Clover willow's Arc

Chapter 4 of 20

The bird slept in Clover's palms. The guardian's shoulder stayed warm against hers. He had said the words plainly. I watch you. Now his eyes waited, and her throat locked. Eleven years she had loved him from the far side of the grove. Now she had no words at all. She looked up at him. His wings caught the low light and glowed soft green. His baby-blue eyes held hers. The silence stretched. If she froze now, she would lose this. She forced her mouth open. "I like you," she said. The words came out small and plain. Her face went hot. "I have. For a long time." He did not laugh. He tilted his head, like she had handed him something fragile. "How long?" he asked. "Since I was a girl." Her hands shook under the sleeping bird. "I watched you heal a deer once. I never came close. I was afraid." Something moved in the brush. A small mouse crept from the ferns, ears too big for its head, its coat pale blue and green. It limped. One back leg dragged. It stopped at the guardian's foot and squeaked. Clover looked down. The moment cracked open. Here was a thing she knew how to do. "It's hurt," she said. She set the bird gently in the moss. Then she reached for the mouse. It shrank back. She stilled her hand and waited. The mouse sniffed her fingers and climbed into her palm. "Your hands," the guardian said quietly. "You didn't freeze this time." "Not with them." She cupped the mouse against her chest. "Only with you." He smiled then, wide and real. He led her to the great willow at the grove's edge. Its long branches glowed, shifting from green to violet, sparks drifting through the leaves. He drew back a curtain of vines. Underneath, dry and warm, was a nest of soft moss where he kept the small ones. "Set it here," he said. "We'll splint the leg together." They knelt side by side under the glowing branches. She held the mouse. He bound the leg with a strip of bark. Their hands touched twice. She did not pull away. When the splint held, he looked at her over the tiny sleeping mouse. "I'm glad you said it," he said. "I wasn't sure you felt it too." Her chest loosened. She had said the hard thing, and the world had not ended. He was glad. But then his smile faded a little. "There's something you should know," he said. He glanced at his wings, then away. "I don't age like you. The forest keeps me. It could keep you too, if you stayed. But you'd have to give up your grove below. Your old life." He met her eyes. "I can't ask that yet. Not until you know what it costs." Clover held the sleeping mouse and felt the ground shift again. He liked her back. That was true now. But wanting his heart, she saw, meant choosing a life she had never imagined leaving her home for.