Sure, the water was a pristine mirror… until the sound of a thunk plop rang when something broke the glassy surface and then a childlike giggle rolled through the trees. A moment later another object went sailing from behind a tree trunk, the person there obscured, and the pebble plopped into the water and made more ripples. The shining fish beneath the surface all scattered, zipping away from the sudden rock storm even as yet another stone was lobbed in a high arc into the air and dropped into the water. Yes, someone surely preferred the way the water rippled to the smooth glassy surface it had once been.
But it wasn’t so much disturbing the lake that Orin liked, rather she quite enjoyed the sound of the pebbles as they dropped in, and tossing the stones was almost a hypnotic therapy to the woman as she leaned against the tree, not knowing that her brother and his family were approaching the lake just on the other side. When the fish swam away their foil scales glittered in the sunlight, and she took delight in that too. Golden eyes were fixated on the water, the woman was caught in some kind of introspective cloud. After all, she was about to make some very big changes in her life…
Orin hadn’t spoken to Skye yet, but the time drew near. She never would have thought in a million years that she would leave d’Arte, but there was little for her there now. Still loyal to her pack, the deciding factor had been the very thing that her palm rested gently upon now; the quickly growing swell of her belly. She could not raise these pups in d’Arte, evil lurked too close and she would forever be suspicious. She wanted these children to have the happiest childhood in the world, something she had not given to Titania, Juliet, and Demetrius, and Orin knew that she could not do that in d’Arte with that Rhiannon so close. Mars would not come back to d’Arte, either, and she did not want to do this alone.
Then again, going to the man was more like going to two. With Mars there was a lot more than met the eye, and she wondered what Bartholomew would think of it all. Well, she would know very soon, very soon indeed.
Lost in thought, she tossed another pebble, the last of the handful, never noticing the stirring of feet in the foliage or the shadow that moved toward the lake to drink. She pulled her sheepskin cloak closed despite the warming weather.
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