D U M B
Time had passed, but it had not softened anything, and it rarely did. What it had done was remove the immediacy of the moment and leave everything else where it fell, and nothing about it had become easier to understand, only harder to ignore.
Aerik had not avoided that, even when it would have been easier to.
The days that followed had been filled with preparation and expectation, and departure was no longer something he could put off. It sat with him now in a way it had not before, tied into everything else in a way that did not leave much room to separate one from the other, including what had happened between them.
He had promised her they would talk, not to quiet the moment and not to delay it, but because he had meant it, and that alone had been enough to determine where he would be.
The maze had not changed, and the hedges were still kept with the same precision, their walls grown high and thick enough to turn you without ever fully closing you in, while each path narrowed just enough to force a decision before opening again.
Aerik entered and followed a path he already knew, his steps steady against the packed earth as the scent of trimmed greenery and damp soil lingered in the air around him. The turns came and went without hesitation, taken the same way they always had been, without pause and without second thought.
By the time the center opened around him, there was nothing in his pace to suggest it had needed to be found.
The space there remained open, shaped more by absence than design, where the hedges curved back just enough to leave a quiet pocket at the heart of it, and he stepped into it and came to a stop as the stillness settled around him without interruption.
A faint breeze moved through the maze and carried the cool of evening with it, stirring the leaves just enough to give them voice before letting them fall still again, and it brushed across his skin without drawing any reaction as it passed.
He did not reach for the bond. Aerik knew she would come when he had sent the invitation to meet at their spot.
Something shifted in the quiet that did not belong to the wind, and it came before movement and before anything he could see, settling into something familiar as it drew closer.
Her heartbeat carried through the stillness, steady and measured, and it stood apart from everything else around them once he allowed himself to listen for it.
Aerik did not turn.
“I can hear you.”
The words carried across the space between them in a low and even tone, and they settled into the quiet without breaking it.
“I told you we would talk.”
He did not look toward her or move to close the distance between them, because the last time he had done that it had not remained simple, and that had not been forgotten.
“I leave tomorrow.”