Rowenna's cottage looked half-swallowed by the bramble thicket, just as promised, with blackberry canes like reaching arms, their last fruits gone soft with age. Ilys dismounted, her legs stiff, her cloak clinging with mist and travel’s grit. Her heart thudded, eager and foolishly tender.
She knocked twice, then once, then shouted, “You still alive in there, you stubborn cow?”
The door opened at once. Rowenna stood barefoot in the threshold, face flushed, belly enormous beneath her linen dress. Her hair frizzed in a riot of waves, pulled back with a single ribbon that had given up hours ago. She looked tired and radiant and utterly unsurprised.
“You actually came,” Rowenna noted, with unabashed sentiment.
Ilys stared for a beat too long before replying, “Gods, you’re massive.”
Rowenna barked a laugh. “I told you! Mother Inrith and the lot could move in.”
“You’re—” Ilys stepped inside, cloak slipping from her shoulders—"you’re fat, Rowe.”
“I am!” Rowenna grinned, arms open. “Now come say hello properly.”
They embraced in the narrow cottage doorway, laughter muffled in the folds of each other’s shoulders. Ilys held her tight, heart thudding beneath layers of wool and sweat and softness. When they finally pulled apart, Ilys dropped to her knees like a pilgrim and placed both hands on Rowenna’s belly.
“I’m naming it,” Ilys announced, palms warm against the wide curve of her unborn child.
“Oh?” Rowenna didn’t open her eyes, her head resting against the crook of the doorframe, crown tilted.
“Woolf.”
Now her eyes opened, one brow lifting just enough to register disapproval. “Woolf?”
“Two O’s. Proper menace. Definitely the type to bite.”
Rowenna snorted softly. “You’re not naming a child, you’re naming a mythic monster.”
“Exactly,” Ilys said, satisfied. “It fits. I can feel them plotting already.”
Ilys shed her cloak and began tending to the hearth while Rowenna lowered herself carefully into a worn chair by the window, the kind that had once been stuffed properly but now sighed, thinning and mourning earlier days.
“Sit if you like,” Rowenna said, eyes on the fire. “Or sweep the soot. I’ve no pride left, only dust and a list of things I can no longer reach.”
Ilys took up the broom without a word, brushing the ashes into a waiting pan. They moved about the cottage in the easy hush of old familiarity, elbows brushing, breath syncing. They ate simply: stewed carrots, barley, and rough slices of bread. The kind of food that sticks to your ribs. Later, with her feet tucked beneath her and one hand resting idly on the rise of her belly, Rowenna spoke without turning her head.
“Leif’s on the southern route again. Trade’s thick this time of year. He’ll miss the birth.”
Ilys glanced up. “Does that trouble you?”
“No.” Rowenna rubbed a reassuring circle against her side, where the child shifted restlessly. “He’s dutiful. Good with coin. Quick with tools. Listens when I speak. That’s more than I ever thought I’d bargain for.”
She paused, then added with a faint glint in her eye, “And when it comes to intimacy, he’s… teachable.”
Ilys arched her brow, chiding frivolously, “Rowe.”
“I’m only saying,” Rowenna said with a faint laugh. “If one must lie with a man, it’s a comfort when he’s willing to be taught what’s worth the trouble.”
She turned her head at last, meeting Ilys’s eyes with a look both wry and soft. “I don’t feel wildly for him. I don’t lie awake aching for his return. But I do not dread him. I admire his steadiness. His willingness to leave me be.”
“That’s love, then?” Ilys asked quietly.
“Perhaps.” Rowenna leaned back, one hand trailing across her own collarbone. “Or it’s the closest thing I’ve had that doesn’t cut.”
Night gathered in the corners of the cottage. The candles burned low, their wax puddling like pale petals across the table. Rain had begun to patter at the windows, plodding and uncertain.
“I don’t know what sort of mold I’m meant to follow,” Rowenna confessed, voice low. “I don’t want to become her by accident. And I don’t want to shape myself to be too brittle, too polished, too good. I just… I want to do this right. But I haven’t the faintest idea what that looks like.”
