Chasing Dreams {Book 2: Chasing Butterflies}

Chapter 19: Rest and Relaxation

Hey everyone! Sorry about the delay. >.< I got caught up writing one of my other stories, and sort of neglected this one. That won't happen again, as I have promised myself to get focused on writing this once again. Took me a while to figure out some details with this, but, I'm sure this is much better this way than my original plans were. Thanks to my boyfriend (swaknight) and Kat, I was able to come up with this ingenious idea. Hope you all like it! =)

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"I wanna stand with you on a mountain; I wanna bathe with you in the sea. I wanna lay like this forever, until the sky falls down on me." –Truly Madly Deeply, Savage Garden

Audrey held onto Draco's hand as they stood in the backyard of Artemis' manor. She held a small bag of luggage in her free hand. They were getting ready to depart to the mystery location Draco had chosen for their honeymoon. Audrey had no idea where they were going; all she knew was that she was glad they were taking a Portkey. No Apparation, no flying... although using a Portkey was terrifying, it was so much more convenient.

She stared blankly at the garden gnome in front of her, unsure what to think about it. Part of her was excited, yet part of her was incredibly nervous. She honestly wanted to know where they were going; she knew Draco wouldn't tell her, not until they got there. He had managed to hide the location so far; Audrey knew he was certainly not going to spoil it now. She turned to him, waiting on the cue to release his hand and grab hold of the unusual Portkey.

"Are you ready?" he asked quietly.

Audrey nodded. "Whenever you are."

They released each other's hand, each reaching towards the Portkey. "On the count of three," Draco decided. "One... two... three."

On three, both of them grabbed the garden gnome. Audrey braced herself as they went spiraling through the air. Admittedly, the girl had closed her eyes. She did not want to see what was passing her, and hoped that she wouldn't get sick from the circling motion. Soon after the sensation started, Audrey felt her feet touch the ground.

The first thing she noticed even before she opened her eyes was that the air around her was cooler than it was in Dublin. Audrey dared herself to open her eyes, and when she did, she almost instantly had her breath taken away. She found herself standing in the middle of a huge mountain range just as the sun set. A small river flowed gently past their feet. Audrey had never seen a place like this before in her life. She turned to Draco.

"Alright... so where are we?" she asked.

A smile stretched across his face. "We're in the Rocky Mountains, in the United States."

Upon hearing that, Audrey was a bit confused as to why he would have picked some place as random as that in the first place. Draco had never struck her as a rugged, mountaineer type; she had always pictured him in a warmer climate, relaxing on a beach. Though now I know why he told me not to pack a bathing suit, she thought to herself. Not that I didn't bring one anyways. "Why'd you pick here?" she asked.

"Why not?" Draco asked back. "We're in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where we are, how to get a hold of us. We're far away from everyone, and everything that has been stressing us out. We're not in another place with thousands of other couples." He paused for a moment, as he thought out his next words. "I figured if we were out here, we would benefit the most out of this honeymoon of ours."

All of them were really good reasons. Audrey was certainly glad that they weren't having the typical, clichéd honeymoon she often heard about- somewhere in the tropics, spending most of their days hardly dressed and having crazy amounts of sex. For some reason, that just didn't seem like it would be as much fun as the movies and books said it would be. The girl rolled her eyes at the thought, but immediately a smile appeared on her face.