"I Shall Go On Believing the Dragon"
By A Collaboration by M. J. Jason and BluInk
Disclaimers:
This story and its contents is in no way intended to infringe upon the established rights and/or copyrights of Universal Studios, MCA, Renaissance Pictures or any other legal holders to the rights and/or copyrights of Xena: Warrior Princess.
Love/Sex Warning: This story depicts a loving/sexual relationship between two consenting adult women. If you are under 18 years of age or if this type of story is illegal in the state or country in which you live, please do not read it. If depictions of this nature disturb you, you may wish to read something other than this story.
Comments, feedback, and constructive criticism may be sent to mcjohn@wt.net. Thank you.
A little girl was running through the woods. Not, in itself, a remarkable thing, but that it was this particular little girl running through these particular woods made it singular.
She was six, certainly of an age to perform chores, but the chores she had were enough to leave her plenty of time to roam; she was weak of eye, and handling a cooking-fire was beyond her, so they generally set her in the corner with a needle and let her do the mending. As a result of many quiet hours to herself and little in the way of real adventure, she had developed a romantic and sweet nature, and odd fancies spun through her head most of the time. Her name was Tessa, and she was a green-eyed blonde with a stub of a nose and a little squint that gave her premature wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a perpetual puzzled look.
As Tessa had a great deal of trouble crossing her yard without tripping over one of the hens or something that dropped from the woodpile, it made it all the more extraordinary that she was running, heedless of obstacle, through a landscape that presented her with many occasions to suffer great pain and no little inconvenience. She went about barefoot as a general practice, and she could count on at least two toes being wrapped round with bloody, dusty bandages at any given time.
She was not accustomed to running, much less pelting along without heed as she was doing now. There was a vigorous and liberating rush to her activity; she was thinking her way around tree stumps and upturned rocks, not merely leaping over them as another child might have done.
As she ran, she tried to gather her breath to shout, but it was a difficult trick to manage that; her throat was rasping, and the middle of her back itched where she couldn't reach it, and it seemed that, if she broke her attention to the pathway long enough to raise her voice, she was certain to tumble over something and, in her mother's immortal words, break her neck.
But this was simply too important, and she stretched out her neck as she ran and gave a long cry, like the cry of a bird of the sunrise. It was a name, and it sang and bounced and whispered among the tree trunks. That was a bit of a surprise; she hadn't known she could yell that loud.
Experimentally, she tried it again, and the half-imaginary forest echoed and redoubled the word, the cool, dim, green spaces holding it safe even as it spread. Perhaps it was a poem (even though poems were usually more than one word long) or a magic spell (although those generally were too).
She called a third time, and was just about out of breath when she got an answer. Before her on the path, a pair of feet thumped into the scattered leaves, and a figure stood before her, all rough brown cloth, fists on skinny hips and weight on one leg, her best friend in all the world and the seven seas, Del.
"What are you doing running?" Del demanded, and Tessa had no trouble hearing the scowl she couldn't see. Tessa bent over, hands on her knees, and fought for air as she thought to herself in wonder, It worked. It worked.
"Here, dummy, siddown," said the figure in brown, taking Tessa's arm and pulling her over to a tree to sit. "I'm gonna get you some water." The edge of the cloth swirled before Tessa's eyes, and it vanished in an instant, straight up. After a moment, there was another thump, and the skinny legs came toward her, a waterskin dangling from one undersized, attitudinous fist.
The stopper came out of the waterskin with a pleasing 'pop', and Tessa gasped, "I should've known you'd have water out here."
"Don't talk, drink," Del told her, and Tessa didn't mind the bossing, for once; she was a lot thirstier than she'd thought she'd be. The water was just getting warmed up--Del must've set it in the sun--and Tessa was overcome with a rush of bodily pleasure, an unfamiliar sensation.
Del settled herself next to Tessa, all coltish grace and confidence that she could walk around without bashing herself silly against something. Tessa tried to pull her skirt down over the bruises she'd given herself stumbling over the chair in the kitchen last market-day and drank in Del's wonderfulness with her water.
It was probably just the haze of imperfect vision, but to Tessa, Del was the most amazing thing in the universe. She was dark of hair and light blue of eye, an uncommon combination and a deep pleasure to a girl who could appreciate color better than most. She moved through the world as if she owned it, an attitude that had fetched her more than one correction at the end of a strap. Tessa's mother said Del was 'a bad influence', whatever one of those was, and the two had worked out a sophisticated method of sneaking around so they could see one another when they were forbidden to. Del's treehouse was their best idea so far.
"Better?" Del asked, and Tessa nodded, wiping off the mouth of the waterskin and handing it to Del. Del tipped it up like an expert--she was practicing for when she could drink wine--and Tessa watched the glimmer of sunlight along her strong arms.
"All right," Del said, stoppering the waterskin and setting it beside her, "what's on fire?"
"Auntie said she'd tell us a story this morning," Tessa answered.
Del looked away, waving her hand as if she didn't think much of such a baby thing to do.
"About Xena and Gabrielle," Tessa added, and Del turned to her quickly, white teeth showing in a grin.
On a sun-dappled porch not exactly in the village (but not precisely outside of it either), a storyteller was entertaining a group of children. The children, a virtually complete set of village sprats below the age to do useful work, sat in a rapt and fascinated line on a bench at one end of the porch, engrossed in the tale the storyteller was hard at work spinning for them.
"And so the mighty giant rolled along through the woods," said Auntie, "and his steps went thump. Thump. Thump." She illustrated with a spraddle-legged stomp that started out on one end of the porch and made it all the way to the other. If she did the distances just right, she could fetch up against the loose board at the side of the porch just as she reached the end, and joggle the bench the children sat on. It always made them jump, then dissolve into giggles, a rare and yet dependable pleasure for an old storyteller.
"His breath was like the huffing of a thousand bulls, but infinitely stinkier," she continued, tailoring the material to her audience, which obliged her with another round of giggles. "And as he moved about, his shoulders even with the tops of the trees," (and here she saw the children glance about them to the forest beyond the porch, checking the proportions for themselves with mingled wonder and apprehension) "he looked about the deep and gloomy forest, peering down at the ground far, far beneath him."
The giant stories were always popular, but even more so with this crew, whose diminutive stature and unexalted status made being taller than a tree look like a great deal of vengeful fun. "He scanned the ground, his sweeping eye taking in a league or two with each glance," (and that was a lot, as the children knew; they could already tell you exactly how long a league was because their parents' fields were measured that way) "and as he walked, he searched for his nemesis, his enemy..."
Auntie gave the children a glare, starting with the one on the end nearest the house and finishing with the eldest, who sat beside the railing. Fortunately, the kids knew what was expected of them, and all of them shouted with gleeful excitement, "Xeeeeeeeeeeeeena!"
"Stop! Stop!" hollered a voice from the woods, and Auntie looked up to see two small figures tumbling at a run down the path that led from the hill beside the house. The taller girl was holding the younger one by the hand, and the sunlight coming through the leaves sparkled on the dark mane of the one and the fair hair of the other.
"Slowly!" Auntie yelled back, and the dark-haired one slackened her pace from an all-out cavalry charge to a mere leg-shattering gallop. The littler girl kept up with her, and Auntie could see the almost heedless speed of the fair one balanced with the iron grip and rock-steady surefootedness of the other.
The two thumped their way up the steps, dashing for the bench, and the dark one pulled the stumbling blonde up just in time to save her from another stubbed toe. With an amazing economy of motion, the dark-haired girl whirled her friend in a circle and sat her down on the bench, then raced to the water barrel on the porch. Auntie caught her and pinned her (it was like arresting a wild pony) and repeated, "Slowly!"
The dark-haired girl raised stubborn blue eyes to Auntie's. "She needs water," she said. "She's been running."
"And whose fault is--oh, never mind," Auntie said, waving her hands in dismissal and crossing the porch to ruffle the fair girl's hair with affection. "Well, if it isn't the late Tessa. And I see you brought your well-behaved friend this time."
"I'm sorry we're late," Tessa said, red in the face and breathless. "Have you started yet?" She was all six-year-old gravity and sober-eyed fretfulness, and all Auntie could do in return was laugh.
"No, little one, not late at all," Auntie told her, and the reassurance flooded across Tessa's face. "I was just warming up the crowd with the giant story. You know, the one where you gave me so much help?" Del, passing with a cup of water, flashed a bit of a smile at Auntie, equal parts grownup awareness and protective gratitude, and handed the cup to Tessa. While Tessa drank daintily (she tended to spill if she wasn't careful), Del threw herself at Tessa's feet, her back against the younger child's knees.
"So have we got to listen to that whole thing again?" Del asked, the rudeness entirely mitigated by her sprawling, easy charm, for she knew herself to be an attractive child, and she used it. When her mouth got her into trouble by announcing whatever she happened to be thinking at the moment, she could usually avoid the worst of the consequences by smiling with it.
"You," Auntie told her, trying to be gruff, "are an uncivilized boob."
Del snorted, looking into the yard, and Tessa leapt to her defense. "Oh, no, Auntie, it's not like that. It's just that she heard it a lot when we were working on it, and it's such a good story she doesn't want to wear it out."
Del craned her neck to give Tessa a disbelieving look, and Auntie said to Del in a low voice, "You can't buy a sword that sharp, Del. Remember that."
Del scratched her jaw, looking at nothing in particular, and tried to look like she didn't have a thought in her head.
"Would you go on, please, Auntie?" Tessa asked, her unfocused eyes more serious than one usually saw in a child.
"If it won't choke you with agony?" Auntie inquired politely of Del.
There was a chuckle from the side yard, and Del turned to find out who it was, but she couldn't see anyone. She turned back to the storyteller on the porch, glaring at her in suspicion.
There was a moment of silence, and Auntie used her white hair and wrinkles to give Del one of those irritatingly secretive adult looks. "Well," she said, clapping her hands and turning to the other children, "where were we?"
They finished the story, Tessa mouthing the words along with Auntie and Del with an attitude of barely-concealed suffering, and then, before anyone knew it, the sun was high and it was time for the midday meal. The children stepped off the porch one by one, this one graceful as snowmelt and that one clomping like a draft animal. Pretty soon Auntie was alone, except for Del, who hadn't moved, and Tessa, whose hands were resting on her friend's shoulder, an attitude of patience in every limb.
Auntie leaned against the doorway--she wasn't getting any younger, and impersonating a giant got tougher as your sinews stiffened--and looked at the two of them. Del's long body sprawled; she had one leg up, and her hand dangled carelessly over the end of her knee, and she was looking into the yard, where the gentle noontime spilled with graciousness through the leaves of the trees.
"Well?" Auntie asked, folding her arms.
Del's eyes sent a flash of blue in her direction, and then she returned her attention to the yard with a determined, casual air. In her hand was a bit of twig she had pulled from Tessa's hair at a particularly thrilling point in the giant story, and she twisted it this way and that, studying it as she spoke.
"Auntie," she said.
"What is it?"
Del turned to give Tessa a bit of a grin the younger girl couldn't see, then, looking at the little twig she was torturing, she asked, as if she weren't all that interested, "Am I... old enough?"
Auntie's instant temptation was to reply in a way that left no doubt as to her opinion, which was that the child was born a thoroughly obnoxious adult who had ended up in the wrong body somehow. But she knew Del rather better than Del knew herself, and she suspected there was more to the question than Del realized. So instead she said gently, "Old enough?"
Del finally seemed to notice that Tessa's hands were on her shoulder, and so she gave them an encouraging little pat. "You said," Del told her, "that I could hear that story when I was old enough."
"What story?"
"The last one." It shot out of Del in a forceful whisper, and she turned to the woman in the doorway. The blue eyes held a fierceness and hunger that struck Auntie deeply. In an instant, the peaceable porch with the gently drowsing insects and the whisper of the wind in the trees vanished, and everything was a curtain of red falling over a world caught in the suck and flare of tempest and holocaust.
"Old enough," Auntie mused, knowing that she'd really have to think about it this time. Oh, child, don't dream of glory here, there's no glory in this-- "Old enough. Well... I don't know, Del, I--"
"You said once," Tessa told her, "that if you were old enough to ask, you were old enough to get told."
"For heaven's sake, Tessa, I was talking about where babies come from!" Auntie said, flustered, and just then the solution to the problem walked around the side of the house, pulling a cartful of short lengths of log. Her name was Kirol, and at first everyone had thought she was a man, because of the name, and then they decided she was Auntie's daughter, and then the man who put in their pasture fence commented one night at the tavern that no daughter should ever be that close to her mother, and so then everybody knew.
Kirol, it was true, looked a lot younger, but it could've been that she did all the heavy lifting in the sunshine, while Auntie mostly kept indoors, fooling with parchments and ink, and you know enough of that sort of thing will age a person. The children were convinced that Auntie had seen something dreadful that turned her hair white overnight, as she was otherwise deceptively youthful; they were never quite able to decide what it was, but it appeared to center rather vaguely on spirits and curses with the power of centuries.
Just now, Kirol dragged the cart over to the chopping-stump, hauled out a substantial section of log with one hand, and set it up on end. As if it were one smooth movement, she swung the axe in her other hand far to the side and up over her head in an arc, and the head of the axe whammed into the end of the log. Tessa jumped, and Del, without looking away from the always-interesting sight of someone who knew what she was doing doing it, took Tessa's hand gently to reassure her.
Kirol raised the axe again, adorned this time with the log, and smacked it against the chopping-stump, and the two halves of the log separated, tumbling with a satisfying, unmistakably wooden-sounding clunk into the grass. Kirol picked up one half, set it on the chopping-stump, and raised the axe again.
"Take her some water," Auntie said absently, not looking at Del.
"Me?" Del yelped.
"You," Auntie said, not taking her eyes off the mesmerizing, rhythmic swing. "Tessa would trip over something."
"Be right back," Del muttered to Tessa, then got to her feet and walked, with much drama and little graciousness, to the water barrel. She took a moment for a speculative glance at the chopping-stump and decided on the big tankard. When it was full, she walked carefully down the steps.
There was already a substantial pile of split logs, and Kirol's chopping didn't slow for an instant. When they had feast days, they usually gave Kirol the task of dispatching all the chickens, because she was quick and methodical and did things with a minimum of fuss.
"Kirol," Auntie called. It was usually the only way to get Kirol to quit doing something she'd begun doing; the villagers, who called her "Ironwoman" but never to her face, told a story about the day she began to set fence-posts for a new corral, and had sunk posts for three leagues before it occurred to anyone to get Auntie to tell her to stop. (She had been thinking about something, Auntie told them later.)
As if it were reheased, Kirol swung the axe into the chopping-stump and turned to the porch, where Auntie was leaning in the doorway, arms folded and a hand to her chin. Kirol only had eyes for Auntie, and the woman who ran the tavern said that she could die a happy woman if someone who looked like Kirol did looked at her the way Kirol did at Auntie.
As it was, Auntie had to point a finger at where Del stood in the yard before Kirol would look away. Kirol lowered light blue eyes much like Del's to the girl before her.
Del had grown some in the past year, and she was proud of it, the long coltish legs and the increased reach, but she still felt like a little girl next to Kirol, so she scowled as she held the tankard out to the woman whose axe glittered with menace half a step from her hand. Kirol reached out with a hand that was in no hurry and swept the tankard away from Del, raising it to her mouth in an arc every bit as poetic as the movement she used to turn trees into firewood. Kirol took a deep swallow, tipping the tankard back, and Del just knew she knew how to drink wine, too.
"Thanks for the water, kid," Kirol said offhandedly, and Del, flaring into foolhardy rebellion in an instant, objected, "I'm not a kid!"
Kirol turned an amused look on her. "I'll take your word for it." Del looked like she was about to explode in pointless fury, but Kirol dropped a friendly, if heavy, hand on her shoulder and remarked, "If you're not a kid, then you're probably old enough to hear that story."
"Kirol," Auntie began, that familiar note of adult-to-adult warning in her voice.
"Come on, you don't practice that one nearly often enough anyway," Kirol called, and Auntie, after a moment of irresolute flutter, clapped her hands to her sides and said, "All right, Del, come back up on the porch."
Obediently, Del tromped back onto the porch and threw herself onto the bench, but gently so as to avoid disturbing Tessa. Auntie settled onto the bench, putting a protective arm around the nearly silent Tessa, and shot one last glare into the yard at Kirol, who winked at her with a gentle grin, finished her water, set the tankard well out of the way, and went back to chopping wood.
"Many years ago," Auntie said in a low voice, her eyes still on Kirol, "before even your grandparents were born, a hero and a bard set out on their last adventure together."
It seemed to Tessa as though no other day in her life had ever held quite that same sort of magic, and that no day afterward could ever possibly equal it for wonder. The low, rough wooden bench; the air of late summer turning to early fall; the rhythmic sound of the chopping; Del's hand warm on her own and, as she grew tired the more fascinated she got, Del's strong shoulder supporting her head while she drifted in and out of the adventure.
Auntie's voice never faltered, never wavered. How does she do that? Tessa asked herself over and over again, knowing (without having anything to compare it with) that Auntie was the world's greatest bard.
The pictures that went through Tessa's head were sharp and clear, and they passed in a parade of wonder. The stalwart woman in the armor, snapping arrow-shafts with disdainful determination, heedless that the brutal heads were buried in her flesh; the lovely, delicate-eyed girl spinning a web of deceit in the house of paper; the ferocious, swirling thunderstorm of the demon with the patterned face; the slight, courageous form of the blue-clad knight who set out to rescue the queen of her heart from the shadowlands.
And then the story turned dark, and evil blotted out the sun, and Tessa began to see that beautiful things could be deadly, and she knew she was learning something important about what it was to live in a grownup world. Her mother's hidden heart made sense now, and a rush of understanding transformed her. Growing up was being in love, and opening your heart to it; at the same time, it was knowing that the things that you'd let become so important were likely to change, fade, die, and there wasn't a damn thing you could do to prevent it, and so it was a delicate and tender soul that opened up to the rest of the tale, like a fragile, thirsty flower lifting its petals to a rough and bruising spring rain.
The rhythm of the words took her, and it seemed that the steady chunking noises from the chopping-stump were the drums of tragedy and loss, reverberating through a land that had lost more than a hero. And by the time the hand reached out to stop the knight before she tipped the ash-pot into the cold, clear waters of the fountain, Tessa, for the first time in her life, closed her eyes because she didn't want to see. The agony squeezed out from under her eyelids, and the tears carried her grief to a place where things meant what they didn't in the ordinary world.
Auntie's voice slowed after that, a note of tragedy and pain as deep as the ocean creeping into it, and Tessa remembered only how to breathe, not why she should. And when Auntie's voice finally stopped, it was as though a dance of love and grief as old as the world had ended, and time itself had come to a halt.
No one said anything for a while, and so the sound of Kirol's steady reduction of half the forest to kindling went on in the profound silence. Tessa felt a light touch under her chin; it was a gentle hand cupping her face. She opened her eyes, disoriented, to see Auntie's kindly face studying hers with sympathy and understanding. We know, we two, Auntie's wise, searching eyes told hers, but we go on, and we continue to love, and the world keeps turning. Tessa wiped her face hastily and tried to understand.
"Well," Del commented, "that sucked."
Out in the yard, Kirol's axe missed the log and buried itself in the stump.
Auntie turned from Tessa and favored Del with a stare. "I beg your pardon?"
"You ought to," Del said with little courtesy, and Kirol hauled at the axe handle without saying anything. "I'd rather have heard the one about the giant again."
Auntie turned a supplicating look on Kirol, who tugged at the axe handle and resolutely refused to turn around.
"Del," Tessa said in a low voice.
"So what good is a dead lover?" Del asked reasonably, bouncing to her feet and going back to the water barrel. "Or am I not old enough to know about that part?" She dipped a cupful of water out and brought it back to sit next to Tessa, dipping her sleeve in it and using it to dab at the other girl's face.
"Del," Tessa protested again, her grief turning into an unaccustomed emotion as she stared at her bath attendant.
"Well, what? That doesn't make any sense at all. Nobody does anything that stupid."
Kirol finally got the axe-head free of the stump, and the next log took an astonishingly long time to balance into position for splitting. She still hadn't turned around.
"Sometimes," Auntie said, "grownups do things that... that don't seem to make much sense--"
"Oh, sure," Del said, blotting Tessa's face with her dry sleeve. "Like abandoning your soulmate to wander the world alone and lonesome, with nothing but an ash-pot to keep her warm at night."
"Well," Auntie said, looking in desperation out into the yard, where Kirol turned her head only a fraction as she kept fiddling with the log, "sometimes adults have to make decisions--"
"I'd never leave Tessa," Del interrupted, and neither of the girls appeared to think there was anything remarkable about this.
"I thought it was beautiful," Tessa whispered to Auntie, and Auntie put an arm around her in a hug that felt distracted.
Kirol turned around finally, picked up her tankard, and made her way back up the porch, not in much of a hurry. As she walked, Auntie gave her one of those urgent grownup looks, and Kirol turned a pair of eyes of sky-blue innocence on her. She filled the tankard, and as she was drinking, she aimed her glance at Del, and her face held a deep, cold light of what would've been laughter in anybody else but Kirol.
"Didn't you like any of it?" Auntie asked plaintively.
Del thought for a moment. "The bit with the dragon was a good bit," she said reflectively.
Tessa raised her eyes and saw that the color of the light had changed. "Del!" she said sharply, leaping to her feet. "If I'm not back in time for supper, Mama's going to tell me I can't see you till market-day!"
Del stood up and took Tessa's hand, putting it to her elbow. She remembered her manners and turned to Auntie, bowing like a knight, and said formally, "Thank you for the story. I apologize for my discourtesy, but silly stories are not to my taste. I would write the bard you got it from and get her to change it."
Auntie, looking up at Del in stupefaction, couldn't think of a reply.
"That's enough, Del," Kirol said casually, lifting the tankard to her lips again.
Del patted Tessa's hand and let it fall, then picked up the cup carefully and walked past Auntie to the water barrel, now guarded by the formidable and menacing Kirol. She set the cup down on the railing next to the barrel and turned to face the tall woman whose eyes were a mirror of her own.
"I'm not scared of you," Del told her stoutly.
Kirol put her hands on her hips and lowered her face until it was a handsbreadth away from the stubborn child's. "I'm not scared of you either," she replied. Then she straightened and jerked her head at Del. "Go on, sprout," she said. "Take your girlfriend home."
"I take care of Tessa," Del said.
"I know that," Kirol answered quietly. "Go on, see her home safe."
Del gave her one last belligerent look, then turned to give Tessa her hand. She helped Tessa down the steps of the porch, and the two of them started over the rocks on the path that led up the hill. They picked their way up, Tessa cautious and Del supportive, and Kirol murmured under her breath, "However long that takes."
At the crest of the hill, Tessa turned suddenly to wave in their general direction. "Well, I thought it was beautiful!" she called to Auntie, and Del's response was, "You like any story where somebody's being all swoony and behaving like a donkey's--" The rest of the sentence was lost as they vanished into the woods.
There was a moment of silence, and Kirol refilled her tankard. "Your audience still not buying it, huh?" she asked.
"I've gone through that story a thousand times." Auntie sighed and shook her head in annoyance. "I don't understand. I worked on it and worked on it..."
"The words in a magic spell are to keep you safe," Kirol said. "They're not supposed to make sense when you say them out loud." She took a few steps toward the end of the porch where Auntie sat and handed her the tankard. "Here, that looked like dry work."
Auntie sipped the water, looking at Kirol over the rim. "A magic spell? Is that what you think it is?"
"Well," Kirol replied, "it's done its work all this time." She bounced on the loose board of the porch. "I'll have to get this in the morning," she said.
"Oh--don't, please," Auntie said, turning startled eyes to her. "The children love it."
"All right," Kirol said with a smile.
Auntie stood up and set the tankard on the bench, then ran her hands over Kirol's arms, her gaze traveling over her form with a deep and practiced pleasure. "You're still as beautiful as the day we met," she sighed. "And I'm--"
"As changeable as the sea, and endlessly fascinating," Kirol said, before Auntie could finish her sentence. "And if that's not beauty, I don't want to know what is."
Auntie trained her eyes at a particularly lucious piece of Kirol. "Maybe you should take over as the bard in the family," she commented. "I'm obviously lacking many skills."
Kirol laughed out loud. "You know, if you want it to be a story, I do have a suggestion."
"I'd love to hear it," Auntie said, with a self-deprecating little smile.
"You could try telling them what really happened," Kirol replied gently.
Auntie studied the porch floor for a moment. "How much romance is there in chopping wood and telling stories?"
"Hey," Kirol said, putting a hand to her chin and tipping her face up, "what makes you think heroes can't settle down and have a happily-ever-after?"
Auntie tried to think of an answer to that, but she had closed her eyes and Kirol smelled so good, of sunshine and wood sap and clean, clear water, and her lips were soft and cool, and she put her hands up over the strong back and lost herself in Kirol's expert, maddening kiss, comfort and awakening all at once. Kirol whispered against her lips, "agapimo," and the magic rushed and swept over Auntie's soul; every time, every single time, she made the world over again, a beautiful, soft place where they were free and safe and able to love one another without question or compromise.
She had to catch her breath when Kirol finally let her go. "That's--er," she said, coughing just a bit, "that's a lot of wood you have there, agapimo."
Kirol shrugged and went down the steps, grabbing an armful of split logs and coming back to stack them into the wood-box on the porch. "Fall's coming," she said lightly, heading back down for another armload. "You'll need something to keep the bed warm."
"Uh-huh," Auntie said absently, leaning against the doorway again and running her eyes down Kirol's strong muscles. "I can see I'll need some help with that." She smiled, the kindly green eyes both very old and very young, and said mischievously, "I'll give you this, you're a hell of a lot handier than any old ghost."
Kirol gave her a flash of a smile and stacked the rest of the wood in the wood-box. "Supper?"
Auntie nodded. "You've done all the work today. I'll get supper." She turned to go into the house, and Kirol sent a powerful, quick arm out to encircle her waist.
"Together?" she asked.
Auntie sighed, a sound of utter contentment. "Always, my love."
Kirol reached out to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind Auntie's ear. "You know what the point really is?" she murmured.
"What's that?"
"I said I'd stay with you forever," Kirol told her, dealing lightly with miracle. "And I kept my promise."
So they went into the house to build the fire.