Jane closed her eyes. Allen guided her forward silently, picking his path with care and gently correcting her every time her steps faltered. They went further than she had expected. Minutes passed as she slowly became used to the feel of him pressed against her arm and side.

  “OK, here we are. Open your eyes.”

  The world had a slight tint of blue, both from the normal way color changed when you closed your eyes to daylight and the sheer amount of water in the air. Jane was doubly glad for her coat as she realized she was standing inside a waterfall-churned cloud of vapor. It was already dampening her hair and would have soaked her whole body without the coat’s protection.

  The view, however, was worth it.

  The waterfall was wider than the river itself, having freedom to spread from normal channels before crashing into the rock below. It was impossibly high, improbably powerful, and so magnificent that it took her breath away. Around the waterfall and even in the air near her, rainbows danced as the light lanced through the airborne water.

  It was at once beautiful and terrifying: a monument to the absolute mockery nature could sometimes make of magic’s best efforts.

  Allen’s voice cut through the thunder of the water. “I wanted you to see it all in one eyeful. I hope it was worth it.”

  Jane turned her head. The waterfall was right there for the seeing, but Allen was looking directly at her. She got the impression that he hadn’t looked anywhere else the entire time.

  An impulse welled up inside her, rushing up from somewhere deeper than her magic sat. It moved so fast that she couldn’t recognize what she was about to do, let alone stop it.

  Suddenly on her tiptoes, she made up for the differences in their height just enough to kiss Allen on his cheek.

  oh no oh no oh no what did you do Jane

  “Oh. Hmm.” Allen reached up with his offhand and gently touched where Jane had kissed. He looked almost as blushed-red as Jane felt. She could barely hear him over the waterfall’s roar and the ringing in her own ears.

  why did you do that Jane now he’s going to not like it and panic and everything will be ruined and…

  “I liked that,” Allen said softly. “What did I do to deserve it?”

  With a massive show of psychological force, Jane wrestled her internal dialogue under control.

  “Nothing, I think. Although you are very nice.” Jane gripped his arm a little tighter as she realized the truth of the matter. “I think I just wanted to.”

  They were quiet for a while, just long enough for Allen to conclude he was failing in his job as tour guide. Turning her from the waterfall, he led her down the stream. Besides the flow of the water itself, there wasn’t much to see, though Allen had his reasons for repositioning them.

  “I think it's the angle that changes it,” he told her. “You get bigger and bigger rainbows the further you get from the falls. To a point. If you get far enough away, it stops. I don’t really know why.”

  Jane did. At least, she understood the basics of the phenomenon. But she didn’t say so. If someone was kind enough to show her things they thought were neat, she wasn’t about to step on that kindness to make herself seem more knowledgeable.

  Soon enough, Allen determined they were far enough away from the waterfall to stop. He guided her to yet another bench, this one a rougher affair made of wood and well out of the direct, soaking vapor from the waterfall. They sat and let the sun warm them for a while, listening to the roar of the water from a distance.

  It was Allen who broke the silence, apparently having been thinking about food.

  “So, that bread you made me this morning. That was as good as anything I’ve had in a shop. You were planning on reopening the bakery, weren’t you?”

  “I was.” Jane chuckled and opened her bag, pulling out a bottle of water and a bag of cookies. She loosened the drawstring and held the bag out towards Allen. “I’ve been working towards it, anyway.”

  “When do you think that will happen?” he asked, taking a cookie with no hesitation.

  “Tomorrow, if you can believe it.” Taking a deep breath, she tried to keep that deadline from stealing any joy from this moment. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Allen froze with the cookie at his lips. “Really? Are you sure I’m not… ruining that? Don’t you need time to do that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t,” Jane assured him. “At least, I don’t anymore. I’ve done about all the prep I can do. Someone is delivering a cartload of ingredients this afternoon. The rest of it is all tomorrow morning’s work.”

  “Still…” Allen stared down at the cookie in his hand. “It just seems like a really big, important thing. I don’t want to be the one that ruins it. We can go back any time.”

  “Don’t worry. I mean it.” Jane scooted a little closer to him on the bench. “I’m having fun. That’s what I need right now. I promise.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  They shared the bag of cookies mostly in silence, though Allen tried his best to talk every once in a while, sharing what he knew of the waterfall. It was the nice kind of silence. They were simply looking up at a natural wonder and not feeling like there was much else they could be doing that was better.

  At some point, Allen’s hand crept over and gripped Jane’s gloved one. She let it.

  She was just beginning to get used to that wondrous, new development when everything changed.

  The same power that had made a faint appearance in the tram suddenly burst forth again, stronger and much more pervasive than it had been before. Jane had taken all the necessary steps to get used to it by then, and she was glad for that. If she hadn’t, she was certain the magic would have knocked her unconscious, or maybe worse.

  At least she was finally able to determine the source of the magic.

  A writhing shape began to form in the waterfall, a huge and terrible thing that ran from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the falls. While remaining clear, its outline was visible from the flow of the water that ran all around it. This left no question as to what Jane was looking at.

  A water dragon. The biggest water spirit I’ve ever seen, and I’m less than a mile from it.

  The dragon raised its head and roared. Its deep tones muddled into the sounds of the waterfall as it broke loose from the river’s flow, moved forward, and blotted out the sky over Jane and Allen.

  She dimly heard Allen shouting in alarm as she leapt to her feet and raised her hands.

  “Stone and glass, cover and protect. Clear Dome.”

  There was no hiding her magic now, not with such a powerful danger so near. A dragon that size didn’t need the desire to harm you in order to do so. It simply had to fail to notice you were there. If it so much as brushed them, they would be destroyed. The dome wouldn’t protect Jane and Allen from any significant contact with the water spirit, but it might be shelter enough if the dragon merely exploded a boulder at them or passed any closer than a few yards.

  It turned out to do neither. Instead, it roared upwards like an arrow from a bow and disappeared above the trees.

  “Jane… what was that?” Allen tapped the clear dome of power around them. “And what is this? What’s happening?”

  Jane thought of several perfectly reasonable answers. Unfortunately, she didn’t get a chance to speak any of them before her dome shattered. In the same instant, she pitched forward onto her hands and knees, and puked.

  Somewhere in her memories, she could hear a woman’s voice talking about suitors. The voice was telling Jane that she could measure the worth of a suitor by how they treated her in her weakest and least attractive moments. Jane wasn’t sure, since she had so few memories of the woman, but she thought it might have been her mother speaking. She hoped it was.

  She also hoped that if Mother could see the current situation, she would approve of Allen.

  The tinker had immediately produced a handkerchief from somewhere and wetted it with the bottle of water. He was now doing his best to hold back Jane’s hair until the time came to help her wipe her face.

  “Sorry.” Jane took the offered bottle, rinsed out her mouth, and spit. “That was a lot.”

  “I’ll say. I’ve never seen anything like that… whatever that thing was.” Allen gestured vaguely towards the spot where the water dragon had emerged, keeping his eyes on Jane. “And thank you for that… clear dome? Thank you for whatever that was. Is that why you were sick?”

  “That, and just the power of the spirit,” Jane explained. “I can feel it in a way you can’t. That was much more than I got in the tram. I wasn’t ready.”

  “Well, thank you anyway.”

  She wasn’t sure what her mother’s criteria were for a man’s behavior around the grosser parts of illness. Jane herself wanted him to treat it as little like an event as possible. In that respect, Allen was passing with flying colors. He was silent while she accepted the handkerchief and began to clean herself up.

  As she carefully made sure no stray bit of stomach contents had stuck to her face, she gazed at the waterfall. Normally, a spirit like that wouldn’t even be visible. Allen certainly hadn’t known it was there. But it could have been around the town for decades, or even centuries, without being generally known, moving with the rivers or sleeping deep within the lake…

  Allen was sitting on the damp riverbank with her now. Somehow, his arm had found its way around her waist.

  “It seems like you don’t want to talk about the magic,” he said quietly.

  She nodded slowly. “I don’t.”

  “Then we won’t.” Allen squeezed her a little tighter. “Just tell me when you feel better, and I’ll get you home.”

  Half an hour later, they were at the top of the waterfall again. Jane told Allen that she was now perfectly well and could see herself home, but he wouldn’t hear a bit of it. He walked with her the entire way, never letting go of her arm.

  When they reached her door, though, she felt him tensing beside her. It was as if he sensed some danger she wasn’t aware of.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look like I felt on the tram.”

  “Oh, sure.” Allen held his hands together at waist-level, like he didn’t know what to do with them now that he wasn’t using them to support her. “I was just hoping you had a good time. Because I did. I just don’t know if you… maybe wanted to do it again. Not that, exactly, but something. With me.”

  The same impulse as before took over, and she found herself giving his cheek another kiss, hopefully with a mouth that didn’t smell too bad. Her arms looped over his shoulders as his wrapped around her waist again. It all felt much more natural now, somehow.

  “Allen, I will be very mad at you if you don’t come see me again. Very soon. Not tomorrow, because I’m opening an entire bakery, but soon.” She smiled up at him. “Does that help?”

  Allen pulled his head back, regarded her face for a moment, then laid a soft, only slightly-bristly kiss on her forehead. She let her weight rest on his shoulders, trying very hard not to let the sudden wooziness of life conspire with gravity to ruin the moment.

  “It does. Thanks.” Allen shook loose first, holding her hand for just a few more seconds. “I’ll see you tomorrow, anyway, but I promise I’ll just be a regular customer.”

  “Good. Now let me get out of your coat real quick so you can leave.”

  Jane felt a twinge of regret at giving the coat up. It was very, very warm in a way she was sure wouldn’t be easy to replace.

  “Oh, that?” He took a few steps down the road. “That’s not my coat. It’s your coat. It has been since this morning.”

  He waved, she waved back, and then he was gone.

  Jane drifted into the bakery. Closing the door, she leaned against it, pulling the coat close around her and considering just how little of a ‘regular customer’ Allen could ever truly be again.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. Gradually, she became aware that she was staring at her counter, where she and the tinker had sat to eat breakfast. Her gaze then wandered to the sink, where she knew the dishes from that breakfast were still waiting to be washed.

  Reluctantly, she shrugged out of the coat and rolled up her sleeves. It would be best to get moving. She did have a bakery to open tomorrow, and an ingredient delivery happening that very afternoon. But she promised herself that, as soon as the delivery was sorted, she would go upstairs and draw a bath.

  She could think of no more perfect ending to such a day than melting into a mix of hot water and recent memories.