Her purple eyes spring to life, was it excitement? Zen looks to Enya walking beside him, but it wasn’t just a normal walk, she had a spring in her step, rocking side to side as she sways through the air. Her cheeks flush red from her grinning so much.
She’s so happy… it's kinda… he thought to himself, her eyes wonder to him with a smirk, catching him staring from under his hood of his new brown cloak that covers him from head to toe, she’s kinda cute… in a childish way…
He averts his eyes from her, feeling a little unsettled by his own unintentional staring.
“So…” he said nervously, “you said the city we’re heading to is a human city?” he said, hoping to break the silence between the two.
Enya lets out a loud sigh.
“What?”
“Not human… Manity,” she giggles to herself.
“What’s the difference?” I mean, isn’t Manity just Humanity without the Hu?
“Well…” she places her finger on her chin, “Humans are like you, from another world summoned here, the Manity race was created by the god Drythus.”
“The god Drythus? You mean gods exists in this world?”
She looks at him confused. “Yeah… Drythus is the Manity god, while Ophelia is the Unseen goddess.”
He stops walking, looking at her curiously. “Gods exist…?” he mumbled in disbelieve, “so Manity, Unseen… what other races are there out there?”
She swings her body around, twirling on one foot with a grin. “You really don’t know?”
“Is that so strange?”
“Well… yes! Every hero who has ever been summoned knew this from speaking with Ophelia!” she walks up to him, still with an excited smile, “well, I don’t really have a choice but to tell you… but…” her face drops.
“But?”
“Well, you see… I can’t remember them all…”
“What?”
“I’ve told you… I wasn’t… the best… student…”
“Oh… so tell me what you do remember?”
Her smile returns, bigger and brighter then before as she twirls back around. “Sure, but lets keep walking.”
She continues on with Zen catching up beside her.
“Let’s see, you have Manity, they are like you, kinda… and then the Unseen, that's what I am, and then you have the Elven and the Dryads.”
“Elfs?” he asked.
“Yeah, they don’t like that name.”
“What?”
“Being called Elfs, they prefer Elven.”
“Oh yeah, you said that before… I guess if I ever meet one, I should keep that in mind?”
“Yep, there's others, but… I can’t really remember the names… its not like I thought I’d be talking to any of the other races in my life, you know?”
“I see… well, thank you, Enya.”
She stops in her tracks, turning to him with a surprised look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
She lets out a nervous giggle. “I… I think that's the first time you used my name…”
“Was it?”
She appears hesitant as she looks towards the ground. “Sorry, that just… caught me by surprise.”
He looks at her confused.
“Can you…” she begins to fidget, “can you say it again?”
Okay… what happened to her? Has she been all alone for a really long time? “Enya…” she appears to shutter to the sound of her name, his brow scrunches up, “how long have you been alone?”
“That easy to tell?”
“I…” he steps towards her, wanting to be careful not to upset her, “I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Her head pops up, a smile back on her face. “It's okay, to be honest… I haven’t spoken to anyone for… a long time. I… I kind of feel a little guilty for feeling so happy, when I can see your not really taking this well, are you?”
“Don’t feel guilty,” he places his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, “we all need someone to talk to once in a while, after all.”
Tears grow in her eyes, oh no, did I say something wrong?
Her hand wrap around his waist in a hug, catching him by surprise as her head dives into his shoulder. To him, she was still a stranger; it was a weird feeling to have someone hug him suddenly when he didn’t even know them.
He feels her hands on his back, his arms widen, unsure on what to do. “He… hey…” he said in reflex.
“Sorry…” her arms tighten around him.
“I… I didn’t mean to upset you, I’m-"
“No…” she cut him off, “I’m just so happy…” she pulls herself away from him, wiping her eyes dry, “its been so long since I touched someone, let alone spoke to anyone… I haven’t felt like this for a while.”
“I… I see.”
She turns away, continuing to walk down the road. “Lets go, if we don’t hurry, we’ll be caught in the night before we reach the city!”
“Right…”
They continued their walk, with Enya walking slightly ahead in silence, flushed with embarrassment from the actions she’d taken with Zen so far, yet her step seems a lot more enthusiastic than before.
Suddenly hugging like that had bothered her more than she’d expected, but it felt good to finally do it. To feel the warmth of another, even if he didn’t hug her back, she couldn’t blame him, they were still strangers.
An hour passes by as they made their way into the large forest, the vibrant trees growing ever so larger and tightly packed, it was a real, wild forest. Zen had visited forests in England, but it was a long time ago when he was young, he loved going on long walks with his friends on the trails.
It reminded him of a day he held dear, as a small smirk appears on his face. In his mind, he looks at Enya, for a moment, he imagined seeing another woman, turning around with a youthful, gentle face with freckles he found cute on her rosy cheeks.
His smirk quickly vanishes. “You okay, Zen?” asked Enya.
Zen sighs. “Yeah… why do you ask?”
“You were smiling but now you seem sad,” she’d turned around, walking backwards to face him again.
He reaches into his jeans pocket, pulling out his smart-phone. “Heh, I forgot I had this on me…”
“What’s that?” she stopped walking, heading towards him with a carious expression.
“It’s a phone.”
“A… fonn? You say the strangest things…”
He’s taken aback from her bad pronouncement of the word, but he just assumed she’d never heard it before, but still, it was the second time she struggled with a simple word. English is English right? Wait… “Enya, what language are we speaking right now?”
“It’s Tellish, why?”
“Tellish? It sounds shockingly like English.”
Enya looks at him funny. “No, it doesn’t… that word you used to name that thing in your hand, was that… English? No wonder I can’t say it…”
“What?”
“The last hero spoke… English, he visited my village a long time ago and spoke some of it in private while writing. I heard it. It sounds nothing like Tellish.”
“That makes no sense, I’m speaking English right now.”
She looks at him even more confused. “No, you're not, you're speaking perfect Tellish.”
What? Perfect Tellish? His eyes widen, confused, he looks down at his phone.
His thumb clicks the side button, cursing the screen to spring to life on a locked screen. Enya, witnessing the flash of light from the device, jumps back in surprise. “Wh… what's going on?”
Zen snickers, trying to contain himself but finding her reaction hilarious. “Don’t worry, it’s not dangerous in the slightest.”
She hesitantly steps back towards him, her eyes gleaming the image displayed. “There’s a woman stuck in there?”
He glances down, seeing the image of a young woman, standing in front of a backdrop of a rocky beach on a sunny day, smiling as the wind catches her long silky black hair. “It's just a picture…”
“A picture? Like a panting?”
“Yeah… you can say that.”
“Who is she? She’s pretty.”
He checks the signal bars for service, finding no signal. Of course… there’s no service here… he sighs, I’m sorry Sara… he turns the phone off, staying silent as he stuffs it back into his jeans pocket.
“Is she… important to you?”
“Yeah… can we not talk about this?”
“Did something happen? Is it a bad memory?”
“I came here…” he mumbled, recalling the moment he was being surrounded by the cyclone of wind, seeing Sara’s arm reaching for him, hearing her call out his name in desperation. He walked past Enya as she stands there stunned, her eyes cast down.
