Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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A flash of lightning flooded the room with painful brightness. As it receded, so did Tauram's strange magic. He reappeared so suddenly he startled Esmera into pulling her hand away from his.
"Do you have to be so dramatic?"
"What is lightning for if not drama?" Tauram grinned up at Esmera. "Besides, it's not every day I come across someone I thought was dead for nearly 23 years."
"I can see why that would call for theatrics." Esmera rolled her eyes. "But if you keep surprising her, you may just make that a reality."
"That's dark, Esmera." Tauram looked down at his familiar so Esmera couldn't see his eyes.
How could she explain to him that the only way she had made peace with the difficulties in her life was by seeing the humour, no matter how feeble, in every harsh situation? Would someone like him even understand?
"But point taken." Tauram looked up, his face serious. "I'll stop."
Beneath Tauram's chair, Lundas's blotchy coat camouflaged him in the shadows, just as Tauram's ability hid him in plain sight.
"That's how you disappeared when we were at the museum." Esmera stepped around the coffee table and back into the toasty warm embrace of the fire.
Tauram inclined his head in what Esmera took to mean "yes", but that wasn't enough for her.
She folded her arms across her chest, her eyes demanding an answer. "Why did you run off like that?"
It gave Esmera some relief to have the question she carried within her out in the open. She would've only asked Tauram more questions about the paintings. He'd had no reason to fear her, and certainly no reason to vanish like that.
Tauram's reply only returned the unease to where it sat on Esmera's chest.
He turned away, smoothing his already creaseless shirt. "I think we're getting off-topic again."
Esmera huffed. She had heard that response so many times it was starting to grate on her.
Who was Tauram to decide what was off or on topic for this conversation? Esmera had so many questions, but it seemed like answers about Milatanur and her status in the kingdom were all Tauram was willing to give her.
Still, they were better than nothing. Esmera was more enlightened than she had been this morning. It felt like a distant time when years of knowledge had been packed into the hours since.
Esmera rifled through her mind for a safe question to ask. "If you can turn yourself invisible, what's my power?"
Everything felt like too much when Tauram fixed his eyes on Esmera. The fire was too warm, Esmera's t-shirt too scratchy, her socks too wet against her feet.
Tauram's gaze lingered so on her eyes, then her mouth that she wondered whether the answer to her question rested in the set of her lips.
It probably did. After all, Milatanur's magic involved the senses. That was why Tauram was staring at Esmera like that, not because he liked looking at her the way she did at him.
