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I must be in hell. All around me are blue flames, but they are cold, as if a toddler had thought them up. From somewhere behind me, a hear a twig snap beneath Simon’s heavy footsteps. I peer over my shoulder so I can behold him in the glow of the flames. He looked ragged, as if he had been in these woods for weeks. Maybe he has, after all, we had both been put under a wicked spell.
“Baz?” His voice cracked when he said it, and that was all I needed to know it was him. Upon hearing his voice, the tendrils of flame flickered out, the last remnant of my dark calling spell, as they had done their job and brought Simon back to me. He took another step towards me, tentatively, as if I was a deer he might accidentally scare away. He might be right to assume such a thing. Ever since America, I've been rather jumpy and the last thing to sneak up on us had caught me completely unawares.
“Simon?” To be honest, my voice cracked a bit too. I decided to close the gap between us. When he didn’t move away, and just looked at me with that beautiful and somber face of his, I put my hands on his shoulders. I looked him over for any harm that may have come to him since I last saw him, and I found none, save for the bags under his eyes. I pulled him in for a hug, and we stood there for what felt like an entirely too short amount of time.
He started rubbing my back in circles, and I dropped my head to the crook of his neck, to breathe him in. Finally, he spoke again. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I can’t believe I finally found you. I was beginning to think I’d never see you again, or that you didn’t want to see me.”
I pulled away in shock. “Of course I wanted to see you, I’ve been looking for you all this time.” Simon smiled softly, and after what felt like an eternity he leaned in to kiss me gently.
Alas, we could not stay for long, so we began trudging our way through the forest. Neither of us knew where we were, so we had the potential to be in the forest for another few days, since our magic was too drained to use and locator spells.
It wasn’t until nightfall that we found a place we recognized, deep in the Wavering Wood, where the dryads ruled, and did not like Simon for all his power. Tonight, however, they would let us stay, as they could tell we were too exhausted to do the wood any harm.
At long last we were able to lay down and sleep, albeit a bit fitfully, finally, finally, in each other's arms.