172 Hur (1/2)

”I…well, I suppose the right way for me to put it is that I like you,” said Sylvie.

Li caught her tone. He had expected her to be flustered, shaky, and wholly unprepared to confront her own feelings, but her voice was quite calm, the type of calm that came mostly from resignation.

Surprisingly, she knew how this was going to go. Although, as Li thought about it, perhaps it was unsurprising. She was a perceptive girl, always thinking and always seeing things that others could not, so he would not have put it past her to know.

”I appreciate that, I truly do,” began Li. He looked to the fields, at the hundred plus souls that relied on him, at the lands whose healthy greens he was responsible for.

”But I can't return that feeling. We walk entirely different paths of life. I am here, tending my own followers and land, and you, though this might be your home, are destined to travel and adventure and follow your heart's curiosity to faraway dreams.

Love should be between two souls traveling the same path together, and I can't do that for you.”

Li knew that there were far more factors at play here for refusing her.

At a basic level, he saw her more as someone to protect, a student or child to nurture – a feeling made even more apparent by their age gap - and he knew that this feeling would only grow as his divinity advanced, making him see all mortal life forms as simply ephemeral seeds to water and watch grow tall and healthy and hale and then dry up and wither and rot.

Sylvie was no different in this regard. She, like every other mortal here, would soon wilt and return to the earth. It would be a disservice to her to entrap her into an illusion of love that was never meant to last.

Certainly, he could, perhaps through the years, find some means through developing his divinity to ascend her into an immortal state, but there was no guarantee she would desire anything of that sort, nor did he want to pressure her into any commitments without her even knowing what he truly was.

”I know.” Sylvie sighed. ”I've known. I have had, how to word it, a fancy of youth, the kind the bards claim sparks brightest in maidenly hearts for that is the first flame they experience. They say that the flame flickers bright, overwhelming the mind.”

She smiled faintly, sadly, and put a pale hand over the flowing cloth of her black dress, feeling her heartbeat.