After having such a crazy morning and then finishing it off with all the planting, I was beat. Mia herself wasn’t in a much better condition. Come to find out, she really had ran to and from town as much as her stamina bar had allowed her. Using a technique we had figured out since the last attack, she would run right up until her stamina ran out and then took a break walking. This allowed us to avoid the stamina drained debuff of completely running out, the debuff itself halting stamina regeneration for a full minute.

Now sorting the loot from Rumble’s early morning slaughter, Mia was blazing through the task with her new light brightening the entire room with a nice white glow yet somehow not quite overpowering the much dimmer flower in the corner.

Waiting for the eggs to finish frying I turned to Mia and asked, “How can the flower still have such a powerful glow lighting up the room when something else is so much brighter?”

Tilting her head, she turned around surveying the room, “You are right, the flower is leaving its glow everywhere. I really appreciate it, but it is kind of confusing how that is happening.”

“Oh, did we ever get a name for it while you were in town?” I asked.

“How did I not tell you!? We did, I just got too excited with the news of the new seed and being immediately crushed by not being able to see it. The name of it is ‘Peace bloom’, it is apparently an ‘Epic’ rank flower! There are very few of them, but they are very slow to grow and usually highly protected against harvesting or moving. Their root networks are extremely delicate and almost all attempts at moving them are lethal to the plant.”

“Excuse me?” I asked with my head now tilting to the side.

“I said it is called a ‘Peace bloom’, it is an Epic ra…nk…. Oh…. I must have been more tired than I had thought after running so much. I cannot believe I forgot to mention that.” Mia sheepishly said with realization of her oversight.

“That’s an understatement! How did you forget the EPIC flower that has helped you get through the past week!?” I scoffed with a bit of laughter filling my voice.

“Hey, I was just glad to be back. Would you rather I hang out in town more next time?”

“Haha, is that the best comeback that you have? Jeez Mia, for being so business-like you sure do have a few cute quirks.” I teased.

Immediately blushing, Mia’s eyes opened wide and she spun around to restart her task of sorting loot.

With an air of awkward silence filling the room, I lamented my ill-fated attempt at teasing her. Turning back to the eggs I dug into what had prompted me to say those words specifically. With the first batch of eggs almost finished, I spared a glance over my shoulder at the girl focused on sorting loot.

With her shoulders tense, she was hunched over her task with dedicated focus studying a particularly intact carapace. Her light brown hair up in a short ponytail and a few long side bangs covering her face, I felt my face start to warm. Mia was definitely someone that I liked, not like the cutesy crushes that you had during school, but something different. She had focus and something about her not trying to fake some persona for popularity. She was genuinely kind to me, but I might have been overthinking it… it may be platonic for her and that we were just that, friends. Well it is what it is, one can hope though. She really is a great person to know either way , I thought while turning back to cooking our dinner and barely missing my prior focus glancing back at me.

~~~

My face was burning with a heat that I had felt more than a few times recently. Honestly it was twofold. One was the compliment, Brad was so blunt with his comments that it kept catching me off guard and I was not quite sure that it was given in the same way that I was hoping. The second reason was that I had not figured out what he thought of me! Why did it have to be so easy and yet the hardest experience of my life?

I always knew what my goals in life had been and had always taken a methodical approach to every hurdle in my life. And here he was, possibly one of the most easy going people I had ever met, just casually unraveling my entire process. I was not mad, angry, or annoyed… I knew what was happening, my heart rate was proof of that. The question was if the things that I came to adore about him, his kind heart, relaxed nature, and tendency for being over protective, were born of him or of his mutual feelings. Either way, my heart was set, but I could not bring myself to risk finding out the wrong answer. And so with a tear running down my beat red face I started to sadly turn back to my task… the same carapace that I had been staring at with no progress for the past few minutes. Reaching up to wipe my eyes, I was taken off guard when I heard him speak.

~~~

Having finished plating our eggs and vegetables, I turned to Mia hoping that it was long enough for her to potentially forget and move on from what I had said. And that is when I saw the hand, coming from her face on the other side of her head, fall with a glimmering shine… a shine that broke me.

“Mia, I really didn’t mean it. It was just a teasing joke, don’t cry, I really didn’t mean to hurt you!” I said hurriedly while running over to grab her.

Her face jerked around, eyes wide glistening with tears and body rigid as I held her shoulders.

And then it happened, my left cheek lit up with pain and Mia jerked away proceeding to run out of the door.

Rumble, shocked out of his nap next to the hearthstone, looked between me and Mia’s fleeing form before flashing a shield emoji and running after her.

Not quite knowing what was going on I just kept kneeling in place, cheek burning and in pain but forgotten over the tightness in my chest and the nausea in my gut.

I honestly just knelt there for long minutes, stuck in the moment of watching her face flash, something that I could only guess was anger, and of her running out of the shack with tears streaming behind her… tears that still stained the dry dirt floor.

Falling backwards, next to the firepit, I just stared up at the stars through the hole in the roof. Stars that were slowly dancing through their dimming and brightening cycles. Tears making my vision hazy, I cried… a long hard sobbing cry with dirt turning to mud on my dusty cheeks.

This played out for what seemed like an eternity until the tears, now dancing with a partner across my exposed face and the surrounding mud, until my mind sharpened with a horrified realization. The hypnotic thrumming around me and a wide eyed worried emoji flashing in the corner.

It was raining with flashes starting to connect the stars in a web,way up in the sky.