Sylvie froze up, the only movement from her being the widening of her faint red eyes. She looked away from Li, down to the grass. She drew her legs to her chest and hugged them, almost curling into herself with a sigh.

"I…well, I suppose the right way for me to put it is that I like you," said Sylvie.

Li caught her tone. He had expected her to be flustered, shaky, and wholly unprepared to confront her own feelings, but her voice was quite calm, the type of calm that came mostly from resignation.

Surprisingly, she knew how this was going to go. Although, as Li thought about it, perhaps it was unsurprising. She was a perceptive girl, always thinking and always seeing things that others could not, so he would not have put it past her to know.

"I appreciate that, I truly do," began Li. He looked to the fields, at the hundred plus souls that relied on him, at the lands whose healthy greens he was responsible for.

"But I can't return that feeling. We walk entirely different paths of life. I am here, tending my own followers and land, and you, though this might be your home, are destined to travel and adventure and follow your heart's curiosity to faraway dreams.

Love should be between two souls traveling the same path together, and I can't do that for you."

Li knew that there were far more factors at play here for refusing her.

At a basic level, he saw her more as someone to protect, a student or child to nurture – a feeling made even more apparent by their age gap - and he knew that this feeling would only grow as his divinity advanced, making him see all mortal life forms as simply ephemeral seeds to water and watch grow tall and healthy and hale and then dry up and wither and rot.

Sylvie was no different in this regard. She, like every other mortal here, would soon wilt and return to the earth. It would be a disservice to her to entrap her into an illusion of love that was never meant to last.

Certainly, he could, perhaps through the years, find some means through developing his divinity to ascend her into an immortal state, but there was no guarantee she would desire anything of that sort, nor did he want to pressure her into any commitments without her even knowing what he truly was.

"I know." Sylvie sighed. "I've known. I have had, how to word it, a fancy of youth, the kind the bards claim sparks brightest in maidenly hearts for that is the first flame they experience. They say that the flame flickers bright, overwhelming the mind."

She smiled faintly, sadly, and put a pale hand over the flowing cloth of her black dress, feeling her heartbeat.

"I had always thought the bards' words insincere, fueled by drink and made to tug at base instincts to draw coin, but now I know that not all their words lack truth. I like to consider myself a thinker. A calm thinker that can reach the right conclusions with far less to work with than others. Someone whose thoughts can run clear in the midst of the tensest of battles. Gods know that Jeanne and Az need someone like that."

Sylvie's hands dug into her chest, impressing into the dark fabric. "But I could not think properly with you. All that you have said, I have known, and I have known for some time.

You are a man of lived experiences, and I knew that I, so unused to these feelings, so unused to life in general, would have seemed so childish to you.

You are a man of passion beholden to this farm, to this land, and, as you have said, my life, my desire to wander and adventure, would never have worked well with you.

You are now a man of many responsibilities shouldering many burdens and even more lives – the greatest burden of all. A woman in the midst of your life, especially one that cannot ease your burdens by being with you, by sharing your passions or life, would merely be a distraction.

I knew all this, I had thought about it, let my head process it, dwell on it, and yet my heart would never let me talk to you, would always send me into a fluster, would fill my rational thought with silly hopes, would always be so very contrarian.

I thought, perhaps, if I had heard from your own lips that nothing between us could have been, that maybe then, my heart would finally surrender and stop flustering me and stop letting me dwell on things that could not be."

Li saw her tense up. She held herself even closer, drawing her knees in to herself tight, burying her face between them, her locks of silvery hair falling from her head like a glimmering moonlit cascade.

"But even now, my heart rebels against me," said Sylvie as she raised her head. A half-formed tear welled up in an eye as she bit her lip. "I thought I would feel better hearing it from you, that I could start thinking clearly again, but hearing it - it still hurts."

Li put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her in to comfort her. She was right to guess that he was a man of lived experiences, and though he had never found something he could call true love in his past life, it was not for a lack of trying, nor was it due to a lack of finding people – he simply had never found the right one.

And through living that, he knew that rejection hit hard, especially the first one, cutting deep into the heart, and he could sympathize with that.

"The hurt will pass," said Li gently. "It always does."

They did not share more words, simply sitting close together in silence, Sylvie letting the initial pain well up and process, and Li lending his shoulder to support her.