Chapter 18: Silver-frost Eyes
The night had grown deep.
The room still retained the warm fragrance of food, and the herbal tea in the cups had long since been finished. Yet Veles did not want to leave Alan’s cabin.
He drank another cup of herbal tea—freshly brewed by Alan.
The black-haired mage did not seem to think that brewing herbal tea at such an hour was troublesome at all. He went about it unhurriedly, then brought Veles a small plate of meringue cookies, with sliced dried figs set beside them.
Then they chatted for a while, though Veles himself wasn’t even sure what he was talking about. Perhaps he mentioned the forest, the raspberry grove secretly sampled by the squirrelfolk clan (he remembered this detail because when he shared the little secret, Alan’s eyes seemed to light up).
He also mentioned an almond tart from a certain restaurant in the royal capital, and the extraordinarily delicious cream candies he had once received from the White Bird clan of Muyun during a mission… Veles spoke of nearly every pleasant thing he could recall. But there were so few things in his life that could truly be called “pleasant” that even after racking his brain, he still came across as taciturn in the conversation.
Alan, of course, didn’t mind at all. Whenever Veles fell silent, Alan would naturally pick up the thread himself. He cheerfully recounted the experiences he’d had back when he was still an adventurer. Several of those past stories made Veles’s heart tighten as he listened—he wished fervently that he could have been there, in that nameless adventurer party. If that had been the case, he could have stayed by Alan’s side.
Life couldn’t have been comfortable for a mage with such modest magical power, muddling along in a seventh-rate adventuring team, but when Alan spoke of the past, he still looked happy. With bright enthusiasm, he even mentioned how he had once successfully bought a copper pot at a wild fae market…
“…When they realized I’d actually bought a copper pot, they nearly freaked out.”
Alan said this, then noticed Veles’s pupils narrow into thin slits at the news.
“Wild fae are extremely dangerous. Buying things at their markets can very easily mean you’ll be left on the other side of the world forever.”
Veles spoke with effort, carefully controlling his tone. Even though Alan was sitting right in front of him now, the lingering fear still made the spines along his tail bristle slightly.
“Mr. Veles, that expression you’re making right now reminds me of our captain.”
Alan blinked mischievously at him.
“Don’t worry. I’d helped that wild fae merchant before—it sold me the copper pot to repay the favor. I know that, as an adventurer, I’m a bit too weak, but I do know my limits. I could tell it meant me no harm. Sigh, honestly, I didn’t want to take risks either, but you have no idea how hard it is to buy a good pot in this world! Only wild fae can get their hands on such an excellent copper pot. The stock you simmer in it is simply unbelievably delicious!”
Carried away by his enthusiasm, Alan jumped up and took the copper pot down from the kitchen rack. It truly was a superb piece: the body was evenly forged and polished to a brilliant shine. Its rose-gold surface gleamed under the lamplight. Even in the royal palace kitchens, it would have been hard to find a pot made with such exquisite craftsmanship. Human artisans really couldn’t produce something this fine. As for the dwarves, they certainly possessed the skill—but they would never deign to lower themselves by applying such mastery to the making of kitchenware.
Alan earnestly praised his beloved copper pot to Veles. He knew himself that it was a little silly; in fact, before today, he had never done anything like this. Not even with the closest companions from his adventuring party had he ever shown such enthusiasm for cookware.
But Veles was different.
Alan didn’t know what was going on with him—he just felt a particularly, overwhelmingly strong urge to let Veles know everything about him—
including that copper pot he loved so dearly.
“…I use fennel seeds when braising beef, with a bit of wild scallion and grape wine. You absolutely have to try it—this recipe would make even poison-marsh slugs taste good.”
As he spoke, Alan’s voice gradually trailed off without him realizing it.
He lifted his head and met Veles’s gaze, only then noticing that, in his eagerness to show off the copper pot, he had moved very close to Veles.
Far too close.
So close that Alan could now see his own reflection in Veles’s silver-frost eyes.
At such a distance, Veles’s olive-shaped pupils and silver irises were still beautiful enough to set Alan’s heart racing.
He could also smell Veles—there was always that clean, ice-and-snow freshness about the silver-eyed ranger, but now it had been tinged with Alan’s own scent: cheese, stewed pork, carrot cake, meringue cookies. Warm smells, all of them, blending into Veles’s presence and evoking the image of a blazing campfire and a cozy cabin in a snow-covered wilderness.
It was a scent that made one want to draw closer—
even though Alan and Veles were already almost pressed together, he still wanted them to be closer still.
They looked at each other in silence. No one spoke, yet there was not the slightest hint of awkwardness.
As though the silence itself, lingering between them, was sweet.
If he weren’t certain that he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol that night, Alan might have thought he’d accidentally gotten drunk again. He felt lightheaded, his thoughts growing a little unsteady—
to the point that he found himself thinking that Veles’s lips looked far too thin and far too pale, stirring an itch in his chest, a desire to see them stained with more color.
The color of raspberries.
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Author’s Note:
Alan: a hapless mage whose secret soft spot gets hit and who then gets completely flustered by his crush. (Fairy sighs .jpg)
