Movement Ten — What the Meadow Kept

They lay together a while longer, after that, the gold light unchanged around them, the old tree still keeping its same patient watch, the grass still moving in whatever unhurried current of wind had been moving it all afternoon. Sorrel's fingers had found their way back into his hair, slow and idle, and his own hand had settled, at some point neither of them marked, against the curve of her waist, resting there loosely, the particular light, easy touch of someone no longer needing to hold on tightly to know he wasn't going to be let go of.

The heat between them had settled into something quieter now, less urgent than it had been during the worst of it, but no less present — the plain, steady warmth of two bodies simply choosing to remain close, unhurried, with nowhere else either of them needed to be. His skin was still faintly damp where the tears had dried against it, and Sorrel didn't wipe it away, didn't smooth over the evidence of what had just passed between them. She let it stay, the way you'd let rain-softened ground stay soft a while longer, rather than rushing to firm it back into something less honest about what it had just survived.

"Thank you," he said, eventually, his voice still a little rough, but steadier now, closer to itself.

"Don't thank me," Sorrel said. "I didn't do anything except stay still and let you be exactly what you already were. That's not a gift, little guy. That's just what love is supposed to look like, when it's doing its job properly." She tipped his chin up gently with one finger, until he was looking at her again, and smiled, the particular soft, unhurried smile she rarely showed anyone but him. "Though I'll admit, I've missed this. Not the crying, precisely — I'd have been perfectly content skipping that part, if I could have arranged it. But this. You, actually here, actually still, instead of already halfway through deciding what face you're going to wear back out into the rest of the afternoon."

"I don't know how to be anything else, most days," he admitted. "Out there. With everyone."

"I know," Sorrel said. "I'm not asking you to be anything else out there. The others need their own version of you, the steady one, the one who remembers every small thing and never once looks tired doing it, and I don't think that version is a lie, either, not entirely — I think it's simply a kindness you've chosen to keep offering, and I don't begrudge anyone that kindness, least of all you. I only wanted you to know that here, with me, you never have to reach for it. Whatever you actually are, on any given day — tired, or raw, or entirely unable to explain why you're crying — that's the only version I've ever wanted in this meadow."

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"What if I come here and there's nothing," he said, quietly, "no grief, no weather, nothing worth crying over at all. Just tired, in the plain, ordinary way. Would that disappoint you?"

"Little guy," Sorrel said, and there was real warmth in it, real amusement too, "I have spent centuries of my own existence learning that ordinary is not a disappointment. Ordinary was the entire thing I was chasing, once, before you handed me the first honest answer I'd ever been given. You could come to me a thousand more afternoons with nothing at all to say, no grief, no weather, simply tired in the plainest way a person can be tired, and I would still want you exactly as much as I want you today. Perhaps more. I don't think anyone's ever properly told you that ordinary is allowed to be enough."

He was quiet for a moment, watching her, something easing further in his face with every second that passed, the particular slow unclenching of a body that has finally, fully, stopped bracing.

"I love you," he said. Simply. Without any performance dressed around it at all.

"I know," Sorrel said, and pressed a slow, unhurried kiss to his forehead, the particular tenderness of someone who has loved a thing since long before it ever learned to properly hold a human shape, and intends to go on loving it long after either of them has any further use for shapes at all. "I love you too, little guy. Even — especially — on the days the weather doesn't behave the way you've trained it to."

He let his head settle back against her chest, and this time, when his breath evened out again, it carried nothing left in it to hold back. The gold light stayed exactly where it had been all afternoon, unhurried, patient, asking nothing further of either of them.

Somewhere near the hearth, that same abandoned cup someone had left days before caught the last low angle of light and held it a moment, gold on gold, before the light moved on without it. The old tree shifted its leaves once more, unhurried, and settled again into its long, patient stillness. And for a long while neither Sorrel nor Eremos said anything else at all — only lay there, skin against skin, warmth passing easily between them the way it always had, the whole meadow quiet around two people who had, for once, let something enormous finish arriving all the way to the end of itself, with nowhere left it needed to hide, and nowhere either of them needed to be, except exactly there.

— End of Chapter —