"It's beautiful!" Kimmie exclaimed in wonder, looking down as the Elemental seemed to level off, watching the gray cloudscape go by.
"Are you alright, Jesmind?" Tarrin asked as Jasana laughed and struggled out of her father's arm. She floated freely beside him as Jesmind replaced her in his embrace, holding onto him tightly, even wrapping her tail around his leg. He chuckled and stroked her back comfortingly. "It's alright," he told her softly. "Look down. Look at how much beauty's been hidden from us, just because we couldn't see it before."
She looked into his eyes with pure anxiety in them, then did as he suggested. She turned in his grip so her back was up against him, something solid for reassurance, and then she looked down. She seemed captivated at the sight of it, at the sight of the cloudtops rolling by a thousand spans beneath them.
He held her from behind, put his chin on her shoulder, and felt her body seem to relax in his arms as she watched the clouds roll by beneath them. He realized that it wasn't the flying, or the heights, that had bothered her. Jesmind was a very old Were-cat. Over five hundred years old. It was the newness of it that had upset her. She was old, set in her ways, seemingly already experienced most of what life had to offer. When she came across something totally new, totally unexpected, it initially frightened her. But it didn't make her run away from it, either. It frightened her, but she would still come to understand it. And when she did, it didn't frighten her anymore. Jesmind was not one to hide from her fears. She faced them, and in in the facing of them she became a wiser, stronger person. It made him very proud of her, for some strange reason.
Maybe saying it was fear was the wrong choice of words. Jesmind didn't fear new things, she simply approached them a bit more cautiously than others might. But in certain cases, like flying for the first time, something that completely went against the natural order of things, saying it was fear was justified.
"Oh, mama, we have to do this again!" Jasana giggled as she held out her arms and fanned them, imitating a bird's flight. "I love this!"
"How you doing, Thean?" Tarrin asked over his shoulder, where Thean and Kimmie floated along with them.
"I'm doing, lad," Thean said in a shaky voice. "Just give me a minute here. This is new for me, you know."
"Don't be afraid, Thean," Tarrin assured him. "The Elemental won't drop you. It's amused that you're afraid, but it would never try to terrorize you."
"I guess it has reason to think it's funny that something is afraid of flying," Thean chuckled ruefully. "After all, it can fly, can't it?"
"Ariana seems to think the same way," Tarrin agreed with a smile. "She can't fathom why anyone would possibly be afraid of heights."
"How fast are we going, Tarrin?" Kimmie asked.
"Hmm, I'm not sure. Let me ask." He communicated his query to the Elemental, but got back a response that was decidedly unquantified. "I don't think the Elemental can understand our concepts of numbers and distances, Kimmie," Tarrin said. "It just told me that it's moving at a cyclone's speed. What that means is anyone's guess."
"They call hurricanes cyclones in Sharadar, and some people call tornados cyclones too," Kimmie told him. "So we're moving pretty damn fast." She looked down. "If I could see the ground, I could measure some landmarks and get a number for us."
"Why is it important?"
"Judging by how fast those clouds are moving, I'd say that we might get to Suld alot earlier than tomorrow," she told him.
"I didn't think of that," he mused, feeling Jesmind's body completely relax. "Alright now, my mate?" he asked gently, squeezing her about the middle.
"I think so," she replied. "It's just new for me, my mate. I'll get over it."
"If it bothers you, you can always hold on to me," he offered.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes a mystery. Then she smiled and patted his paws. "So, it takes me getting scared out of my wits for my mate to show me any affection out of bed," she teased in a playful tone.
"My affection for my mate should have been realized a long time ago," he said, both a quip at her and an admission to himself.
That seemed to confuse her. She looked at him, looked away, then looked at him again, and then she looked away again. She leaned against him, content to let him hold her, snuggling down into his embrace. "Well, at least this is a damn easier way to travel than running," she admitted. "Even if it is weird."
He held her gently, reflective. His affection for his mate did indeed go deep, and it had been there for a very long time. He had to admit, she had had him the moment she had looked up at him with those smoldering eyes back in that cramped den in the wilderness of Sulasia, the first time she had kissed him. She had taken him for mate that morning, and her warmth, her giving of herself, her exquisite tenderness, they had sealed her place in his heart. Jesmind had been his first love, and there was still enough human in him for that to never go away. She would chide him for confusing physical pleasure with affairs of the heart, but she didn't understand the nature of the human about such things. The human could not experience the powerful intimacy they had shared and not been moved by it. Jesmind could have been rough with him, the way Mist had been at first, or been domineering or self-gratifying, but she had not. It had not simply been physical to Tarrin, and he was pretty sure that it hadn't simply been physical for Jesmind either.
She was his first love. And she still was.
He was surprised that it took him so long to understand that. But he'd been angry with her- very angry-and he'd had so much on his mind. She'd simply been there, not being too obtrusive in his life at first, but slowly and methodically worming her way back into his good graces. And when she got there, she showed him everything that had been missing from his life. She made life worth living for him again, gave him something solid to long for when he left her to continue on his quest. She had given him a daughter, given him a home, and had given him a life. She had never given up on him, even after she left him. Even then, she did everything with an eye on the day that he would come back to her, the day he would be hers once again.
She loved him. Kimmie was so right about that. Just hearing Kimmie say it hadn't impacted him as much as realizing it for himself. Jesmind loved him, loved him just like a human woman would love a human man, just like Kimmie said. Jesmind wanted something beyond a simple mating, she wanted something that would last with him. And seeing how her mother and Thean were, she had decided to try that. To create something between them that would draw him back to her again and again after they parted, an endless cycle of parting, reunion, and enjoying it as long as possible before their Were-cat natures drove them apart. He knew that they could never be together all the time like humans, because the nature of the Were-cat would eventually overpower their desire to remain together. And when that happened, they would have to separate for a while, until they spent enough time apart that they were ready to return to one another again.