>>6113480Salicera’s hug, her touch… it feels just as good as ever. There has been a time when you would have done anything, absolutely anything, to feel part of this group. Now you feel like you would do anything to protect it. Which also means…
“I know I can trust you. I can trust the person who was there with me in the Well, the girl who carried me—“ and you can’t stop yourself from blushing a tad, “all the way from out there. I know I can trust Salicera Fors.”
You feel her jolt even as you keep hugging. It’s clear she knows what’s about to come her way…
“… but I don’t know much about <span class="mu-i">Willow Stark</span>,” you whisper.
She purses her lips, running a hand through her hair as she thinks, her eyes roaming all over your face in a way that makes your heart pick up pace for some reason. There is this… unknown quality to Salicera you have always admired, and now she’s here with you… for you, so close and yet so distant. Whenever you thought you had her figured out she revealed yet another layer to you, and now it turns out she isn’t even who you believed her to be.
This girl…
“I suppose that’s fair,” she sighs. “I’ll try to do my best. I already told you about my greatest fear anyway. A veritable phobia!”
“… is phobia another of those words from your world?”
“Uh… may be. It means ‘a terrible fear’ or something that gives you an irrational fright.”
“Rest assured there are no bees around here.”
“And I hope there won't be in the Treviri Throne lands, either…” she relaxes in your arms, and then pulls you back into another tight hug. “I will do whatever it is in my power to make you trust Willow. It’s still me, just with a few inside jokes and memes added to the mix. Oh God, it’s going to take me years to teach you about the internet…”
[cont.]
