Starlight of a Moonbeam

The Sweetest Sunlight, Five - Age 15 (Elena POV)

AN:
Thank you guys for the 8k!!! 🥳
I love you all! 💜

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Reaching out my hand, I let the soft whispering weeping willow branches slide among and around my fingers kissing my skin with their sunlit sweet leaves in the late hour of spring.

My feet bare on the dreamy grass, I step between the bowed branches and up to the trunk where I place my hands on the smooth bark and feel the life within the beautiful tree.

"So what do you think?" Coen asks behind me, carefully watching my reaction with a hint of nerves in his tone, but as my training and skills have increased I've tried to leave it all behind when I'm with him, and intentionally block it out. I don't want to know, I want him to tell me, to show me, like he has with this place.

"I think it's incredible," I say spinning back around to face him, my light cream skirts blowing in the gentle breeze as I do. "How did you even find this place?" I ask him in wonder.

"The way all the best things happen, by accident." He smiles at me and strokes a branch with his hand as he continues. "I was actually trying to get away from everything for a minute; Trinor and my father had been nagging me about something stupid and pointless and I wanted to get away from the bakery for an hour or so to cool off. I could have gone to the fountain or the fields but I didn't want to risk meeting anyone and having to explain, fearing that they'd try and scold me too, so I took to the hills and was halfway to the base of the staghorns when I came across this place," he says looking around.

The weeping willow tree by which we're standing is one of many in a private glade of them, hidden away thanks to the curve of the base of one of the nearest mountains. The only way in, so I've seen, is the way we came through a ravine of fallen rocks and rubble that wouldn't attract unknowing attention. But once through, the glade is open to the sky and shaded by the soft branches. Around the sides are steep rock and hill that, other by a mountain goat, aren't preferable to climb, but cut off on the farthest side to reveal a breathtaking drop below breath-stealing view.

"Anyway, I spent the afternoon exploring and forgot the reason why I'd left until I got back hours later." Coen chuckles at himself and draws my attention back to him.

Part of me is eager to know what it was that his father and brother we nagging him about, perhaps it's something that I can help with, but if the reason he didn't go to his friends or me in the first place is that he didn't want to talk to anyone about it, then I won't ask him now.

But being in this beautiful place just the two of us, it's easy to forget about that and become lost in the dreamlike feel that seems to pour out the branches of the trees and down into the grass until it seeps into your very bones, calming you to a place of ease. That is, except for the fact that it's him, and I can never seem to be calm around him for long before it turns into something else.

Since that night when I was fourteen, my feelings for him have only grown and made my life uncomfortable and awkward in ways that I'd never anticipated. A message or word cannot be just that, it has to be thought out carefully and precisely or risk an unintended outcome.

And then of course there's the entire prospect of if I should do anything about my crush or just leave it to sit, and either hope it dies like a flower in the fall or wilts with self-pity when he dates someone else. And that's not even considering the thought of telling him.

If I'm being honest, when I would read a story where something like this would happen, I would always scold the character for not buckling up their courage and telling their crush the truth, but now that it's actually happening to me, I can see that's it's not nearly as easy as it sounds.

Would he even like me back? Does he like me back right now? Should I do something about it? Should I wait for him to make a move? Or should I do nothing and hide in my own cowardice.