Strix wasn’t quite sure when it had happened.

It was a feeling that grew from a seed into untamed wilderness in the pit of her stomach. Coiling and tightening its grip on her heartstrings every time she looked into those eyes. Oh, those eyes. Green ponds in which she could lose herself and never find a way out again. When Strix looked at Diath, the vines within her grew and strengthened their grasp. Day by day, it grew and flowered. Her protestations seemed to do nothing but fuel it.

She was going barmy, wasn’t she? This is how you end up with the Bleakers, isn’t it? She wanted to scream, to cry, to throw herself against the grass in a fit - anything to quelch this feeling. It did nothing to stop it, of course, but Strix screamed anyway.

Not that that was out of the ordinary.

The party had made camp for the night not long after another of the tiefling’s hissy fits - they knew better than to drag her along the jungle floor to Omu. Strix looked into the embers of the campfire and sighed. She was going to have to say something, wasn’t she? Sod it, sod it all. Strix buried herself up against Waffles’s down and groaned, eliciting a confused hoot from the owlbear. There was nothing else for it, then. She’d go and find Diath on his watch, and tell him the dark of it.

As the sun set and a myriad crickets chirped, Strix set out to find where the rogue had camped out on for his evening watch, trudging through the mud underfoot. It would appear she wasn’t quiet, as Diath looked up at her arrival from a rocky perch.

“Strix, I….it’s not your watch yet,” he stammered, peering at the bedraggled tiefling with confusion, “go back the hut, you need to rest-”

“Oh pike it, Diath, I came here to tell you something!”



She stomped up to the rocks and stood next to him, glowering at him with her face mere inches from his. She stared deep into those fishpond eyes for what seemed like an eternity, before clenching her own shut and cursing and throwing herself to the ground. Diath would have found it cute, had he not been so worried.

“Why?! Why, why, why?!”





He let Strix run herself ragged - she tended to calm down after her energy was spent - before sitting himself down next to her.

“Strix...what’s wrong? You….you know you can tell me…”





Strix sniffled and wiped her face on her tattered robes, looking up at him once more.

“I...I….Diath, I think I’m sick.”

“W-what makes you say that?” Diath’s brows furrow with concern.

“Every time I look at you, I get this….feeling. I haven’t felt it before, and it hurts...when I look at you, it feels like someone lighting my blood on fire. That’s not supposed to happen! And then, and then, sometimes when you smile, it feels like razorvine in my stomach and it stabs at me and it just keeps growing and I can’t stop it! Am I sick, Diath? Is this a curse?! Wait...did that damn snerson at Oralunga curse me?!”

Strix screeched and pulled her hat down in frustration. Of course, why didn’t she see it before! She knew not to trust that snake, she just knew it! If she ever saw her again, she…

Her thoughts were cut off as Diath’s stifled giggles erupted into laughter. She looked up, struck by the sound. How long had it been since she’d seen him so happy? She stared, before scowling at him.

“What’s so funny, cutter?!”



Diath wiped tears from the edges of his eyes as he stopped laughing.

“Strix, it’s….no you’re not cursed, you’re fine.



“Then what is this, Diath?! Why do I feel like this?!”

The question she screamed at him brought him to a halt. Blinking, he stammered, before turning his head away from her. No, he would not hide this from her, she wouldn’t let him! She grabbed his shoulders to turn him towards her.



“Tell me!”



Their eyes met, and Strix faltered, lost in Diath’s once more. The razorvine in her stomach lurched and coiled, and the fire started raging once more. She caught her breath as he stared back at her, a look which she was unaccustomed to. It was not one of fear, or disgust, or pity. No, Diath looked at Strix as if she were the most valuable treasure he had ever laid his eyes upon.

Strix clenched her eyes shut and reeled at the feeling overwhelming her senses, before letting instinct take over. Her body moved of its own accord, and her head moved forward, her lips moving to meet his own. The fire raged inside her as her lips pressed against Diath’s, a warmth that threatened to consume them both. And as they kissed deeper, long into the twilight, Strix began to understand the feeling the had grown within her.

For the first time since it had found its way into her heart, Strix let the feeling of love bloom.