Chapter 32 c Garden of Shadows

Iggy followed suit, eyeing the openness of the sky and the never ending mountain terrain through the opening of leaves before them, like an eye into the eternal unknown. He abandoned his clothes and approached the spring. It was luminescent as if a light shone from beneath, but that was the uncontrollable trick that Emi played on people’s eyes. He cupped his hands together in the water. The shadows played on the eyes in the same way that the light did. “I see why you like it here,” he said. Then, feet first, he slipped into the sizzling hot water until his head submerged. Underwater, he caught her in a hug around the waist.

She laughed and wiggled, and when he came up with her still in his arms, wet and warm, he kissed her chilled lips and smiled. Eyes greener than the moss below, yellower than a lily, and bluer than the daytime sky, she melted into him. Into his ear, she whispered, “not yet, but soon.”