Page 26 of Locking Down Qetesh

I laughed. "Fair enough."

"So, would you like to?"

"Is that wise?" I asked. "We sort of work together..."

"In that our boss is the same person," he pointed out. "But if you don't want to, I understand."

"No, that's not what I'm saying," I responded quickly. "I guess I was just worried about work. And Ella. How would she respond?"

"I wasn't planning on telling her straight away."

"That makes a lot of sense. I'm sorry, I'm not very good at any of this. I've really not had much experience."

"You don't need to be good at it," he assured me. "All you need to do is decide if you want to go out to dinner with me. One where my sister is nowhere near."

"Yes, I'd like that."

"There's no sex afterwards," he joked.

I laughed. "If I thought there was a risk of that, I'd be saying no." I took a deep breath. "Which isn't to say that I don't think sex with you would be fun, I'm sure it is."

"I'd like to think so. And if the date goes well, we can find out at some point."

"But only if we plan it."

"Yes." There was something like relief in his voice. "Really, we've already talked about the hardest part."

I laughed. "Have you forgotten that I'm an immortal goddess?"

"Actually, I kind of had. Is that another hard conversation?"

"I guess so. I don't age, and I'm probably not going to die. That has to be something you're okay with."

"I have to ask...you're probably not going to die?" There was a curiosity in his voice that I should have expected.

"Well, I heal at the normal rate for any dryad, so I have to assume that if I suffered from a fatal accident, then it would kill me. But I have no proof of that, because I've never been in a fatal accident."

"Ah, fair enough. But shouldn't my mortality be more of something that should be a deal breaker for you?"

"That depends on whether you'd ever consider immortality," I said.

"I didn't realise that was something I could consider."

"It's not hard to do," I said. "All gods are capable of it. But I think that is something we would need to talk about. I think I'm theoretically okay with whatever a partner would want when it came to immortality, but I don't think that will stop it from hurting if they choose to leave me through death."

"Ah, understandable," he said softly. "I guess I've never really thought about it. But I guess I'm open to talking about immortality. I suppose it has its downsides."

"Several thousand years is a long time," I said. "And the people around you die. I've said goodbye to more people than I could tell you tonight."

"What do you do to remember them?" he asked.

"What makes you think I do anything?"

"Just a hunch."

"I have a series of journals," I said. "Though some of the earlier ones are papyrus scrolls. When I lose someone who means something to me, I write down everything I can think of about them, and I draw their picture. Now, I add a photo, if I have one, but I still draw them. When I'm feeling like I miss someone, I look over their page, and then start reading the others. It makes me cry, but it also makes me feel close to the people I've lost, and there's something beautiful about that, even if it hurts."

"That is beautiful," he said. "Is that what you'd do for me? If we worked and I chose to die?"

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