Really. Elswyth could easily listen to Heron talk about flowers all day. It wasn't just that she liked listening to his voice either.
It was the way his eyes lit up. This young man absolutely loved flowers and he did not try to hide it. His face looked so happy she could not take her eyes off of him.
She liked it. She liked looking at him when he was so engrossed in something he enjoyed. Reading, looking at flowers, talking about his younger sister. Anything that made his eyes light up like that.
And she was also lowkey jealous. She wanted him to look at her with that delight in his eyes. To be able to know he liked her as much as she liked him.
Perhaps that was selfish of her.
But she really wanted to be the girl he married some day. Especially if he would then look at her like this.
She was painfully aware she had a long way to go to receive Heron's love. It was good enough right now that he was not blind to her womanly charms. The way he blushed sometimes at her was a good indicator of that.
Still it wasn't romantic love. At the moment he loved her as a friend did, and had moments where he was struck with the fact she was an attractive woman. Right now, she would be good with this. She had no desire to make any real moves on him yet. Not till he was a bit older. Teasing him a bit was enough.
It was admirable to her that he could so easily show his love for flowers, even though that was not something every man would be willing to admit, even in Jarenkul. Though Jarenkul society saw flowers as neither a feminine or a masculine sort of thing. But from what she understood it was different in the other kingdoms.
Well, other than for researchers who researched what properties different flowers might have. But even though it would not surprise her if Heron chose to do that later, that wasn't what this was. He genuinely loved flowers.
This was one of the reasons she loved her adorable prince. She found herself smiling happily as she watched him. She wasn't even entirely paying attention to what he was saying as she was more paying attention to just the sound of his voice.
He snapped her out of her slight trance with a worried frown, "El? Are you alright? You seem to be zoning out?"
"Ah." She blinked, "I'm quite fine. Sorry." She hated that this looked somewhat rude, but it wasn't like she could admit what she had been thinking. She didn't want to scare him. "I was just thinking."
"Are you sure it wasn't anything?" Bless him, he didn't even get mad she had zoned out while he was talking. He just got worried about her. He really was just about perfect…
"Sorry. I just went off on a tangent of thought while listening to you." She smiled, and decided to tell a bit of the truth, "I couldn't help but admire how much you love talking about the things you like."
He actually flushed a bit in embarrassment, "Oh. Heh. Thanks…I guess?" He didn't seem to know quite how to respond as he grew a bit flustered.
She laughed a bit and clapped a hand on his shoulder, which was no longer quite as scrawny as it had been when she had first met him. He had more muscle now. "No need to get embarrassed. I just find it nice to see someone so wholeheartedly enjoying something."
"Okay." He chuckled, still a bit embarrassed. But he didn't seem to think too much of it. Which was probably a good thing. He was definitely nowhere near ready to know her feelings towards him.
Not that he could run away if he did.
She chuckled inwardly. Yep. There would be definitely no running away anytime soon. She was glad of it.
To her being tied to him by this magic spell was a good thing. Well, she would have found it annoying if she'd known at first. But now she was glad of it. This way, even if she made a slip up, he couldn't run or send her away.
Also she liked that they seemed to have been getting closer even more after finding out about the spell's effects. Their way of dealing with it made her feel close to him and she liked it. She liked the daily moments with just them, and no one else but his snake.
This spell thing was in no way inconvenient to her.