Ped stood on a precipice, looking down to the valley floor. She was dressed in the appropriate gear for scaling the cliff face, but she was no longer sure she wanted to continue on her current path. She held the rope between her hands, but not tightly enough to begin a rapel. Ped turned back to look at where she had come from, it was safe there she knew what to expect. To continue meant going off into the unknown, the dangerous, and possibily to never return to where she had been...
Ped sat bolt upright in her bed. Her sheets were tangled about her, and they were drenched in sweat. She began to shiver, remembering the vivid images she had seen in her dream. To calm her fears she spoke aloud to herself, as if the sound of her own voice could keep the worries away. "Penjustce Elora Danara get a grip on yourself. Just because in four hours time you will face the last ritual before your mating to Gaw is complete is no reason for you to worry. Now the fact that in eighteen hours time you have to return to the Temple, regardless of your feelings, you have a duty to keep, and keep it you shall." Ped stopped for awhile. "By the twenty realms, this reminds me of the last time I had to talk myself into doing something. Aw for the good old days in the Asylum, when we knew just how long we could torture someone until they couldn't stand it any longer..."
Ped grew silent as she felt the stirring of the man in the next room. This would be the last night they would have seperate rooms, from this point on they would more than likely be mated and he would move into her room. With an impish grin Ped got out of her bed and grabbed the robe at the foot of it. She tied the sash around herself and ran on bare feet to the door seperating her room from Gaw's.
Gaw opened his eyes to see a vision before him. She was standing in a pool of light that was coming from the full moon outside the window. The moonlight lent her another worldly glow, her skin seemed almost like a pearl, and her normally golden blond hair a mere apparition of its normal color. She walked towards him, but she did so quietly. Gaw was sure he was having another of his dreams... right up to the point where she untied her robe, dropping it to the floor, and moved to stand next to him.
Gaw sat up quickly. "Ped?!? What are you doing?"
Ped placed one finger over his lips. "Be quiet Gaw, you speak too loudly and someone will know I'm in here. You and I both know that even with couples who are not nearly as 'orthodox' as you and I have been, are forbidden to see each other the night before the last ceremony."
"So that's what you're calling it, 'orthodox'. I just thought it was just you trying to frustrate me, the way you frustrate every other male in your life." Gaw grins at her look of shock, which quickly turns to one of outrage.
"Why you..." Ped lunges at him. She suceeds only in being where she wanted to be, in his arms. She smiles at him. "Well I guess my plan worked better than I thought."
Gaw's eyelids lower, until he is looking at Ped with suspision in his eyes. "What plan?"
"Why the plan to get me into your arms of course." Ped snuggles into his body. "Don't send me away Gaw... I've been having frightening dreams lately, and I just know that if I have one more before the night is out, I will return to the temple early, without the rituals being complete."
"You're that scared of what a future with me means?"
"No... more like what this act will make me have to choose in the future, does that make sense to you?"
"Perfect sense my darling Elora. You are welcome to stay here for awhile... and I promise not to try anything."
"Nothing at all?" She asks, feigning innocence. "Come now Gaw, the woman you are about to become mated to is snuggling in your arms, afraid of falling asleep, and you don't think you're going to try anything?!?"
"There's that suspisicious nature of yours coming thru again. Has living among non-Syreena males so erased your years of upbringing?"
"You, my darling friend, are hardly a typical Syreena male."
"Which is one of the reasons why you and I are to be mated tomorrow morning." He brings Ped under the covers with him.
CLIFFHANGER!