Matching Day: Part 1

To love risks more than just her heart.

Based on a post by SmallTownPrincess, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connected.

Girls spend their entire lives looking forward to the fateful Matching Day - and whether or not they will admit it, boys, too, have at least a healthy curiosity. It's so reassuring, knowing that in your eighteenth year, you and your age-mates will be paired off, brought together with another from their own community or a surrounding one that match them perfectly. No song-and-dance dating rituals, like the ones in the books Livia liked to read, no old maids, no riotous bachelors; just simple, comforting compatibility.

"Have you heard?" The hushed, conspiratorial tones issued from the pink-lacquered lips of Livia's best friend, Mara.

"What?" Livia's low-pitched voice always made her sound disinterested, but she paid close attention to Mara when her friend sounded this urgent.

"There was a big accident over in Micrague. One guy died!"

"Oh, that's terrible," Livia murmured, letting her eyelashes drop and rise again to half-mast in a brief show of empathy. It was all she had time for, as Mara leaned suddenly, ever more urgently forward, gripping Livia's arm in both hands.

"That's not the worst thing," she rolled on. "The guy who was killed? He just turned eighteen. That makes the numbers for tomorrow's Matching uneven!"

Two full breaths, painful to the impatient Mara, passed before Livia spoke in response. "So, what, someone won't be paired? A girl will be left without her match?"

"Whoever matched with him will have no pair on Matching Day," Mara proclaimed ominously. Her eyes were wide and glittering with morbid excitement.

"What do they do about that?" It was unheard of, as far as Livia knew; there were always even numbers, always a perfect match for everyone.

Mara gave an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe she'll never be matched."

Livia was surprised into laughter. "They can't leave her without a match forever," she said with certainty. "Maybe they'll search out another community for someone that fits even better than that poor boy who died."

Her reassuring confidence sent Mara, humming, away to terrify someone else with proclamations of an eternity alone for some poor girl. The thought nagged at Livia for the rest of the afternoon, though. What if he was matched with me?

"Verin Massada," the stern voice called from the central platform, and a stick-thin brunette drifted toward the three steps that lifted her above the circle of impatient teenagers.

"Philip Pressia." The broad-shouldered redhead that stepped up to take Verin's hand smirked and bowed at the polite smattering of applause that ushered the happy new couple off the stage. Livia smiled approvingly; Verin needed a little more humor in her life.

Livia watched each girl she'd grown up with walk back into the circle, shyly clutching the hand of her new mate, and twisted her skirt nervously in her fingers. It seemed forever before the 'R's were called, and the wad of boys brought in from all the different communities steadily shrank. She met the clear grey eyes of one of the remaining boys as Clanley Ritchell was met by a generic-looking, dark-haired boy, and she thought fleetingly, I hope I'm matched with him. He seemed to be thinking the same thing; his face fell a little when he was called up to greet a willowy blond on the dais.

"Danica Soress," the voice demanded, and Livia stood a little straighter with a sharp intake of breath. Had she been skipped?

All the vague, incoherent fears that had accompanied Mara's morbid pronouncement coursed through Livia, charged with shame as some girls recognized the omission and turned to look at her with expressions of varying pity. Livia felt on the edge of tears.

She saw the blond - that wretched Salvia - pull the grey-eyed boy down to whisper cruelly in his ear and point in Livia's direction, and she contemplated melting into the dirt.

With the blood roaring loudly in her ears, she heard no other names called, and stared fixedly at a nondescript blade of grass in front of her to avoid the glances that were flickering toward her. How can this be? she thought frantically. How can I not have a match?

"Livia, what's going on?" Mara's face held ghoulish curiosity with only an edge of concern for her friend, and Livia couldn't deal with her. She turned without a word and marched to the fountain a good distance away from the platform. People were breaking off now, finding secluded spots to get to know this person with whom they'd be partnered forever. Livia, wrapping her arms tightly around her gut, had never felt so alone.

How could she have lost a lifetime of companionship without ever tasting it? It was too, too cruel. What right did that boy have to take away everything in one fell swoop? How could he die? She wanted to shake her fist at the heavens, demand an explanation, but she just trailed her fingers through the rippling water in the fountain basin, swallowing hard against the wave of emotions that threatened to show itself grotesquely in her features.

"His name was Bracken, if that helps," said a voice behind her, and she jumped, throwing water onto her dress. She turned to see that grey-eyed boy approaching, and she prepared herself for the humiliation she was sure to experience at his hands; he had, after all, been matched like everyone else, and she was alone - possibly forever.

He did not mock her, though; his eyes held the soft, cautious understanding of someone who pitied another, but was not sure whether that person desired sympathy or not. When she said nothing, he shrugged self-consciously. "Sorry, I realize you might not have wanted to know. I just, he was my best friend. I thought if you did want to know about him, I'd at least let you know who you could ask."

A flood of gratitude made it temporarily impossible for her to speak, and then she forced a smile. "I think I'd like to know," she said hesitantly. She wasn't sure; would it be better to know nothing about what she'd never have, or to at least have pleasant thoughts about what could've been? "Can I ask you something now?"

"Absolutely."

"Would I have liked him?"

The boy nodded. "I think so. He was quiet at first, it took a while to get to know him. But once you did, there was no one you trusted more." He added, with the hesitation of an afterthought but the seriousness of something he'd intended to say all along, "Seeing you here, there's no doubt that he would have liked you."

He gave Livia one last smile and lay his hand over hers for a moment, ignoring the water droplets that sat on it like dew. For a warm second, she felt a rush of what it might have been like to have someone get to know her intimately over a lifetime, to love and understand her and for her to love back, and then the grey-eyed boy was walking with wide strides back to Salvia, and nothing but a hollow sadness remained beneath her breastbone.

Livia hated them. All of them.

The girls with their softly rolling curls, teased and coached for hours in order to look casually delicate when the boys, their shirts tucked in and their shoes shined, arrived at their doorsteps carrying one or two or twenty flowers in one hand and a shining invitation in the other. They walked with springing steps the short distance to the gathering hall in the center of town, hand in hand or arm in arm, and Livia wanted to throw rocks at the whole lot of them.

She had been invited, sort of, to join in on the festivities. The community officials, not sure what to do with the first single person over eighteen in a century, had hesitantly allowed for her participation in all the new couples' activities; so far, she had partaken in none of them.

Desperately, she wanted to be a part of the revelry, but she could not force herself to walk into the rooms full of happy girls and their happy boys, and have nothing herself. Her mother, unable to comfort her, had begged her to go to the dance. It was the last night before all the boys would be returning to their own communities, taking their matches with them. It was the last night she would seek Mara, who had paired with a boy from Onek.

And she'd tried: she'd gotten dressed, piled her hair up on top of her head and pulled her elbow-length gloves on, but nothing could motivate her to step outside her house as streams of giggling lovebirds trickled by on the way to the hall.

"Go, Livia," her mother said, coming up behind her with a basket of laundry on her hip. "You should at least go long enough to say goodbye to Mara."

"I can't, Mama. Think of how they'll look at me!"

Her mother bent Livia's head down to kiss her on the forehead. "It's not your fault, Neinei, and they know that. They feel bad for you. They all want to see you. The world didn't end when that poor boy died."

"Bracken," Livia said defiantly. Her mother had refused to say his name, insisting that it was better for Livia to know nothing about what she had lost.

Patting her daughter's shoulder, she adjusted her basket and turned to leave. "Go."

Livia had retreated around the side of the gathering hall, standing just outside the golden pool of light that poured like honey from the windows. Sobs caught in her throat and were choked down, unvoiced, as she watched Mara and Verin and Danica and dozens of others receive chaste pecks from shy boys as they spun by in their brightly-colored dresses, waving fluted, bubbling glasses and laughing with abandon.

And there, the grey-eyed boy, Bracken's best friend, was seated quietly with his hands folded in his lap, listening politely to an enthusiastic rendition of some trivial event or another by Salvia. It was always easy to tell when she was excited about something, as her arms pinwheeled and hands fluttered with no thought to how the gestures went along with the story.

He glanced up, and his eyes met, for a moment, Livia's. He looked surprised to see her there, and then a bit sad, and then his gaze drifted back to Salvia, who had grabbed his knee in her earnestness.

This infinitesimal rejection, the refusal to even meet her eyes for more than a moment, pushed Livia over the edge. Tears, burning like acid, washed over her face, and she stumbled away from the window, crying with pitiful lack of restraint.

She staggered into the sparse forest, the trees providing scattered shelter from curious eyes, if any should choose to drift away from the golden party, and the darkness of the night fit her mood, a strangely soothing thought.

"Are you alright?" For the second time, the grey-eyed boy's voice jolted her out of her own misery. She would not face him; not now, when her eyes were puffy and irritated, her nose red and her face streaked with dirty tear tracks. He would see her and compare her to Salvia, and she would fall short; she could not handle right now seeing him weigh her that way and find her lacking.

His hand on her back was another surprise, and then both his hands weighing down on her shoulders as he stepped closer behind her. "Hey," he said gently. "Everything will turn out fine. Maybe, maybe you'll find someone better than Bracken could have been for you."

She forgot her resolution not to face him then, turning toward him with her eyes narrowed to angry slits. "How could I, when everyone is paired already? Besides, I had my chance - he just managed to get himself killed before I could even meet him!" The words came out much harsher than she intended, and the young man in front of her actually took a step back from her ferocity, hunching like she'd landed a blow to his gut. "I'm sorry," she said immediately, automatically. "I shouldn't have said that. He was your friend, "

"It's alright," he said, giving her a ghost of a smile and waving his hand with a nonchalance that didn't show in his eyes. He had that gentle look of quiet appreciation of life that came to some people who lost loved ones, but knew that lost friend would be offended if they did not continue to smile. "I know it's probably really hard on you, seeing everyone so, happy." He trailed off, not looking happy in the least.

"Speaking of happy people, shouldn't you be in there with Salvia?"

His face took on the contemplative expression of someone deciding how to phrase something delicately. "Salvia, she's not quite what I expected to find, on my Matching Day. She's, "

"Lively?" Livia suggested. "Brazen? Exuberant?"

 obnoxious," the grey-eyed boy said decisively. "I don't like her at all."

Livia smirked. "Well, you have to like her. She's your match. You love her."

He shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "I don't."

"But she's your perfect match," Livia insisted.

"But what if she's not?"

Livia heard her heart beat twice before she asked, "What?"

"What if Salvia is not the perfect girl for me? What if the girl that I would love more than anyone else in the world couldn't be matched with me because, there was someone else our age who she would like a little bit better?"

"That doesn't even make sense," Livia said, shaking her head. "The matches have always been perfect: even numbers, complete compatibility;”

"But this time they messed up, right? I mean, you should know. You're the person who's affected more than anyone else."

"Well, yes, but;”

"So why isn't it possible that they aren't right on everything else? What if they didn't match this girl with me because she would love this other guy more?"

"Well, so, maybe they did. But if you would love her so much, surely you would want to see her happy, with the man she was meant to be with, right?"

"Yes," he said, very seriously. "I would want to see her happy."

"Then you should leave her in peace with the person she was matched with, and focus on learning to love the girl you were paired with."

The interminable silence stretched between them as the grey-eyed boy stared down at the leafy ground and Livia watched the way his hair blew across his forehead in the breeze. At last he said, "What if she wasn't matched with anyone?"

Livia's heart sped up, beating double time as she realized what he'd been saying all along, what she'd been too dim to put together until he'd spelled it out. "But you are matched," she said numbly. "Salvia has you."

He leaned dangerously far forward, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered into it, "I don't want Salvia."

Livia shrank back, confused. These were dangerous words he uttered, dangerous thoughts. People were matched with the people they were meant to be with. How could there be any other way? They couldn't be wrong; there'd been no divorce, no infidelity, no broken hearts in the decades people had been paired this way. Surely it was the right way. It had to be.

"I don't even know your name," Livia said resolutely, as though that settled the matter and proved him wrong. She pushed against his chest to force him back, feeling the blazing heat of his heart under her palm.

"It's Mason," he said quietly, and his words had the sound of discussion-ending power to them too. Livia was conscious of the fact that she had not moved her hand from his chest; her fingers curled slightly, enjoying the silky feeling of his shirt over his skin, and the warmth that radiated from his flesh.

"Go back to Salvia, Mason," she whispered. She realized she was shaking from head to toe, and not from cold. Here was everything she had ever wanted, everything she had imagined when she thought of her Matching Day, but he was not hers. "Please, go back to the party."

With a sigh, Mason touched her cheek briefly, the lightest of butterfly wing contacts, and then he turned and vanished into the night, not toward the party, but deeper into the forest. Livia stood for a long time without moving, her mind racing and her heart pounding like a runner's feet, and then she walked, slowly, directly away from Mason.

"You didn't come to the party last night," Mara said, breaking the silence that stood like frosted glass between her and Livia.

"No." Livia had gotten no sleep the night before; lying in bed, replaying continually the frightening moments with Mason, her heart had never slowed.

"Well, I just wanted to say goodbye, " Mara twisted her hands for a moment before wrapping Livia up in a warm and desperate hug. "I'm sorry, Lenny. I'm going to miss you so much."

The tension between them melted, and Livia returned the hug tightly, sighing. "It's hard to believe I'll never see any of you again - all the girls I've known all my life! Except for Maize and Crista, they're the only ones who matched with boys from here, right? And I don't really even know them."

"Well, you'll see Salvia too, for a little while."

Breathe in. Breathe out. "Why's that?"

"Oh, that fellow she paired with - Mason, isn't it? - his parents have some sort of huge wedding ceremony planned, and they've got a house mostly built for the two of them. They told him to stay here a while, get to know his partner's family for a bit, let her spend some more time with them, and then head back once the house and all the plans were done."

Wedding were an extravagance, a luxury that most people went without, especially if they didn't have the means to make it a massive event. The fact that Mason's family was going to such lengths meant they must be well off indeed.

"So Mason, and Salvia, will be around for a while?"

"Yeah, at least a month, I'd say."

A buzzing numbness in her extremities made it difficult for Livia to respond. She had thought Mason would be gone today, that she'd never have to see him and Salvia together again. But they would be here for a month,

"Speak of the devil," Mara said cheerfully, skipping over to greet Salvia as she pranced up the path with Mason's hand gripped in her own vice-like claw. The dark circles under his eyes said that he, too, had had a night with little sleep.

"Good morning, Mara, Livia," he said politely, giving each of them a little nod. His eyes lingered on Livia, though, and she found herself blushing and rushing to hug Mara goodbye again and begging for many letters describing life in Onek in great detail.

But then Mara left, and Salvia, Mason and Livia were left standing in an awkwardly isosceles triangle. "So, " Livia said at length, rocking back and forth in her slippers. "How was the party last night?"

Salvia's face split into a smug smile, and her eyes flickered over Mason possessively. "It was great fun, of course. Although I preferred what happened afterward." Her voice held a torte of suggestive layers, and Livia felt a little sick as she pictured Mason cornering a coy Salvia, taking out his frustration at Livia's denial in an aggressive, passionate,

"For heaven's sake, Sal," Mason said, sounding irritated, "I wish you would stop talking like that. You know nothing happened after the dance. All I did was walk you home!"

Salvia flushed brilliant crimson, her smile sliding off as if greased. "Mason!" she hissed, but he rolled on, unperturbed.

"And what are you trying to prove to Livia, anyway? It's not like you can have some sick competition going with her, like you do with Danica and that twit she paired."

Livia thought, for a moment, that Salvia was going to slap him, but instead she stormed away, her face schooling itself into a grin again as she spotted Verin coming up the way with her redheaded match, who was carrying a good chunk of her possessions on his back.

"If she tells one more person what a great time she had 'after the party,' I swear, " Mason muttered, just loud enough for Livia to hear. She suppressed a giggle; it wasn't that she wished ill on Salvia, really, but it was nice to see the girl taken down a peg or two, especially by Mason.

"Have you thought at all about what I said last night?" Mason asked quietly.

Livia tried to look less haggard as she answered, "We settled it, didn't we? You belong to Salvia."

Mason grunted, looking insufferably unhappy. "I'm meant to be with you, I think," he said abruptly.

"How could you possibly know? How could anyone possibly know they were meant for someone without knowing anything about them?"

"Ha!" Mason said triumphantly. "That's what everyone's doing anyway, isn't it? Aren't they all just assuming that they're meant to be together without knowing anything about each other, just because the community leaders say they are?"

"Mason, stop," Livia said firmly, shaking her head. "Don't you realize that this is what our society is built on? I think you're just being lazy, not even trying to get to know Salvia."

"Have you met her?" Mason's strained question revealed his frustration. "She's, she's awful! She parades me around like a - gods, like a show dog - and constantly makes these ridiculously shady comments about our 'evening activities,' as she likes to call them ,  the girl's determined to get me decapitated by her war axe of a father!"

"You know, it's not unheard of for matches to, "

Mason's scowl made her trail off. "Don't even suggest it. We are going to have an actual wedding, after all," he said sulkily. "You'd think she could at least wait that long."

Livia giggled at the absurdity of it. "You are concerned about her impatience for;”

 She's got a running bet with several other girls about how quickly she can tempt me! They're all competing, like it's some sort of game or something. Well, she's figured out by now that I'm more tempted to run like hell back to Micrague than, " He didn't need to finish the sentence.

"Then why haven't you?" Livia asked quietly.

"Because there is a girl here in Treston that does tempt me," he said, sliding a little closer to her without appearing to move at all. Livia's eyes darted back toward Salvia, but the girl was obliviously half-shouting in her eagerness to say goodbye to all the girls who would be leaving.

"Mason, "

"Meet me tonight, Livia."

"What?!"

"Please, Livia."

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

"It's just, it's not done! It's not right."

"It's also not right to leave a dazzlingly beautiful, possibly perfect girl alone for life, but they've done that, haven't they?"

"Mason!" Salvia's brutally nasal voice broke into the steadily intensifying argument with the delicacy of a hammer, and she swooped in between Mason and Livia with calculated accuracy. "Come on, we've got brunch with Tevia and Bryce this morning before they leave, or don't you remember? Goodbye, Livia."

As he was steered away, Mason shot one last pleading look at Livia, who shook her head slightly. She could not meet him, not tonight, not ever. He was not hers; she told herself that repeatedly, never letting the words slip from her mind. If she did, even for a minute, and she allowed herself to believe that he could fill the void that Bracken had left, she would find herself drawn to him, wherever he was. She hoped the repetition of that thought would be enough.

"Gimme nuther un, Sally," Livia slurred, grabbing the glass away from Salvia, who was chatting with the other girls who had not left that morning and trying to pretend that Livia was not there.

"Get your own!" Salvia objected, jerking the glass back hard enough to slosh it on her dress. She and the other girls laughed uproariously, as though this was the best joke in the world.

Livia was not as drunk as they all believed she was, but she made a good show of it; she had found that, when people believed she was totally inebriated, they tended to speak as though she was not there. She could sit apart from the group and observe the social undercurrents beneath the surface of this small fireside gathering.

The boys were seated largely separate from the girls, who whispered theatrically everything they did not shout, and who screamed with laughter at every other word or so. Livia watched the way Maize's blond boy hovered just behind her, talking to the guys but turned a little to the side so that he would immediately know if she needed anything; he was already besotted. The other boys kept a watchful eye over the group of girls, but seemed more intimidated by the giggling gaggle than enamored of them.

Mason sat at the back of the group of guys, shrouded in flickering shadows, as far from Salvia as he could get. He had been nursing the same drink since the party had begun, and had drunk maybe two sips, as far as Livia knew, so he was certainly the least impaired of all of them.

She stood and pretended to stagger, actually tripping in the process; she would have tumbled headlong into the fire had it not been for a fortuitous snag of her wrist by Maize's blond.

"Thanks," she mumbled. She poured herself another tall glass of whatever Crista had brought and threw back a burning mouthful of it.

"Hey, leave some for the rest of us, Lenaninny," Salvia drawled, smirking. "That's for celebration; don't take it all up with your pity party."

"Shut it, Salvia," Livia muttered, taking another drink.

"I've got as much right to talk as you do! Maybe more, since I can actually contribute to society. What can you do? Matchless, childless, hell, maybe they'll give you a pet so you don't suicide."

"That's enough," Livia said with a little more heat, her generally slow anger bubbling up hotly in response to the burn of Salvia's words.

"Tell us, what's it like to be without a match?" Salvia continued cruelly. "To know that you'll be totally alone for all eternity?"

"Probably about what it feels like to know you'll be ugly and obnoxious for all eternity," Livia replied nastily, her anger peaking.

"That's pretty funny, coming from someone so unattractive that a guy actually killed himself so that he wouldn't have to be paired with her," Salvia retorted, sloshing her drink over both of the other girls with the intensity of her gestures.

"And you think Mason is so thrilled to be your match?" Livia cried. "He'd rather;”

 Hey! Calm down, both of you." Mason stepped between the two of them, hands raised in case the argument came to physical blows, which it might have, if Livia had finished her sentence. "Why the hostility all of the sudden?"

"She started it," Salvia said poutily, and Mason shook his head.

"No, she didn't. Regardless, I'm finishing it. Somebody should take Livia home."

"Let her take herself home," Salvia hissed. "Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll impale herself on a tree branch or something."

"Salvia, come on, break up the party. I'll walk you home," Mason said patiently.

"No!" she whined. "I'm having fun. You just sit back down and have yourself another drink. You're clearly not having a good enough time."

Stone-faced, Mason watched her flounce back to the fireside, flanked by Maize and Crista, and then he turned to Livia. "You want to go home?" he asked brusquely. She nodded, consenting to being led along the tree line back toward her house. How he knew where she lived, she had no idea.

When they were out of sight of the fire, Mason took her hand, and she responded with a faint smile, letting his warm fingers be a talisman against the cold night. "Livia, " he began, but he seemed to rethink speaking as they took a few more steps side by side.

"What?" she asked, and it was a long time before he answered with a question of his own.

"What is it that you don't like about me?"

"What?" she repeated.

"Why don't you like the idea of being with me?"

"Who said I don't?"

"Well, you say you can't possibly be with me because I'm Salvia's match, but it can't just be Salvia, can it? I mean, it's not like the two of you are the greatest friends, based on that show back there."

"You're, not mine," she said, repeating that mantra that had run like a hamster in a wheel through her mind all day long.

"But I want to be."

Livia shook her head slowly, deliberately. She didn't even realize she had stopped in the middle of the forest, still clinging to his hand like a drowning person to a floating bit of flotsam. "You can't. They won't let you."

"Who won't let me? Who's to say that I can't love any woman I want? Who on this earth has the right to tell me I can't be with you?"

"Well, they do," Livia replied vaguely, trying to concentrate on his words as he spoke too fast.

Mason shook his head in fierce denial of the indistinct statement. "No. The only person who has the right to govern who I fall for is me, and I pick you."

"Gods, Mason, do you even know what you're saying?"

"I know what I want, and I know what I don't want. I don't care about society's norms or whatever it is that makes you so scared."

"I'm not scared."

"Then what are you?"

"I respect the system."

"The system has destroyed your life, Livia."

"What's better, then? Chaos?"

"What's better is being able to choose. I would never, never have chosen Salvia. In a thousand lifetimes. But you?"

"Why me, Mason?"

"Because you're different! You're not just beautiful and sweet and quiet; you watch people, you notice things. You see the world a little differently than everyone else. You're above the pettiness of girls like Salvia."

"Obviously not, I just let her get to me."

"Yeah, well, you're drunk."

"I'm not drunk!"

"Gods, Livia, of course you are. I saw you staggering around back there."

"I am not," she maintained. Truly, she was barely buzzed, but Mason didn't seem to believe her. She wondered if he would try to take advantage of her apparently inebriated state, and decided he would not.

"Would you be angry if I kissed you?" Or perhaps he would.

"Would you kiss me if I didn't want you to?" she countered.

"Do you really not want me to?"

"You're Salvia's," Livia said stubbornly, running those words through her mind again: He's not yours.

"Livia, for once, could you think with your heart and not with your head? What do you want?"

"Mason, "

"What do you want?" he insisted.

She stared at him for a moment before sighing in defeat. "You," she muttered.

His smile was triumphant. "Then I'm yours."

"Salvia will never let you go that easily."

"What Salvia doesn't know can't hurt her."

"Mason, no! People would find out. Salvia would find out, and I don't know what the consequences would be for breaking a match, but I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty."

"Then we'll get out of here! Come on, we'll leave tonight. Let's go somewhere where they've never heard of Matching Days. We'll find a place where people pick their own people to love and we'll settle there."

"I can't leave, Mason. This is my home! And besides, do you even know if such a place exists? We could run through the wilderness for the rest of our lives and never find anything like that. We could die looking for it."

"Then we'll stay," Mason said with a sigh. He studied Livia seriously for several long minutes, his face serious. With a quick dart forward, he pressed his warm lips against hers, surprising her into a gasp with the suddenness of the contact. When she didn't immediately push him away, he stepped closer, running his hands down her arms from shoulder to wrist.

She shivered and pulled back, her eyes wide. I can't kiss him, she thought frantically. It goes against everything, he's not mine, he's not mine, he's not,

His leaned forward again, catching her lips with his, and her train of thought was completely derailed. She was startled to find her own arms wrapping around his neck, drawing her closer to his warm body. His hands found her waist and lifted her so that she was standing tiptoe on his feet, putting her mouth level with his.

It was him that broke away the second time, with a rueful grin. "Ah, " he groaned. "You're drunk, "

She shook her head. "I'm not, I promise."

He eyed her doubtfully. "Regardless, I should take you home," he sighed. "Salvia's probably wondering where I've wandered off to."

"You're going back to her?" It shouldn't have bother Livia, but after that kiss, the boundary lines had shifted, somehow; she felt she should have sole ownership of those lips.

"For a while," he said, his smile seeming to suggest that he understood her thoughts. "Will you meet me tomorrow night? Here?"

Livia contemplated it for two fractions of a second, and then her heart spoke for her. "Yes." She felt like that one kiss had been a crucial moment, setting her feet on a path from which she could not stray. She had to meet him; fate demanded it.

He walked her briskly to her back door and kissed her sweetly on the forehead in farewell before turning to jog back to the fireside gathering.

"Wait, Mason?" Livia called when he was almost out of hearing range. He turned and cocked his head to the side questioningly. "Don't kiss her like that, okay?"

His face split into a pleasant grin. "Only you," he assured her, and then he melted into the darkness like the dream he was.

One more step, Livia told herself, Just one more step. He'll be on the other side of those trees. No one followed you, Livia. No one knows you're meeting him. You can't be caught. Just take one more step,

She took a step, and then another, forcing herself across the strip of scant foliage and sliding as quickly as she could back into the blessed anonymity of denser trees. Her heart, once speeding like a runner's, was now making sick, wet thumps in her chest; she was afraid she might be having a heart attack. Fear made every limb shake uncontrollably, and each breath quiver in her chest. Gods, I should not have come, she thought frantically.

And then she saw him. He was looking up at the stars, his grey eyes luminous with their light, his hands shoved in his pockets as he took one deep, calm breath after another. Why wasn't he as nervous as she was?

She shifted, and a twig snapped, bringing Mason's eyes down to earth. Perhaps he had been nervous after all, because when he picked out her face among the leaves, he let out a momentary sigh, his mouth sliding into a smile of relief.

"You came," he breathed, extending a hand toward her, beckoning for her to come out of the trees. Livia nodded, glancing in every direction at once as she slipped out of hiding cautiously. "I was afraid you wouldn't." He took her hand when she was close enough. "Are you alright?"

She was panting with the effort not to run. What if someone came upon them? What if they were discovered, here, together? It had been bad enough when she thought she might be caught sneaking out of her window in the middle of the night, dressed like it was daytime, or skulking through the woods on her own; if they saw her with Sylvia's match, !

"Hey," he said gently, kissing her softly on the forehead. "It's alright, I promise. No one will find us. No one will ever know anything about this."

"How can you know that?"

"Whatever happens, Livia, I promise you'll be safe. I won't let anything happen to you." She wanted to laugh at the words, at the hollow promise that he could not hope to keep, but he enfolded her in warm, unyieldingly strong arms, and she felt safer than she had all night.

He tried to comfort her, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, but she still stood stiffly in his arms, trembling all over.

"Here, come here," Mason murmured, sitting down on the leafy ground and pulling her down next to him. He tucked her against his side, wrapping an arm around her waist and shifting his shoulder so that she could comfortably lay her head on it, if she chose to; she did.

"Why did you ask me to meet you here, Mason?" she whispered.

"I've told you, I think we're meant to be together. And I wanted to be able to talk to you without, you know, the entire community looking sideways at us. Or Salvia's interruptions."

"So you just wanted to talk?" Livia's mind flickered back to that fate-altering kiss the night before, the experience that had made her jittery all day, wondering what another nightfall would bring.

Mason laughed quietly. "As reluctant as you were to meet me here at all, I figured I wouldn't push my luck," he said, flicking a mischievous grin down at her.

"A kiss might not be totally out of the question," Livia said after a pause.

"Your wish is my command."

To be continued in part 2. Based on a post by SmallTownPrincess, in 2 parts, for Literotica.