Don’t be fooled by how Redana can’t hold still, not until she’s weighed down by her wife in her arms. It’s not that she’s impatient, you must understand, and it’s not that she’s bored— it’s just that this is her paradise, too. If she can’t keep her eye on one butterfly in particular, it’s because she’s noticed all of them, and if she can’t hold still to count them all, it’s because she’s noticed the flowers they spring lightly on, and the birds which prey upon them, and the rustles of the grass in the wind.

Also, she’s Ceronian. She is doing a very good job stifling the urge to run feckless and wild and free until she’s tuckered out, and she doesn’t even eat any weird bugs, which is— well. Let us not besmirch Ceronian honor. It would be quite beneath them. Even if the bug was particularly weird and interesting. She’s not going to do it.

“This must be the last test,” she muses aloud at one point, one specific point, as Bella follows small squeaking creatures from hole to hole, whipping her head around as they continue to taunt her from just out of reach. “A place no one would ever want to leave.”

But she does. She wants to go and get her sketchbook and fail at drawing for another hundred years. She wants to punch a tree in order to get wood enough to build a shelter. But even that might be too much to bring here, a terrible curse which would inevitably bring cities and farms and nature preserves and extinctions. Not that she thinks in those terms precisely, but that is the shape of the shudder that runs through her as she rests her knuckles against a tree which droops its long hair over the water.

Maybe just a tent would work. Or a pack and a blanket and willingness to sleep out under the stars.

These are the sorts of things she considers while she fights to maintain her self-control and not run up the nearest mountain just for the satisfaction of making it to the top and seeing what sort of creatures might be up there[1].

When the creature— the noble beast— the Questing Beast itself— emerges, she takes Bella’s hand[2]. She feels the awe, lets Bella’s transcendence spill into her own cup, which is ready to be filled. Somehow, the two of them find it in themselves not to bolt after the Questing Beast.

For a long while, she just holds her Bella close. The sky is nothing like a box. She tries to find ways to explain, but none of them can withstand the full, searing light of Bella’s ecstasy. Eventually, Redana gives up and focuses on the things which are important: running a hand over the back of Bella’s head, subvocalizing at a supportive resonance, and not chasing any, [i]any[/i] rabbits at all.

“…let’s spend our honeymoon here,” she eventually manages. “Once we save the universe and all.”

If there is any sense or reason in Bella’s love, maybe it is found in the calm, happy certainty of those words.

[hr]
[1]: she has a vague memory of a picture book which informed her that goats live on mountains. And lammergeiers, too.

[2]: her wife’s hand is an anchor that keeps her from running up and excitedly asking if it wants to be her friend, as per long-dormant genetic protocols.