He lifted his arms, making angels in the sand, and he wondered if the Goddess was watching him.
"Arrabelle, I'm terrified of you. I have been since the moment we met."
He was talking, words coming out of his mouth that he didn't even know he had inside him.
"You are everything I could ever want, but I'm too scared to let you love me. I'm a pusillanimous fool and I hate myself for it."
The first raindrop hit Evan on the forehead. It was so unexpected that he recoiled, sitting up and wiping at his face. But then he realized what was happening and started laughing.
"Your rain scared me!" he said, yelling up at the sky. "Who the hell is afraid of a little water?"
A lyric from a song danced through his head . . . something about needing someone like a desert needed rain, and he laughed even harder. He was sitting in the sand, laughing his head off, getting rained on . . . and he wasn't happy, per se, but he wasn't so miserable now, either.
"Arrabelle!" he screamed, his voice reaching up to the three moons. "I love you!"
The rain began to fall in sheets. He was getting drenched, but he didn't care. He lay back in the sand, his clothes and hair plastered to his body. He closed his eyes and let the rain wash everything away.
• • •
He woke up to the smell of growing things. It was a rich, loamy scent and it filled his nostrils and made him smile as he shook away the last fingers of sleep. He rubbed his eyes, the memory of the impromptu rain shower making him laugh.
The smell of damp soil was only getting stronger. He turned his head, surprised to find himself smack-dab in the middle of a field of mushrooms. He sat up, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and looked around.
"Whoa." The word slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it.
No matter where he turned, as far as the eye could see . . . mushrooms.
He got up and stretched, surprised at how one rainstorm had changed the whole tenor of the landscape. He was so busy marveling at the bizarreness of the dreamlands and not paying attention to where he was going that he almost missed it. The hillock in the middle of all the flat land. It was the only part of the landscape not covered in mushrooms and once Evan had seen it, he was obsessed. He walked over to it, crushing little mushroom bodies under his heels as he went, drawn irresistibly to whatever lay beneath it.
It was a large rectangle of dirt, a mound of soil that looked as though it had lain undisturbed for a long time. Without understanding why, Evan knelt down beside the mound and thrust his hands into it. He began to dig, slowly at first and then faster, shifting soil out of the way with a frenzy that made him light-headed.
Finally, he stopped, his fingers touching something soft. He brushed the dirt away . . . and discovered Arrabelle's sleeping face.
• • •
He tried everything to wake her up. He called her name. Gently slapped both cheeks. Shook her. Yelled her name. He tried everything until there was only one option left.
It feels like a test, he thought. And I hate tests.
But he wasn't the same man he'd been-something had happened to him during that rainstorm. He'd been purified by a supernatural event greater than himself. It almost felt like a religious experience, like he'd gone out into the desert and waited for the Goddess to find him and lay a kiss of absolution on his brow. With that accomplished, he had the confidence to do anything.
Like wake up a sleeping princess.
"Arrabelle," he said, as he knelt before her, a prince with dirt-covered knees.
He ran his finger down the side of her cheek, then lowered his face until his lips were inches from her left ear.
"Arrabelle, I love you. I know that if I do this and it works, I will be tied to you for life," he said, and cleared his throat, his mouth dry. "So I promise to always be honest with you and tell you what I'm thinking. I'm ready to be vulnerable again, to have a better life with you at my side."
He stopped and closed his eyes.
"Arrabelle, please wake up."
He placed his mouth gently against her lips, felt the dry crackle of his own parched skin as he kissed her. She tasted like dirt and growing things, her lips moister than he'd expected. He felt her stirring and then her arms were encircling the back of his neck and pulling him toward her.
"I thought you'd never get here," she breathed against his mouth.
"Me neither," he said-and then he kissed her again.
She held him close, her body warming under his. She was lithe, yet firm, and he could feel her taut muscles tensing as she ran her hands up and down his back. He enjoyed the feline grace with which she moved underneath him, wanted to get closer to her, fill his senses with her.