The next hour or so was a blur of Ayaa more or less using Simone as her own personal model. It was fun, and a great stress relief for the poor ex-thief. And Simone even seemed to be enjoying herself, even if she did assume that everything was too much for her ‘plain’ self.

It wasn’t long after the last dress that Ayaa picked up her own new dresses, and led Simone up to get them paid for. Once again, the entire purchase was put under Raile’s name.

“Oh he won’t mind. This is chump change in comparison to what he has to pay for when Ve-” Ayaa paused. “Nevermind. Let’s just say he won’t mind. Think of it as a housewarming gift.” When Simone asked if they could go to a smithy, Ayaa was more than happy to agree. The fact that Simone was willing to continue their little date was a good sign. It meant that Simone was beginning to relax and was enjoying herself.

At least, Ayaa hoped Simone was enjoying herself.

The smithy wasn’t hard to navigate to. Jayou had two smithies. One was the original, and the other was opened up by Kalina when the talon family moved to Jayou. It was less than a year before the second smithy was ‘integrated’ into the first…so while in name there were two smithy’s, there was truly only one.

The one they entered was not Kali’s, though she tended to stop by and make a lot of the products that were sold. Today, though, it seemed she was at the other smith. “What a shame… I was going to ask her if…” Ayaa sighed, and waved the thought away. Simone got to looking for a set of daggers, and soon after there was a disturbance.

Ayaa saw it coming a mile away, but chose to ignore it. Being an ex-thief herself, she had no real reason to call one out. However, Simone seemed to take offense to the burglary happening, and with amazing reflexes, threw the dagger at the thief. The blade embedded itself mere inches away from the thief’s face, and the man dropped down, eyes wide with shock.

“Wow…that was…” Ayaa stared at Simone. That was almost as good as Lewis. Has he been teaching her? He walked over to Simone and smirked. “Where did you end up learning that?” The thief scrambled up, panicking. Without thinking, he yanked the dagger out of the wall, and threw it back at Simone, trying to use it as a distraction.

Out of reflex, Ayaa caught the dagger with ease. “Oh…look at that. I must have gotten lucky…”

Simone looked at Aaya and rubbed the back of her neck. “Lewis and I can share experiences. So whatever he knows I can learn pretty easily. The same is true for anything I know with Lewis.” There wasn’t a better way to explain it. “Plus, Lewis wanted to make sure I could defend myself just a bit…” She watched Aaya catch the dagger and clapped a bit. “Oh…” She was impressed but then she knocked the man out with a quick movement. “There we go.”

Picking out a few more daggers and even a bow she pulled out a coin pouch and paid for it. “I think these are a good set of gifts for Lewis. He’s always buying me things. But… He normally doesn’t let me leave by myself so I can’t surprise him often.” Simone explained as she collected the new wares. “He gets twitchy when I’m out of his sight. Worried more so. He’s been like that since we first met. I’m sure it was for different reasons but… the one time I got hurt he chastised Dala for letting me get hurt.”

Aaya and Simone walked back to the small townhouse and Simone stopped to look at it for a while. “This isn’t a bad home. Lewis thinks it's too small but I’m just so glad we’re able to be together. So please be patient with him Aaya. I know he’s a bit rough around the edges but he’s a good man… At least if you don’t cross his boundaries,” Simone laughed a bit as she opened up the door so they could put things away.

“Do you really think he will like the lingerie?”

Ayaa was careful not to give anything else away about her other form and previous profession as she and Simone went through the rest of the smithy looking for items.

“It’s quite impressive really how you two can communicate so easily,” Ayaa said honestly. She may have had issues with Lewis in the past, but someone like her might be good for him. Ayaa certainly couldn’t do anything about his headstrong value of ‘the end justifies the means.’

It didn’t take long after purchasing the few items for the two to return to the townhouse. “Lewis has boundaries?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Could have fooled me,” she muttered under her breath. “He will probably love the lingerie…” Again, the image of Lewis and Simone being intimate flashed through her mind, and she gagged a little.

It wasn’t that Lewis was a man, but more that it was Lewis. The assassin was a vile creature hellbent on getting his way…and that was just far too much to handle for Ayaa.

Not to mention that, despite it all, Ayaa felt as though Lewis was a brother to her.

“Would it be okay to make some tea? I’ll serve it,” Ayaa looked at Simone hopefully. She hoped that Lewis wouldn’t show up.

“It helps us a lot. Before my death our biggest issue was communication… The version of me that Lewis was stuck with… She overreacted constantly and I don’t know how many times Lewis had to kick in my door to get me to listen.” She chuckled a bit and smiled towards Aaya. “Shockingly yes. His boundaries are something you should ask him about though. That’s one of those private things you should get from the people who own them.”

Simone nodded, “Sure, there is a bunch of tea in the kitchen.” She helped Aaya get out the teapot and teacups. They were all brand new since they never had a reason to have them before. “Lewis just got me all these… Although I couldn’t decide what set I wanted so…” She motioned to the four full sets of tea ware. “He got me all the ones I wanted.”

Climbing up she took some boxes down and started to put the gifts into them before tying some ribbons around them. “I kept the last few gift boxes that Lewis gave me so I could put things for him into them.” They were a bunch of dress boxes. “Oh!” She got excited and brought out a huge vase of lilacs. “Lewis got these this morning. He gets me new ones everyday. It’s the first thing he does when he wakes up or when he gets home from a job.”

The wife put her nose to the flowers and took their scent in. “This is my favorite thing he does.” She was sure that it would blow Aaya’s mind that Lewis went so far. “He does the peonies in the den too.”

Ayaa stared at the four separate tea sets and then to a slightly embarrassed Simone. “I can’t believe him…” But when she gave it another few moments of thought, it started to make a little bit of sense. They had grown up without any real access to the things they wanted, so maybe it was his way of making sure that she had everything she wanted.

She could relate…

Ayaa put a kettle on to boil and started to arrange the tea set on a platter. She asked Simone for some snacks, and ended up cutting slices of cheese and crackers to add to the platter while SImone attended to her gifts. When Simone brought the vase of flowers, Ayaa couldn’t help but stare dumbfounded.

Lewis and flowers!? That was something nearly impossible to comprehend for the ex-thief.

“Since when does a feared, brooding assassin play with flowers…” She shook her head. It was like he was a completely different person.

Simone looked at Aaya and started to laugh. “Everyone has always had the same response to it.” She blushed and looked at her flowers. “We used to just angrily screw around until… What we call the dream dive happened. Lewis and I got a lot closer during it. He spent what amounted to a year or more inside my head even though only a few minutes had passed in real life.” She took her time explaining it all. “After that… Lewis didn’t know how to handle our relationship. There was a moment when I got tired of him avoiding me so I sat on him while he was on the bed and demanded to know why he wouldn’t touch me. He threw himself out the window to avoid me.”

She took them back into the den once they had tea and snacks. “He ended up asking Lady Angela why he felt the way he did. She told him about his feelings and that if he didn’t hurry up I might leave him. Wrong thing to say… because he scared off the only person willing to get us food at Lord Raith’s temple. He was hurt because he thought I was leaving him. Anyways after that… He went and asked the flower lady what would be good to give me. If I remember right… It was the day that someone had tried to frame Lewis for cheating on me and younger me… Cried and locked the door. So he kicked it in and had to get me to talk to him… and he won me over with lilacs. Lilacs mean first love… So he got me lilacs every day because he liked watching me take care of them.”

She sipped on the tea and thought about it some more. “Lewis wanted to make me happy because he knew that I would die. So he did his best every day. He might not look it but Lewis is very romantic and tries hard every day for our relationship.”

Ayaa gave her a blank stare. The idea of hearing something as absurd as a ‘dream dive’ was a little much even for her. She had heard of some amazing drugs that altered the sense of time and space itself, and he wondered if Lewis just drugged her. His love for her was genuine, but there was no way that they experienced a year’s worth of time in mere minutes…Lewis throwing himself out of the window was probably an avoidance tactic.

“Lady Angela?” Ayaa seemed confused. He had heard that Lewis ended up associating himself with that one god, Lord Raith, but Lady Angela was an entirely separate entity. The drug theory was starting to seem more and more likely.

Yet, despite the theories swimming around in Ayaa’s head, she could believe that the two loved each other. The story of the lilacs was endearing, and even romantic from a twisted point of view.

“So…did all of that really happen, then? Your death and rebirth?” For a small girl like her, the concept of high level rebirth magic was almost impossible to comprehend. Ayaa hadn’t heard everything about Lewis and Simone…she was dealing with a lot of her own inner demons still…

Simone put her cup of tea down and held a conflicted look on her face. “Yes,” she took a long breath. “Let me tell you a little bit of my story.” She wasn’t detailed about it at all. “I was born roughly fifteen hundred years ago near Adeluna in a place named Auclair. My father was the king and I was his only child. A man came to covet me and he cursed me with the worst form of immortality we’ve ever seen recorded.” She closed her eyes. “He burned my whole city to the ground. He killed everyone I loved. All of my people. All because I refused to give my body to him. I was sixteen. The curse would activate upon death and reverse my age and erase my memories. I killed myself to deny him but I couldn’t stay dead. He subjected me to many things like rape and torture. He killed the family I would make along my long journey. Finally, when I upset him greatly because I would not break he tied me to a rock and sank me to the bottom of a lake after removing my womb. I stayed there for three hundred years until a duke’s servant pulled me out. I was raised to marry his son and when they realized I couldn’t have children… They hired Lewis to kill me. And he tried to kill me too. When he couldn’t… He brought me back to the tower with him.”

She seemed a bit more comfortable now as she spoke, “Lady Angela is the God of Life and Love. We ended up in her realm on accident after her string appeared on my finger. Lady Angela offered to help us by deciphering the curse on me. Lewis needed the password to unlock the ability to read it. So she sent him into my mind. We spent just over a year together physically in Raith’s tower. We fell in love but my stubbornness… My desire to see the end. I was so tired Aaya, I made Lewis promise to end it. He did. He killed the man who cursed me and released me from the curse. He killed me after fulfilling my wishes for a week including getting married. He lasted two weeks before he ended up in Lady Angela’s realm. She was more than unhappy with him for waking her up. She agreed to bring me back if he agreed to pay the price.”

She took a breath, “The price was heaven and hell. Heaven if we remain in love and hell if we fall out. We are the same person. We share the same life force. We can share every sense we have. There’s even been the case of our bodies combining into one. We call it Resonance. We can even share memories but we have our boundaries and we’ve decided we would rather wait and talk about it when we’re ready to. After all, I’ve not disclosed everything I’ve been through to Lewis yet. I’ve not yet had time to fully come to terms with what’s happened to me.”

There was a warm smile on her face, “When he woke me up… The first thing he did was make me feel loved and apologize for making me wait. Then he told me to shut up and kissed me. My body was made in his image. Angela let him have that and he chose this form. He’s a sweetheart, really.”

The whole time Ayaa stayed mostly quiet. The story that Simone weaved was more than a drug fueled fantasy, and Ayaa had to concede that it might be truthful. Either that, or Simone was quite the storyteller. When she finished, Ayaa had to keep her mouth shut in order not to start laughing at the fact that Lewis had just been called a sweetheart by this woman.

But, if that’s what he was to her, it was hard to argue. Ayaa took a sip of her tea, and took a cracker with cheese. “That’s quite a lot to take in. I…I’m sorry that you’ve been through so much.” It was hard to say what she said next. “Lewis must be a good match for you if you two care for each other so much.”

Ayaa never would have thought that the mad man would ever find a match, but apparently the gods had other plans. This Angela must have been crazy.

“We would dive into hell for each other. Until the end of days. Until our final death.” She smiled at Aaya. “These are the promises we’ve made to each other.”

They spent the rest of the day talking about little things and Simone helped Aaya do her nails. “I’m not very good at this, admittedly but it looks cute on you Aaya.” The door unlocked and Simone’s face lit up as Lewis came inside. Lewis paused looking at Aaya with the same .

“You have fun today?” Lewis had fresh lilacs in his hands as he kissed Simone and gave her the flowers.

“They are always so pretty… And yes, of course.”

“I’d slit their throats if they didn’t give me the best,” Lewis said it straight-faced as he went upstairs to change out of his gear.

“See? He’s just rough around the edges,” Simone put her nose in the flowers and inhaled again making a happy noise. “The other ones aren’t wilted yet.” She got up and put the flowers in a free vase. Simone froze and looked back at Aaya. “You should…” She was blushing.

Lewis came downstairs and threw Simone over his shoulder. “Leave.” He started up the stairs with her over his shoulder and stopped. “And thanks… They’ll look good on her.”

Simone had long given up trying to fight Lewis when he did things like this. “Thank you Aaya! Come back soon!” She waved. “Please lock the door on your way out!” And they were gone as the sound of Simone getting tossed almost echoed.

Aaya continued to visit Simone when she could and after a month or two… Aaya walked in to Simone packing things up. “Oh, Aaya…” Simone didn’t quite know what to say so she hurried herself between rooms. “Lewis… bought us a new home. He said we shouldn’t tell others about it right now. We’re waiting for Kali to finish our room and kitchen but it will be soon.”