sudden, sharp laugh. "Oh, fuck this! I said I was going to be blunt, then kept dancing around it anyway."
Ery still held my hand in hers, and used it to pull up to my feet. I stood, a little bewildered, as she swung around to face her straight on. She snickered again, and muttered, "Damn, you're tall," as she had to actively look upward when we were this close.
That got laughing too.
And then she tugged down toward her by the collar of my shirt and kissed .
It wasn't a cute, chaste kiss either. It was a searing, passionate kiss that made my knees weak. My head went blank by the ti we parted but she kept herself pressed up against , with her arms settled around my waist in an embrace.
She laughed as she all but held up while my brain reset. When I was functional again, I held up a single finger between us. "Hold on, just a second." I said, sternly. Ery looked up at doing her best to project doe-eyes. "First, I think being blunt suits the two of us very well. Second, you're going to have to do that again, because I was woefully unprepared."
I couldn't turn away from Ery's face, my eyes focused on burning her beautiful affectionate smile into my mind.
"I'm sure we can make that happen." Ery said, and tugged my face down to hers once more.
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