Chapter 576: Feelings and friends
The house remained quiet for a long time after Sylphie finished speaking. The low fire in the hearth still burned with a soft flame, casting slow shadows over the wooden walls and the vines growing across the ceiling. Outside, the Central Realm remained distant, ancient, and immense, but inside, everything seemed reduced to the space between them. Kael remained seated on the sofa, with Sylphie lying across his lap, his fingers sliding through her white hair in slow, repeated motions.
Sylphie kept her eyes closed, but she was not asleep. Kael could tell from the way her breathing changed whenever his hand passed near her ear, or when his fingers descended to the nape of her neck and returned through the soft strands. She seemed to be trying to absorb every touch as if storing silent proof that he had truly returned. A hundred years had changed many things in her, but that simple gesture still disarmed her completely.
Kael watched her for a while before speaking.
"You are quiet."
Sylphie slowly opened her eyes and raised her face just enough to see him.
"I am trying not to cry again."
"You do not need to try."
She smiled faintly, but there was clear fragility in the gesture.
"I need to a little. If I start, I may not stop anytime soon."
Kael slid his hand along the side of her face, touching her cheek with his thumb. Sylphie immediately closed her eyes, leaning into the touch. The reaction was small, but carried an old hunger for affection, something accumulated over far too many years. It was not only missing kisses or embraces. It was missing being touched by him as someone loved, not as a student, not as a future goddess, not as a responsibility.
"You do not need to control yourself with me," he said.
Sylphie took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.
"I know." She touched his hand with hers, keeping it against her face. "But it still feels hard to believe. I spent so long imagining this moment that now I am afraid of moving too quickly and waking up."
Kael leaned down slightly, bringing his face closer to hers.
"You are not going to wake up."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
The word had barely left his mouth before Sylphie raised herself enough to kiss him. The kiss began gently, almost timidly, but the shyness did not last long. She gripped the collar of his clothes with both hands and moved closer, as if refusing to accept any space between them. Kael answered calmly at first, but soon her intensity broke through his own caution.
Sylphie had waited too long to kiss him that way.
Kael felt it in every movement. In the way her fingers clung to the fabric of his clothes. In how her breathing faltered when he pulled her closer. In the small tremor that ran through her body when his hands moved down to her waist and held her firmly against him. She was not merely showing desire. She was reclaiming something denied to her for far too long.
When the kiss ended, Sylphie remained with her forehead against his, breathing unevenly.
"I missed your mouth," she murmured.
Kael let out a low laugh.
"You became more direct."
"A hundred years teaches a few things."
"Like being direct?"
"Like not wasting moments."
The answer made his smile fade slightly, replaced by something more serious. Kael held her face with both hands and kissed her again, this time deeper, longer, as if wanting to answer that sentence without words. Sylphie sighed against his lips and slid one hand up into his red hair, tangling her fingers there with a familiarity that seemed never to have been lost.
She tugged lightly at the strands, not to hurt him, but to confirm that she could touch him. Kael allowed it, and the gesture seemed to affect her more than he expected. Sylphie pulled away only enough to look at him, her eyes wet again, but now mixed with an intense, almost incredulous happiness.
"You really are here," she said softly.
Kael brushed his thumb over her cheek.
"I am."
"I repeated that so many times in my head." She smiled, trembling a little. "I imagined so many versions. Some were beautiful. Others were horrible. In some, you were too different. In others, I was."
"We are different."
"I know."
"But we are still us."
Sylphie closed her eyes for a second, as if that phrase had touched some point far too deep. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and hid her face against him. Kael held her by the waist, keeping her close. They stayed like that for a few more moments, simply breathing against each other, as if the body needed time to accept it before the heart could follow.
Then Sylphie raised her face and kissed the corner of his mouth.
It was a small kiss.
Then another.
And another.
Kael remained still at first, watching her with an almost amused expression, until she kissed him again, this time on the lips, with more insistence. He answered, and within seconds, the quiet of the room began to change. The blanket slipped from her body. Sylphie adjusted herself better over him without pulling away, and Kael felt her warmth increase against him.
"You are teasing me," he said against her lips.
"Am I?"
"You are."
Sylphie smiled, but the smile carried an emotion that went beyond playfulness.
"Maybe I have the right."
"You do."
The simple answer made her expression waver. Kael noticed and kissed her forehead, then the tip of her nose, then her mouth again. Sylphie closed her eyes and released a long sigh, surrendering to the sequence of affection as if she were tired of remaining strong. His fingers traveled slowly along her back, feeling the delicate shape of her body through the fabric, and she curved naturally against him.
"Kael..."
Her voice came out low.
He looked at her.
Sylphie swallowed before continuing.
"I do not want to spend tonight talking about Yggdrasil."
"Neither do I."
"I do not want to talk about a hundred years."
"Then we will not."
"I do not want to be a goddess right now."
Kael fell silent.
She held his face, forcing him to look at her.
"I want to be yours."
The world seemed to stop for an instant.
Kael held her gaze, and something in his expression changed. The exhaustion was still there, along with the marks of battle and the accumulated tension of everything he had faced to reach that house. But there was something else now too. A silent decision. A firm tenderness. A longing that no longer wished to be restrained.
He kissed Sylphie again.
This time, the kiss was in no hurry to end. Sylphie wrapped her arms around his neck, allowing herself to be guided as Kael held her by the waist and rose from the sofa with her in his arms. The movement drew a small sound of surprise from her, followed by a low laugh against his mouth.
"You still do that."
"I do."
"Without warning."
"Did you complain?"
"No."
She kissed him again, and Kael crossed the small room without hurry. The bedroom was beside it, separated by a half-open door covered in thin vines. The light inside was low and warm, spread by small luminous flowers attached to the walls. The bed was simple, covered in pale sheets and a soft green quilt.
Kael entered with Sylphie in his arms.
For a second, he stopped near the bed and looked at her.
She looked back at him, her white hair falling over her shoulders, her green eyes full of expectation, emotion, and longing. There was no fear in her. Only desire, trust, and the intense need to finally transform waiting into presence.
Kael smiled faintly.
Then he tossed her onto the bed with enough care not to hurt her, but enough firmness to make her laugh and cling to the sheets. Sylphie fell onto the soft mattress, her white hair spread around her face, and looked at him as though this were the first truly light moment after an entire century.
Kael placed one knee on the edge of the bed and leaned over her.
Sylphie raised a hand and touched his face.
"You will stay?"
"I will."
"Even if Yggdrasil complains?"
"Especially if she complains."
She laughed, and this time the sound came whole, warm, alive.
Kael held her hand and kissed her fingers.
Then he moved closer to her lips.
"We need to make up for lost time."
...
Yggdrasil sat at the table in Nidhogg’s small house, holding a warm cup with both hands as if that object were the only thing preventing her dignity from collapsing completely. Her leaf dress still looked wilted, several flowers hung lifelessly from the vines, and her red hair fell messily over her shoulders. Across from her, Nidhogg slowly pushed a plate of cookies closer, wearing an expression far too serious for someone offering comfort to her own mortal enemy.
"Eat," Nidhogg said. "It helps when you are emotionally devastated by ungrateful teenagers."
Yggdrasil carefully picked up a cookie, staring at it as if it carried some ancient answer about divine suffering.
"I do not understand," she murmured. "I trained her for a hundred years. Taught her about roots, cycles, responsibility, and ascension. Then he appears with that dramatic red hair, and she simply melts."
Nidhogg nodded gravely.
"Tall men with red hair are dangerous to the natural order."
Yggdrasil looked at her.
"You like him too."
"That detail does not invalidate my analysis."
Elion, leaning near the wall, watched the scene with crossed arms and a tired expression. Seeing Yggdrasil, the World Tree, sitting in Nidhogg’s house, the dragoness who had spent eras devouring her roots, receiving tea and sentimental advice as if they were old childhood friends, was something no sensible prophecy could have predicted.
Nidhogg poured more tea into Yggdrasil’s cup.
"You need to accept one thing," the dragoness said. "Sylphie may be your successor, your forest goddess, and your precious student, but she is also a woman in love. Those two realities will coexist, even if it makes your leaves fall."
Yggdrasil lowered her gaze to the cup.
"I hate when you make sense."
"I am uncomfortable too."
Elion released a long sigh.
Both of them looked at her.
The witch merely shook her head, somewhere between disbelief and resignation.
"My son managed to do the impossible."
Yggdrasil frowned.
"Invade my Central Realm?"
Elion looked at Nidhogg serving another cookie to her own mortal enemy.
"No. Make the two of you talk like friends."
Nidhogg and Yggdrasil remained silent for several seconds.
Then, simultaneously, they looked away.
"That means nothing," Yggdrasil murmured.
"Absolutely nothing," Nidhogg agreed, pushing another cookie toward her.
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