The Rossem Project

A Perfect Day - Part 3

     He didn't solve it that day, though, and he returned to the dwelling tree to find Lirenna humming a tune as she trimmed the windows, carving away the bark that kept trying to close up the hole in the tree's swollen trunk. It didn't need doing. It only needed a couple of trims a year, but caring for the tree gave her a joy that mounted ever greater with every day that passed, making her shine with a radiant beauty that seemed too great for the mortal world to contain. She leapt into his arms with a cry of delight as soon as he passed through the door and Thomas was infected by her happiness so that he laughed in return as he hugged her back.

     "Now that's the kind of reception a man deserves when he returns home after a hard day's work," he said. "A hug from his wife and dinner on the table."

     "Dinner at midday?" asked Lirenna with a quizzical smile. "What strange habits are you picking up here? The sooner I get you back to Haven, the better."

     "Leave your tree just three weeks after moving in?" asked Thomas. "I thought you liked it here!"

     "I do!" cried the demi shae, hugging him tighter. "I do, I do, I do! But I love Haven too! I want to live in both places at the same time!"

     "Well, this is a University for wizards. If it's possible, this is the place to do it. I'll tell the others, we'll make it Pondar's next project."

     "Have you found out what his current project is yet?" asked the demi shae, releasing him and pulling him towards Thomas’s new armchair into which they collapsed together.

     Thomas pulled him arm free, where it was trapped behind Lirenna's back, and put it around her shoulders. "Not yet," he said. "The others warned me not to even ask. It's very secret. Even Pondar himself's only working on a small part of it, and I'm not sure even he knows what it's all about."

     "Very intriguing," said Lirenna, turning her head to look at him and squinting to focus on his face, only a couple of inches away from hers. "One more puzzle to add to all the others."

     "There's probably puzzles like that all the time in a place like this," said Thomas. "We'd probably have noticed it during our apprentice days if we hadn't been kept so busy studying. Hey, you'll never guess who I met just now!"

     He told her about his meeting with Elmias Pastin, and the demi shae stared in wonder, having assumed that the senior wizard, who'd been getting on in years even back in her apprentice days, must surely be dead by now. The former director of extra planar studies had been her favourite teacher as well as his, though, and the news that he was still alive delighted her. She made up her mind to visit him as soon as she could arrange it and find out what he'd been up to in all the years since they'd last seen him.

     They ate a quick lunch, and then went for a stroll through the surrounding woodlands, being careful not to stray any closer to the centre of the small forest, where the other shae folk lived. They found a place where the yellow sun was shining through a gap in the overhead canopy, warming the bole of a large malla tree, and they sat with their backs against it, Lirenna nestling comfortably against Thomas’s shoulder. The sun was warm on their legs and faces and a gentle breeze ruffled their hair, so that Lirenna's silky soft locks tickled both their cheeks. They sat there in silence, just enjoying the moment, both of them wishing it would last forever. They both knew it couldn't, of course, and so they concentrated on making the most of it while they could. On fixing this moment in their memories so they'd be able to re-live it any time they chose.

     Lirenna had one of Thomas’s hands in her lap and was playing lazily with his fingers while he stroked the bare skin of her shoulder with his other hand. The sounds of children at play drifted over from deeper in the woods, the happy musical laughter of shae children, and Lirenna tilted her head to listen, a dreamy smile of happiness on her lips. The sounds of birdsong and the activity of small animals also came from that direction. The woodland creatures knew that they had nothing to fear from the shae folk. Lirenna had once seen a pureblooded shae man stand motionless in the middle of a forest with a handful of hazelnuts in his open palm, and a squirrel had come bounding towards him and scrambled up his leg to get them. It wasn't unusual to see a shae with bird droppings on his arms and shoulders from birds that had decided to sit there while the shae was going about his business. The shae folk enjoyed it, didn't mind at all, and the birds saw the shae folk as some kind of funny walking perch, as safe and harmless as a small tree. They were a part of nature in a way that humans could never be. Not even the most dedicated druids.