Dismissed Captain!" An hour later the tired General looked out on his weary commanders through the smoky haze of the chamber turned command center. "G...ntlemen, the war is over, but the task of rebuilding the kingdom will begin in earnest with the morning. I fear that may be harder than the fight that brought us here!" The next couple of hours were spent eating, drinking and remembering the fallen. It had been two years since the small province of Hespula had taken up arms against the King, two. "Certainly better than anyone could have imagined when Shae stopped Denis from killing himself and taking a few others with him if he could have managed it. But that's a story for later, too. Let's just say it was a long and difficult road, but worth every minute." I think so," he smiled, realizing that the whole story had to be considerably more painful than Eve and Shae had let on. He let out a sigh and said, "I just hope things work out halfway as well for me, after this." Dave, I know. They all knew of our trips, just Sarah and I went up there. Rarely we would make sweet love in nature, perhaps the finest of all between mates when out in the wild with birds singing and a soft warm breeze over bare skin. More often we simply sat and watched, not speaking as no need to, enjoying the sight of what we had built below. Our life together was almost a given from childhood. Sarah was the daughter of our neighbor, we were inseperable. We played together and worked together, the way. Then she asked me to tell her about my childhood and i told her as much as i could remember with her laughing at most of my dumb mistakes and dares as a kid and teen. she scolded me like a mother does to her misbehaving children for doing so many things that i would never regret. and when we started to talk about how she likes the area, she told me to hold on a second. i could hear talking in the background, and she returned and said "i gotta get ready to go to the neighbors 22nd birthday.