Chapter Six: What the Seasons Taught Her to Wait For

6.0 — After

The light in the World Fragment has shifted, somewhere in the last few hours, into that particular deep gold it settles into when neither of us has been paying much attention to maintaining it — not quite dusk, not quite anything else, simply the color the sky turns when two people have been too occupied with each other to notice time passing at all.

Flora lies curled at the far edge of the grass beneath the old tree, wrapped loosely in a length of the same pale, glimmering gauze that Vaelira chose once before from the chest at the tree's roots — gathered around her now less as garment and more as shelter, one shoulder bare where it has slipped free and gone unnoticed. She is turned mostly away from me, propped on one elbow, watching something in the middle distance that isn't actually there, and has been, for some minutes now, entirely and pointedly silent.

I can see the flush still lingering along the back of her neck, the fine, faint sheen of exertion not yet fully cooled from her skin, the particular boneless stillness of a body that has spent itself completely and is only now beginning to take inventory of the cost. Her hair — that soft, washed pale green, like new leaves not quite unfurled — has come loose entirely from whatever order it held earlier in the evening, spilling over one shoulder and across the grass beneath her in a way that makes her look younger than she is, more vulnerable, completely unguarded in a manner she almost never permits herself to be in the presence of anyone but me.

The grass beneath us still holds the faint, lingering warmth of the evening's fire, carried up from the hearth we'd built the meal around hours before, and beyond it the old tree stands exactly as it always does, patient and unmoved, its branches holding the last of the gold light the way they hold everything else in this small, borrowed corner of the world — without hurry, without any need to let it go before it is ready. Somewhere past the tree line, the grass gives way to the low stone wall where the others had gathered earlier that same evening, the hearth long since gone to embers, the mismatched bowls cleared away by hands that are no longer here.

Unlawfully taken from NovelFire, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

It had been her Turn tonight. The Roster — that careful, collaborative system the women built between themselves long before I fully understood its elegance — had given her the hours following the shared meal, the whole clearing settling into quiet once the others had made their farewells and moved on to whatever private corners of existence they each maintain. Ilyrisse and Vesalia trading some easy, low farewell near the tree line, their hands linked briefly before letting go. Vaelira already half-asleep again before she'd even properly left, murmuring something that might have been a blessing or might simply have been drowsy contentment. And Flora — softened by the whole warm evening, by being seen and held and included in a way she still isn't entirely used to, even after all this time — had asked, in the small, careful voice she still uses for anything she wants badly, whether we might stay a while longer once everyone else had gone.

We had stayed considerably longer than a while.

I let my eyes rest on her now, in the quiet that has settled after, the curve of her shoulder where the gauze has slipped, the faint marks the grass has pressed into her skin, the particular loose, unguarded way her whole body has finally stopped holding itself in the careful, watchful posture she still sometimes slips into around anyone but me. There is a tenderness in seeing someone this thoroughly spent, this thoroughly undefended, that I don't think I will ever stop finding sacred — the plain, astonishing privilege of being trusted with a person at their least composed, and finding nothing there except more of them to love.

"Flora," I said, quietly, into the stillness she's wrapped around herself as thoroughly as the gauze.

She didn't answer. She drew the fabric a fraction higher over her shoulder instead, a small, wordless gesture of retreat, and continued studying the middle distance with fierce, unnecessary concentration, as though something vitally important were happening there rather than simply the slow settling of light into evening.

I let the silence sit a moment longer, unhurried, the way I've learned to with her — some doors open faster if you don't press against them. The light held steady around us both, patient as ever, and somewhere beyond the tree line the last of the hearth's embers dimmed slowly toward dark, and neither of us moved to follow it.