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Since it was dependent on the weather here, despite the dome covering the entire palace, it wasn’t as sprawling as the park in its perpetual springtime. Some leaves were already turning color as fall approached in the real world.
“This is lovely,” I exclaimed when my eyes fell on the large fountain in the center of the garden.
Here, the shrubs had been trimmed and pruned, and resembled more of what I would have envisioned for a palatial garden. I didn’t recognize any of the shapes they were supposed to represent, but imagined they symbolized certain animal life forms in the Pandraxian Empire. Alien-looking flowers bloomed in between, stunningly beautiful.
But once my gaze was drawn back to the large fountain—easily the size of a house on Earth—I had eyes for nothing else. Moonlight played off it, in a crystal vibrance that made me think it had been sculpted from glass or ice.
The water was illuminated by color-changing lights, and the bottom was filled with fish in all shades of the rainbow.
I rushed to the side of the fountain, forgetting about the cumbersome layers of skirts, and promptly got them wet as I sat down on the edge to get a better look at the fish.
Daryus followed me and my breath caught as I became aware of his closeness. I forced my eyes to stay on the fish that drew me to the fountain in the first place, and not to stare up at the man whose presence unnerved me.
“You’re getting your dress all wet,” he observed.
“It’s worth it,” I replied, trailing my fingers through the water and creating a colorful line. “Oh!”
I tried again and giggled as hundreds of different shades burst from where the tips of my fingers trailed through the water.
Daryus lowered himself to sit across from me, with our knees so close that I felt his heat against my flesh. Tiny fish became attracted to my finger and swarmed it, carefully nipping at the tip.
“They think you brought them food,” Daryus explained in a deep voice.
I giggled again. I barely felt their tiny mouths against my skin, but watching them dance around my fingers made my heart happy. Each was about the size of my pinky, and glimmered in different metallic hues, like the Pandraxians themselves.
I became more daring and allowed my whole hand to submerge in the water. Amused, I watched more fish gather and swim around it with their oversized heads and tiny fins. Fins, I noticed, as crystal clear as the water and only discernable by the slight colorful current they created.
When I looked up, I noticed Daryus’s gaze on me, not the fish, and my breath caught at how bright the teal pigments of his irises were. Deepening the longer they stayed on me.
His hand that had been resting on his knee, lifted and cupped my cheek. “You are so soft,” he remarked in a raspy voice that sent shivers of comfort down my spine. I liked the sensation of his warm palm against my skin.
We stayed like this for a few minutes, gazing into each other’s eyes, forgetting about everything around us. Quietly our eyes communicated what we didn’t seem to be able to put into words. One question burned through my skull, What is happening to me?
Because something inexplicably was taking place between us. I felt it in every beat of my heart that heated just like my skin heated under his touch. It felt like it was expanding, as if wanting to embrace the alien man across from me.
The fish still swarmed my hand, but I didn’t even notice, just like I didn’t notice the water slowly creeping up from the layers floating in the fountain, searching to wet more dry material, expanding just like my heart.
Nothing seemed to matter in that moment but him and me.
Until I noticed drops of water on my hair, and with a curse Daryus withdrew his hand and pulled me to my feet.
“It’s raining,” he stated, pulling me back to the entrance.
Rain?
I looked up and watched thick, dark clouds moving overhead, felt drops on my face, and abruptly stopped, laughing. “It’s raining.”
He stopped too, looked at me as if I had lost my mind. But I couldn’t help it, for the first time in many months, I felt normal. I had always liked the rain, and this alien downpour was no exception. I lifted my head higher and tried to catch some of the drops, like I would have done on Earth, turning in circles and giggled.
When I noticed Daryus standing there, staring at me with an unreadable expression, I impulsively took his hand. “Try it.”
He looked skeptical, so I leaned my head back and stuck my tongue out. “Try it,” I encouraged again.
Hesitantly, he copied my moves. The rain was coming down harder now, making it easy to catch not merely a drop but several at once.
“You are getting soaking wet,” Daryus observed after he caught a few drops, drawing his brows together.
I gripped the hems of my flowy dress that was getting more drenched by the second, and twirled in a circle, with my head still leaned back. I was twirling so fast that I predictably lost my footing and would have been splayed down on the ground, had Daryus’s hands not caught and steadied me.
