Midoria's Heart

Midoria's Heart 29 - Goodbye, My Love

Chapter 29 - Goodbye, My Love

“Jay… I…” His words had literally left me speechless; I couldn’t make my lips move. I stared into his eyes, so full of emotions that I couldn’t put into words. The truth was that I had no idea how I felt; I knew that I cared for Jay – it felt as though I had known him for years, even though we had just met. But then there was Daniel…

“I...” I started to say again, but he put a finger to my lips.

“Look, I don’t expect you to love me back or anything. I… as much as I hate to admit it, I know that you care about – maybe even love – Daniel. I just need you to know how I feel,” he told me, turning his head so that I could no longer see his eyes.

“I need to think about this,” I finally managed to say. He nodded mutely. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t love you Jay… I think I do. But it’s just… too much to deal with right now,” I shook my head, as though it would help me clear my thoughts. “I think that right now, the best thing to do is to focus on trying to find the Staff and the Key.”

He was silent for another moment, before he finally met my eyes again. Though he hid it well, I could see a hint of pain in his blue-tinted eyes, and it made my heart squeeze with guilt. “You’re right,” he said, actually managing to smile at me.

“We should head back,” I said, glancing up to the sky where the moon was beginning to set. There was a hint of light beginning to creep out over the horizon, and I knew that Daniel and Lisimi would be worrying about us.

We flew back to our little campsite in silence, my thoughts swirling around soundlessly in my head. To my surprise, Daniel wasn’t even awake – instead I found Lisimi curled up against his side, her hair draped over the arm he had wrapped around me. It was cute, but I also felt a pang of jealousy come over me, and I turned away, beginning to pack up our stuff.

“Wake them up, would you?” I asked Jay.

“No need,” Daniel groaned, opening his eyes. He looked at Lisimi lying next to him and blushed, turning his attention to me but not meeting my eyes. I rolled my eyes and turned back to finish packing. By the time both Daniel and Lis were up, Jay and I had finished and we were ready to go.

Despite the fact that I had hardly slept, I found that I had a lot of energy for flying. The joy that I felt seeing my kingdom blossomed within me as we passed over the shimmering lake below us, and then the golden fields later in the afternoon.

Stopping for a break just after lunch, Daniel took out a map of our kingdom, and examined it. “Hey, we’re actually closer than we thought,” he said, showing us how the lake was only a few miles from the start of the hills.

“Yeah, but look at the hills – there are so many, and we don’t exactly know what we’re looking for,” Jay argued.

“Actually… we kinda do.” Lisimi pointed out, pulling an old rolled up piece of paper from her bag. “See, this is the map of the kingdom that I found in the tower room. There used to be six cities and villages that had temples. The one here in the middle is where we found Midoria’s temple. We found the cave where the sword should have been here,” She said, pointing to a small village in the mountains. “And here,” she indicated a small village called Saríon, “Is the village closest to the hills. It’s a pretty safe bet that the Staff will be hidden somewhere near there,” she concluded.