Her Safe Haven

Chapter 10 - Mother's Love

Previously on Her Safe Haven: Winter showed Rohan the venues for Lakeside Festival in Lakeside Town. At Lakeside Town Park, Winter told him the story of a mysterious light on top of a hill there that could be seen every night from the 'Cove of Two Lovers', a small lake at the park. Afterwards during lunch, Winter found out that Rohan's mother passed away while giving birth to him, and in an attempt to comfort him she reached towards his hand. He mysteriously snapped back his hand away from her touch like a jolt of electricity when she made the contact.

The rest of their tour, as far as Winter could feel, passed by awkwardly.

After their lunch, the only things she had talked about with Rohan were information for the venues for the festival. Other than that she would just walk or stand awkwardly next to him when there was nothing left to explain out of the places they visited.

Even though Rohan seemed to be behaving like his usual self — with his polite comments and occasional sarcastic or teasing remarks — Winter couldn't really bring herself to joke openly with him like before, in worry that she might offend him again.

So she was hoping that their last destination would really change the mood to how it was before she stupidly asked such personal question about his mother.

"Winter?"

She snapped her attention back to Rohan. 'Yes? You said something?'

Rohan furrowed his eyebrows slightly in worry and pointed at the town park on their left. "No... I just recall you said we are going back to the park, but we missed the entrance just now."

Winter inwardly slapped her forehead for having zoned off like that and gave Rohan a small sheepish chuckle. 'Sorry, I wasn't paying attention,' she gestured awkwardly and turned to walk back towards the park gate. 'The place that we're going to isn't really part of the tour, but... I want to show you something there.'

Rohan nodded. "And this is the third time you say that in the last fifteen minutes," he said, his lips quirking slightly to a smirk when he saw the light blush on her cheeks. "Are you sure you're okay?"

'Yes!' she gestured — perhaps a bit too quickly. 'I mean, why wouldn't I be?'

Rohan raised his eyebrows at her but otherwise stayed quiet.

They strolled past the Cove of Two Lovers towards a small dirt path with red maple trees on its left and green open grass field on its right. He saw children and families still running and walking around the open field, and some even seemed to still be having a picnic, despite the now setting sun.

The air felt nice, he decided, and it smelt like fresh dew on grasses and new oak. Like Spring. It was a relaxing Spring dusk, with occasional cooling breeze blowing past them, and he felt serene, peaceful. He wished Dews Town could be a little bit more like Lakeside.

However, he was slightly worried because Winter had been acting rather weirdly ever since their little talk during lunch. He suspected it was because of their talk about his mother — and he had told her that it wasn't really a big deal and that she shouldn't worry about it — but still their interactions afterwards had been strictly businesslike. She would only talk about the festival, and he could only give respectful comments on them.

He even tried teasing her for a bit to try to get her to laugh, but she only gave an awkward chuckle and nothing else; no sarcastic remarks, no playful comments, nothing.

He glanced over at his escort and knitted his eyebrows in slight concern. As they continued to walk deeper down the path, Rohan reflected on whether or not he had said something else that may have offended Winter this afternoon. He had talked to his female classmates and fellow council members before, but the conversations he had with them usually only revolve around council duties, school work, or some bold girl trying to ask him to 'hang out' (in which he would always very politely decline and subtly walk away). So he realised that this was pretty much the first time that he could really converse with a girl so openly — his sister not counted — and he was afraid that he might have crossed some sort of invisible boundaries that would cause a huge drop in Winter's mood.