Two days after their discussion, Rose and Daffodil broke camp and moved on, traveling east. They remained friends, just as they had before, but there was a certain underlying tension that hadn’t been there before.
Neither of them knew quite how to deal with what had been revealed that night, or with the uncertain feelings that it had brought to the surface, so they tried to ignore it at first. But the secret, once revealed, couldn’t be suppressed, and it wasn’t long before a choice had to made.
The first small step in their relationship came late in July, when Rose slipped on a rock crossing a rushing stream and fell, and Daffodil came to her aid. As usual, Rose accepted Daffodil’s help in getting out of the water, but when they were back on dry land, they didn’t stop holding hands, and instead walked along together, instead of one trailing the other, as was their usual way of traveling.
After that, things moved more quickly. On warm nights in the wilderness, they spread their sleeping bags out together and lay side-by-side under the stars, talking and then finally falling asleep. It wasn’t more intimate, exactly, but their actions had effected a change in their relationship, one that had, in some ways, brought them closer, but it made them both wonder what would happen if they decided to go back to the way things were before, or if it would even be possible.
It was on one of those nights that Daffodil kissed Rose. Rose was surprised at first, then responded, more out of curiosity than anything else. She had never been kissed that way before by anyone but a man—and not all of those advances had been welcome.
Rose was surprised when Daffodil backed down after that, but she wasn’t entirely comfortable with what might happen next, and she realized that Daffodil wasn’t, either—which was why she had backed away. Such a relationship was unfamiliar to both of them, and neither was sure that they wanted to take it all the way.