<div style="text-align: center;"><a class="postlink" href="http://i.imgur.com/NHlFgsv.png">[ img ]</a><br/><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="color: #BF0000"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">You said you don't have to speak...I can hear you.<br/>I can't feel all the things you've ever felt before...</span></span></span></span></span><br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">• • • •</span></div><br/><br/>That his first language wasn’t English was incredibly endearing. It had her smiling, the silent laugh that accompanied one that just proved how endearing it truly was to her. On top of finding him devastatingly attractive, she found the way he spoke adorable without being annoyingly so. It was something most would have thought an insult to a man and, perhaps if she’d voiced it aloud, he’d have felt the same; men in her culture detested being called such a “feminine” term…but she found no other word that could work to describe how he sounded to her.<br/><br/>But her thoughts were cut short as he stepped closer, as his whisper pulled more crimson to her already shining cheeks, her smile broadening as she found the strength to look away from his piercing eyes to regain composure.<span style="font-style: italic">You shouldn’t be speaking with him,</span>a voice in her head told her, knowing how this could look. A young woman speaking to a stranger, smiling as she was with as attentive as he was? If he weren’t her intended, which he wasn’t, it would look like she was becoming amorous about another. If anyone thought that…her reputation would be ruined and it’d be pure luck that had her still able to marry whomever her father had arranged her hand with. Who would want to be second prize when it was obvious their bride-to-be was intent on another?<br/><br/>She wasn’t…but the woman knew how it’d look so she had to keep herself under control.<br/><br/>Her eyes slowly slid back up to his once the crimson of her cheeks had died down to a manageable level, listening to his story of why he’d come and how he’d come across where she lived. Gaze following the point of his finger, she couldn’t believe this man was sleeping in a barn, working at night for food and lodging, just so he could try to make a new life for himself. What was it that he’d left behind? Did he have others that missed him? That’d want something more for him? If she’d been in his position, surely someone would have cared that she was living in squalor as he described.<span style="font-style: italic">You’d never know it from looking at him, though…</span><br/><br/>…And then everything seemed to stop.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">“Do you believe in love at first sight?”</span>The question caught her offguard as it was preceded by seeing her, his voice falling off as his nerves took hold, or so she assumed. He’d seen her and…fell in love? That was something that was read about in fairytales and stories of old. It was what every woman wanted to hear, even if she never admitted such thoughts aloud. She wanted to feel so beautiful, so entrancing, that a man would fall to his knees and seek her hand. Bellen was no different, often wishing she was like the royalty she read about, how men went to battle for them, how they’d do whatever it took just to get a<span style="font-style: italic">glance</span>in their direction, or a handkerchief. She found herself wanting her future husband to have much the same reaction, though it wasn’t one that she thought possible.<br/><br/>Yet, here was this man, Milek, asking her the very question she wanted to hear from her intended, and she found her breath caught up in her throat. She couldn’t function, couldn’t think properly. All she could do was blink, swallowing back the nerves that suddenly had her entire body alight, her heart skipping beats, and her chest struggling to pull in breaths that were seemingly impossible.<br/><br/>“…I guess it would depend on what you were looking at…” she replied softly, taking a step back as she daintily cleared her throat, and glanced back at her house. The fading light of the day was her cue to go inside and fetch her father should he wish to continue talking, but she couldn’t very well leave him standing at her gate, nor did she wish to.<br/><br/>“Are you happy?” Bellen asked suddenly, glancing back at him. “Happy living on the farm as you are?”