When he's finished half the loaf, he moves toward me carefully. I hear the soft rustle of fabric as he settles the sitting room blanket over my shoulders, gentle and careful.
He stands there for a moment, and I feel his hand hover over my hair. Not quite touching. Not quite pulling away.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry."
Then he's moving again, and I hear the soft scratch of pen on paper.
When his footsteps finally fade, heading toward his room upstairs now, I assume, I allow myself to "wake."
The blanket is warm around my shoulders. The tea is cold, but there's a fresh cup steaming beside it. And on the table, under the plate of bread, is a note in his precise handwriting:
Thank you. For believing I can be more than what I am.
I'm sorry I can't believe it yet. But I'm trying.
I'm sorry.
-C
I hold the note carefully, and something in my chest eases slightly.
We're not okay. We're not fixed. We might not even be on the same page about what we want.
But he's trying. He ate the bread. He left me a note.
He's still here.
Through the bond, I feel him settling into rest. Not sleep, but something close. And underneath the fear and guilt and confusion, there's something else now.
Something small and fragile and golden.
Something that might, eventually, be hope.
I fold the note carefully and tuck it into my pocket. Then I carry what's left of the bread up to my room, wrap the remaining loaves for later, and fall into bed as the sun rises over the snow-covered forest.
Later, we'll talk, and we'll figure this out.
Tonight, I let him rest. Let the magic I poured into the bread do its work. Let both of us believe, just for a moment, that maybe we can navigate this impossible situation.
That maybe choosing each other, every day, is enough.
Even when we're both terrified of what that choice might mean.
Cadeon
The daysafter our argument have a careful quality to them.
We move around each other like dancers learning new choreography, polite, cautious, both acutely aware of the space between us. Iris doesn't push. Doesn't demand answers I don't have. She simply continues her routine: cooking, researching, tending her slowly reviving greenhouse.
And I continue mine: patrol, maintenance, being useful in the only ways I know how.
The difference is that now, the silence feels wrong. Heavy. Like we're both waiting for something to break or heal, and neither of us knows which it will be.
I'm checking the wards on the eastern boundary when I feel it through the bond: ”a spike of irritation mixed with resignation. Someone is at the cottage. Someone she doesn't want to deal with.
I'm moving before I consciously decide to, covering the distance back to the house in minutes. The bond has grown so thin these past weeks that feeling anything through it this strongly means she's genuinely upset.
When I round the corner of the cottage, I see why.
