The warm and relaxed tone Sarah had maintained throughout almost the entire conversation vanished as if it had never existed.

What remained was a serious expression, with that single eye fixed on Mark with an intensity that made him straighten up in the armchair by instinct.

"The condition is that you don’t take Zilu with you."

Mark looked at her for a second and then let out a sigh.

"So she told you," Mark said, leaning back in the armchair.

Sarah nodded once.

"After explaining everything that happened to her," Sarah said without changing her serious expression, "she told me about the proposal you made her."

"..."

"She told me you offered to have her join your group," Sarah continued, crossing her arms. "And that she was planning to accept."

Mark looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"And I..." Sarah paused and her jaw tightened slightly. "I didn’t have the heart to oppose her wishes, at least not in front of her."

"Then what’s the problem?" Mark asked, tilting his head. "If Zilu wants to come with us of her own free will, I don’t see why you’d need to oppose it."

"Because that girl isn’t thinking clearly," Sarah replied in a firm tone. "She just lost her sister, she’s scared, she’s alone, and you showed up at the worst possible moment."

"..."

"She’s just acting on impulse," Sarah continued. "She’s clinging to the first thing that makes her feel safe, and in this case that’s you, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for her."

Mark stayed quiet for a moment, listening, and then something Sarah had said caught his attention.

"Can I ask you something?" Mark said.

"Go ahead."

"Why do you refer to Zilu as ’little one’ or ’girl’?" Mark asked. "Because from what I can see, the two of you are roughly the same age."

Sarah looked at him, surprised, and after a few moments she laughed.

"Stop trying to flirt with me," Sarah said in a mocking tone. "That’s not going to work to convince me."

"Flirting?" Mark repeated, confused. "I just asked a question."

Seeing Mark’s confused expression, she decided to explain.

"While I look quite young," Sarah explained, "I’m actually already in my forties."

"Forties?" Mark asked, surprised.

"Forty-two to be precise," she said with a shrug. "I’m twice Zilu’s age, so to me she’s still just a kid."

"Are you sure you’re not pulling my leg?"

Sarah laughed again, this time a little more openly.

"Our life expectancy is much longer than humans’," she explained as she got up from the armchair across from him. "We age at a slower rate, which is why we look the way we do."

Sarah walked over to the armchair where Mark was sitting and sat down beside him, letting her body drop onto the cushion.

"A demi-human like me can easily live two hundred years," Sarah continued, turning her head toward him. "So at forty-two I’m barely what you humans would call ’in the prime of youth.’"

"I see..."

He stayed quiet, thinking over everything she had told him.

"...So you see yourself as her mother?" Mark said finally.

"In a nutshell, yes," she said in a voice that had lost much of its earlier firmness. "I was the one who took care of Zilu and her sister when they arrived at the village."

Mark listened carefully.

"They were just little girls," Sarah said. "They showed up one day at the village entrance, alone, without parents or anyone. Zilu was so small she could barely walk without tripping over her own feet."

Sarah let out a light laugh at the memory.

"I took them into my home, fed them, taught them to speak properly, taught them to hunt, to cook, to survive in the forest..." Sarah listed. "And when they were old enough I helped them build their own house in the village."

Sarah paused.

"I raised them myself," she said in a tone that left no room for interpretation. "They’re my daughters in everything but blood."

"...Aren’t you being just a ’little’ overprotective of your ’daughter’?"

Sarah turned her head toward him with a somewhat offended expression.

"Overprotective?" she repeated.

"Zilu isn’t a child anymore, Sarah," Mark said. "She’s old enough to make her own decisions."

"She just lost her sister and—"

"And that’s exactly why she needs to decide for herself what she wants to do with her life," Mark interrupted. "Not have someone else decide for her."

Sarah pressed her lips together.

"It’s not right for you to impose your wishes over hers," Mark continued.

Those last words hit Sarah hard, but she didn’t respond with anger, she just looked at him in silence.

"After losing one of the two..." Sarah said finally in a quiet voice, "I don’t want to risk anything bad happening to Zilu."

"I understand," Mark said. "But keeping her locked up here isn’t going to protect her from everything."

"..."

"And on a different note..." Mark said in a lighter tone, "if you want children so much, why have you never had any yourself?"

Sarah looked at him surprised, that question had clearly caught her off guard.

Her cheeks colored slightly and her ears moved in a way Mark couldn’t quite interpret.

"Being the chief of this village never left me time for anything..." Sarah said with a small pout, looking away to one side.

"That’s a very poor excuse," he said with a short laugh.

"It’s not an excuse!" Sarah protested, turning toward him. "It’s the truth! Do you have any idea what it’s like to manage a village like this one? You have to mediate disputes between races, organize forest patrols, make sure there’s enough food, solve every little problem that—!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say."

Hearing him mock her, she punched him in the shoulder.

"You’re quite irritating, you know that?" Sarah said, frowning.

"I’ve been told before."

Sarah looked at him with her lips pressed tight for a couple of seconds and then did something Mark didn’t expect.

She fell back onto the armchair, with her head landing directly on Mark’s lap.

Her black hair with red streaks spread across Mark’s thighs.

Mark looked down at her.

"Comfortable?" he asked with a smile.

Sarah didn’t respond to that.

She just looked at him for several seconds without saying anything, with an expression that slowly shifted from annoyance to something Mark couldn’t quite identify.

"If you really want to take Zilu with you," Sarah said finally in a voice unlike any she had used up to that point, "...then you should leave me something of equal value."

"And what exactly is a child’s life worth?"

"Guess, genius."

And before Mark could respond, she pulled him into a deep kiss.