Page 206 of Grim and Oro
But my favorite color is not just green—it’shergreen.
The green of reawakening. Of growing. Of beginning again. Looking into her eyes feels like taking a deep breath after being underwater. Like finally seeing an oasis in a desert. Like discovering stars in darkness.
Her eyes are hope, in despair. A sun, through the night.
Eyes full of summer, even in the dead of winter.
“Sounds beautiful,” she says.
Yes, I think, looking right at her.Unbelievably beautiful.
“Your singing,” I say.
She seems surprised. “What about it?” I shrug, wanting to know this about her. Something, maybe, she’s never talked to anyone else about.
“Tell me about it.”
Tell me everything, I want to say.I’ve never wanted to know so much about anyone before. I’ve never cared enough to ask.
And if this world was not so cruel, if the weight of it did not fall onto our shoulders, I would be honored to spend every day undergoing the unmatched and eternal task of getting to know you.
She answers, and the sweetness returns. “It’s calming to me. Something I was born being good at, without really trying.”
“Like swordplay?” I ask, watching our game become a conversation. Feeling the lines between us fading.
“No. That was hard. I wasn’t naturally good at it, not like the singing. It used to frustrate me to no end ... Terra, my fighting instructor, would scold me for my impatience constantly.”
I try to imagine it. Isla as a child, training.
“So, I practiced. A lot. Every day, all day, all the time. Until the sword was weightless in my hand. Until it was part of me, just as much as my voice was. Iforcedit to be.”
I can see the fire in her heart, similar to mine. Fuel to provesomething—most of all—to herself. I wonder if she knows how rare it is to care so deeply. I wonder if she knows how long I’ve cared about nothing at all. Nothing beyond my duty.
Nothing else until now.
We watch each other. Could she ever find my face as interesting as I find hers? Could she want to know about me the way I constantly want to discover her?
She swallows. Her mouth tightens, and I know her enough to see the shift. The levity hardening into seriousness. It’s coming. The question she wanted to ask from the start, the reason she suggested this game in the first place.
For even though I want to ask her a thousand questions that have nothing to do with this game, she does not see me as anything beyond a means to an end.
“Is there a relic on the island that can break any bond? That can break the curses of the ones that wield it?”
So that’s what she’s been looking for, in these libraries. A relic.
One that breaks curses? She’s been looking for something that doesn’t exist. “No. If there was, I would have found a way to use it.”
She frowns. Looks away.
“Is that what you were searching for?” I ask, wanting to confirm it.
She nods.
She’s clearly gotten the answer she was looking for—though it hasn’t seemed to please her. She doesn’t need to ask anything else.
But then she says, “How long have you been able to gild?”
I blink. I’m torn between the surprise that she wants to keep playing, and the fact that her question is the last thing in the world I want to talk about.
