---alright! Nevermind, We got Merlin back, I was afraid we'd have lost him for a long time.---
Ping walked slowly by himself. They were crossing a large field of open grass. Off to their far right mountains rose up into the crystal blue sky. Due to the type of rock they seemed purple, capped with pure white snow. The land rolled on in front of them, dipping and rising again in a series of hills that stretched into the distance.
Ping noticed hardly any of it. There was a gloom about him as of late. He looked disconsolantly at the ground. Watching every mile go by. Stone by stone, pebble by pebble.
Time had no meaning and seemed to fly by. He was startled to notice a shadow on the ground next to him. He followed the shadow up to it's owner and saw Reyuan. He walked silently next to him. A fresh spring in his step.
Ping looked back behind him. Ji'tory walked some ways back talking to Dragonfly. Ping resumed his forward gaze at the ground, but noticed Reyuan looking at him. With a goofy grin on his face.
"She's really somthing isn't she? Beautiful, intelligent..." He trailed off expecting an answer.
Ping looked at him from out of the corner of his eye, "Yeah.. I guess.." He said non-commitally. He faded back into silence.
They walked on. Reyuan looked at him for awhile. Ping didn't return his look. "There's somthing going on between you two isn't there? Yes, I think so. Whenever she looks at you there is pain in her face. I haven't ever seen you two talk together since I met all of you. You didn't do somthing to hurt her did you?!?"
Ping continued to look at the ground. "Go ask her for yourself."
Reyuan frowned at Ping_Me and fell back to talk to Ji'tory. Ping continued to look at the ground for some amount of time. By this time the sun was beginning to dip to the horizon. The afternoon was turning golden. Truly like the song they seemed to walk in feilds of gold. After a while they exited the field for a stony forest. small boulders rose from the ground amid tall oaks. Their path began to slope upward. Ping never looked back for fear of maybe embarassing Ji'tory. Time passed and Ping knew that telling the story of what happened would be painful for her. It was painful for him. He wasn't totally devoid of emotion. His compassion level had been set very high in his creator's latter days as a "quick fix" to his shortcoming. But it was sort of like building a house with duct tape instead of nails. I just doesn't work.
The forest path leveled out. But the trees became more sparse -but not losing their height- and the boulders more numerous. Varying in hight and width, light-grey to white in color. The path ran on in front of them. Somtimes it had cart tracks on it, somtimes not. Somtimes it ran on rock, somtimes not. Evening approached. Reyuan returned.
Reyuan looked at Ping for a minute. "She's afraid you won't forgive her."
Now Ping was genuinely surprised, and unlike himself he showed it. "It against my nature not to forgive somone."
"Go tell her that for yourself." He said in direct relation to Ping's earlier words to him.
Ping stopped dead in his tracks and let the party pass. Bug seemed to be entertaining Avenger and Dragonfly, trying to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a single blade of grass. Her started walking again as soon an Ji'tory approached. She looked at him in surprise and turned her head away.
Ping matched her pace. "It's okay, Ji'tory."
She jumped a little and looked at him out of the corner of her eye, her head slightly bowed. She then sighed heavily. "Thank you, Ping." They walked onward for sometime in silence. Not the silence that speaks. Just silence.
The boulder forest continued on.
"He's really somthing isn't he? Beautiful, intelligent..." She said.
If Ping was surprised before, he was even more so now. (hello anime face-fault ^_^).
"Uh, yeah..." He said.
//Seems she's healing just fine!// Ping thought to himself.
---Thanks all you guys for the compliments!! I got the warm fuzzies now
)---