But still, after all his attempts at calming her, Mericlou was unable to control herself. Like a lost child who had just been returned to her mother, she held on tightly to him, crying into his now-drenched tunic, until her words became little more than unintelligible blubbering. Still, Aldrec showed infinite patience as he held her trembling body close, a beloved protector shielding his most precious possession from harm.
Distantly, in her throes of grief, Mericlou heard him cast another spell.
Rimrod. She felt his breath as he gently blew upon her, after which all grief and anguish left her. Accompanying this sensation was that of her entire body becoming a lead weight. She felt an overpowering drowsiness take her: something that she had no choice but to give into.
It actually felt good, she thought, to fall into such a peaceful slumber.
***
She awoke in unfamiliar, yet comfortable surroundings.
The mattress and sheets of the bed where she discovered herself were silk, soft and light as a whisper.
She opened her eyes, and sat up slowly, realizing that her jacket was gone. She gasped, thinking that all her clothing had been removed, but the shock was short lived when the covers fell off of her. Save her shoes, the rest of her clothing was still there. To her side, she noticed that her jacket and shoes were placed neatly upon a small wooden chair beside the bed.
As she slid out of bed and slipped into her shoes and jacket, she received her first view of the room. The style reminded her of the posh décor of the few elven homes she had been privileged to see, but the architecture was more minimalist. Nearly everything was made of wood, intricately carved with flowing lines in the shapes of leaves and vines. This pattern existed in everything from floorboards to furniture: from the dresser across from the embroidered silk canopied bed, to the frame around the doorway at the far right-hand corner. And inset into those grooves of the leaf and vine prints were veins of pure gold.
To her increased delight, plants of every sort lined the room, from potted vines that crawled up the wooden walls, to ferns and floral bouquets that seemed to grow straight from the wood itself. These produced a heady, invigorating greenhouse-like scent.
Was this Aldrec's house? She recalled only the last few seconds before she succumbed to the sudden drowsiness in her love's arms. Where had he gone off to?
A light breeze blew into the room from the open window beside the dresser, causing its fine muslin drapes to billow and float about like mist. A swirling shower of what appeared to be shining floral petals blew in with the wind, vanishing into tiny points of light the moment they hit the floor.