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“A dance, my lady?”

The voice catches Laerwen in a moment of quiet, in a brief space amidst the music, the chatter, the laughter. She was sitting alone, escaped for a moment from a knot of laughing friends, enjoying a sip of her mulled wine – and she savors it now as she lowers her mug slowly, as she turns to where her wife stands behind her.

Siril is radiant at Midwinter. She is radiant always, of course, but there is something enchanting about her tonight, lit as she is in the gleam of thousands of lanterns, her cheeks round and flushed from cold, from laughter. Snowflakes cling to the tips of her eyelashes, nestle in her hair, amidst the bright holly berries woven in among the coil: a shade brighter than the wine, than the robe draped over her in layers and layers of gauzy fabric, a wrapping Laerwen would love nothing more than to undo.

She licks her lips, tastes the remnants of the wine, a glow of warmth in her belly that intensifies when Siril’s eyes flicker down to watch the motion of her tongue.

“Of course,” she says, smiles slow and promising, reaches up to take her wife’s hand and rise to her feet. “I would desire nothing more.”

“Nothing?” Siril smells intoxicating, so close: wine and pine and snowflakes, a scent Laerwen could inhale forever. Her smile is a mirror of Laerwen’s, lips full and inviting, curled up even as her head tilts up, her body sways into Laerwen’s arms.

“Well.” The music is fast, a beat that encourages abandoned motion. In the distance she can see other dancers doing just that – her own mother a whirlwind in the arms of her father, slung about into leaps and flips and turns, to whoops and applause. About them, elves dance wildly, kicking up tufts of snow to sparkle in the lantern-light like facets of gems, the only disturbance to the surface of the snow. The trees themselves practically sway, the slow-deep thrum of their hearts lifted by the beat – and Laerwen heeds none of it. She rotates slowly, draws one leg up the side of Siril’s until her thigh hooks around her wife’s hip, tips her head back to bring their bodies in flush, breast to breast. Gazes up between the interlacing branches at snowflakes descending like stars.

“Well?” prompts Siril, and her voice is thick with laughter and desire.

Laerwen lowers her leg again, keeps her ankle hooked around the back of Siril’s. Pulls herself up, bends so that her lips brush the tip of her wife’s ear, cold against flushed lips, her breath a cloud of steam that sends a shudder through Siril’s body – one Laerwen can feel in every part of her own.

“Well,” she breathes, nips at the point of Siril’s ear. “Perhaps there is one thing.”

“Oh?” murmurs Siril: throaty, coy. “What might that be?”

“Let us leave the revels behind,” says Laerwen, her smile unstoppable now, “and I will show you.”