I climbed the mountain every day after that.
At first, I wasn't even sure he would be there. The encounter at the frozen waterfall had felt like a dream—too perfect, too impossible to be real. But when I reached the small plateau where the pines gave way to open sky, he was waiting. Standing as still as the peaks themselves, watching my approach with those impossible star-flecked eyes.
"You came back," he said. Not a question. A statement of wonder.
"I said I would." I was breathless from the climb; my cheeks flushed with cold and exertion. "I keep my promises."
The corner of his mouth twitched—almost a smile. "So I'm learning."
That first day, we sat on a sun-warmed rock and I talked. I talked about everything and nothing—the gossip from the village, who was marrying whom, which crops were failing, the latest ridiculous argument between the baker and the butcher's wife. I told him about the festival coming up, the one where all the young people danced around the bonfire and the elders pretended not to notice when couples slipped away into the darkness.
He listened. He actually listened, his head tilted slightly, his gaze never leaving my face. No one had ever listened to me like that—like every word I spoke was precious, like my chatter about mundane village life was somehow fascinating.
"You're very quiet," I observed after a particularly long ramble about the colour of the new priest's robes.
"I have had millennia to learn the value of silence," he said. "But I find I prefer the sound of your voice."
My cheeks flushed, and it had nothing to do with the cold.