Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Caitlin!” the sound of her name cutting through a chilled winter morning is almost immediately followed by Amaya’s arms around her shoulders. The embrace is neither invited nor desired, but Caitlin is determined to remain a lady at her mother’s grave. “You’ve come back! We were so worried – it’s been a year! Where have you been?”

The false sincerity is less with Amaya than it would be the other woman’s family, or the rest of the villagers for that matter. Perhaps she did worry over Caitlin this past year, perhaps Caitlin’s sudden absence led to an outpouring of fearful wondering as to the fate of their village healer (or witch, dependent on the given day and the speaker), but it’s more likely the dramatics of Amaya’s concern emerged solely when she spotted Caitlin kneeling in quiet contemplation at her mother’s grave. That anyone has spent the past year fretting over her disappearance is, in a word, doubtful.

“To the mountains.” Caitlin answers. The flowers have slipped from their earlier position, and she escapes Amaya’s arms to correct it.

Amaya’s dark eyes grow wide, in the fashion a child’s might when told a fantastical tale or some tidbit worthy of horror. “Then…then it’s true!” Caitlin has no need to inquire as to just what ‘it’ is because Amaya promptly expels a great breath, within which is a jumbled, “Father said it was true, but I couldn’t believe it – that you were spirited away in the night by…by one of them! Those great beasts that live in the mountains! It was him, wasn’t it? That lumbering brute that stole into your cottage! What did he offer you? What? Gold, jewels?!”

Patience isn’t Caitlin’s virtue of the best of days, and all her preparation for the chance that she would have to suffer this line of interrogation might never have existed, for all it is doing to quell her temper in the moment. With a long breath and steeling of the nerves, she once more straightens up and meets Amaya’s scrutinizing expression with a cool gaze to match her tone.

“To address your first point, they are not beasts. To address the latter points, the only lumbering brute in either village or mountain is old Farmer Bennett – unless the bottle has finally taken him to his Maker – and I was offered nothing more extravagant than the chance to escape the narrow-minded imbecility of this village.” The jab lands its mark beautifully: Amaya’s feathers are ruffled, and she looks fit to fire back a cutting remark before Caitlin smoothly adds, “And finally, before I bid you good day, I will kindly thank you and the rest of your lot to cease rumors of this nature. He did not steal into my cottage – he was invited. If you refuse to have the respect for him and his kind to not paint their intentions so vulgarly, I will insist you respect my character enough that I not be classified as a common whore. Thank you, and good day.”

***

“Imbeciles, idiots, and jackasses, the lot of them!” Caitlin flings the heavy burden of starched cotton and wool to the floor; the last remnants of her life in the village now serve as traveling clothes and otherwise are banished from her thoughts for favor of dyed linen and silk which glides over her skin, midnight blue and dove white. “It’s almost not worth the trouble to be a dutiful daughter!”

Lisa laughs, a hearty sound that always prompts a smile no matter how sour the original mood. “Let Mick accompany you next time.” She suggests while long and nimble fingers secure the lacings of Caitlin’s bodice and smooth wayward folds into order. “Let’s see their bravado when face-to-face with the great lumbering brute who spirited you away after ravaging you senseless in the night!”

Caitlin tosses a hand backwards in a halfhearted gesture; it barely swats Lisa’s shoulder and only earns another bout of laughter. “Your blood-brother is many things – he is not that.” Any lingering hint of annoyance fades into a soft smile. Soft as the grass under her feet and the petals against her fingertips when she wanders the fields and gardens. “He has only ever been good to me.”

Granted, “good” was a subjective term in the beginning when the situation mandated urgency: a stranger arriving at her door late one winter night, towering height and impressive girth cloaked in black. At the time, stories of the great beasts in the mountains, mystical creatures capable of shifting their shape to that of human form, were exactly that: stories. Fables and fantasies delightful to listen to, then set aside for other thoughts. But that night, there could be no mistaking the stranger for anything less. The black slit pupils and otherworldly red irises betrayed him without a word, and Caitlin distinctly remembers her heart faltering in its rhythm. Then, with a sweeping motion, the dragon made his request, spoke an abridge tale of needing the services of a healer, a true healer, to ease his blood-sister’s suffering. Amid a thousand questions, her higher mind heard only the reality of someone in need of aid. The questions could be, and were, asked later. In the long hours to immediately follow, however, there was healing to be done. How and why the dragons were impressed enough to implore Caitlin to stay thereafter remains a mystery to her now. The situation failed, on a spectacular level, to bring out her finer traits.

“And generous.” Lisa steps around the front with a critical eye for any needed adjustment to the garments. “The little blacksmith’s daughter wasn’t wrong to reference the gold and jewels – though I doubt even her expansive imagination could cover the true nature of his gifts to you.”

“She certainly didn’t need to know about it.” Caitlin pushes both hands through her hair, hefting the whole of her brown mane behind both shoulders. “Especially when I told Mick it wasn’t necessary.”

“Mick disagreed.”

“He disagrees with me on plenty.” All adjustments made, Caitlin wastes no time plotting out the rest of her day to make up for all that has been missed: she needs to make her usual rounds in the hospital suite, restock herbs from the garden, and see how Shawna is coming along. “Especially when it comes to showering me with expanses of wealth.”

“You love it.”

Yes, she does. But that bit of knowledge falls under the growing category of things people simply don’t need to know about – or confirm.

***

The garden is a communal space, maintained by faithful groundskeepers and available for all to enjoy. Caitlin finds it a hearty source of certain herbs but less so of others. Back home, in her quiet cottage, she grew her own garden and thus maintained inventory as she saw fit. Lisa has assured her, multiple times, she is free to make requests, but Caitlin feels, simply put, awkward at the mere thought. She lives here in a life of luxury beyond anything a poor village girl could dream. To make demands is to be ungrateful.

She collects a little of this, a little of that, enough to maintain her through the week’s end, then ventures on to her true destination: a modest estate built into the mountain base with an upper level currently under construction. There have been multiple offers for assistance among the community, but Mark is selective when it comes to the hands that will aid in preparing his child’s nursery.

“Don’t even think about it.” Caitlin says, tone allowing for no argument, as soon as she sees Shawna trying to stand and greet her. Naturally gifted with a dancer’s body, long legs and lean muscles, Shawna was confined to bedrest a month ago when the swell of her belly simply became a weight imbalance too great to overcome, and while Shawna herself is a terrible patient, restless and moderately resentful about having her activity restricted, Caitlin couldn’t have found a better support for the matter than Mark. He hasn’t left their home in the past month, instead recruiting the groundskeepers to bring any needed supplies, and personally carries his mate to and from any necessary locations – within the confines of the house.

Shawna delivers a predictably sour look at Caitlin’s words and hunkers down in her (excessively) cushioned chair with arms folded awkwardly over the chest. “Here to tell me I can roll over to the other side?”

“And tomorrow, you’ll be able to roll to the other side.” Caitlin answers in that buttery smooth tone that always makes Shawna bristle and Mark cough on a chuckle. “Now, are you going to continue making my job difficult, or shall we begin?”

The eyeroll is as dramatic as it is unnecessary, but Shawna obediently shifts position in the chair (it’s about the only adjustment she can make without assistance) and watches Caitlin settle in front. “Can barely see you anymore…” she mutters. “I look like the front face of the mountain.”

“Nonsense.” Caitlin smiles as she feels a tiny roll of movement in Shawna’s belly. “And I’m sure Mark agrees with me.”

“Damn right.” The proud father-to-be appears around a corner, shirtless and streaked with perspiration from his labors. Caitlin can still hear the faint echo of tinkering in the near distance – Hartley must still be working in Mark’s absence. “Prettiest flower in the garden.”

“Don’t try and butter me up.” Shawna’s grumbling is betrayed by the way she tilts her head in search of a kiss, which Mark happily provides. Twice. “You did this to me.”

“I seem to recall eager participation at the time.” He earns a light smack to the shoulder for his quip. Caitlin is forced to bite her lips at the whole exchange – not to shut away a smile, but to remind a notoriously wayward mind of her purpose: to be a Healer, to ensure the offspring growing inside the other woman is healthy and on track. Everything its mother cannot be, at least not now. Not while Shawna’s sole responsibility is to be a mother, not a fellow Healer. Privately, Caitlin can’t imagine Shawna won’t return to her role as Healer once the babe is properly weaned. The other woman is as passionate for her art as Caitlin – and with a far better bedside manner to her name. Caitlin has always been too guarded, mannerisms too akin to her surname, while Shawna is warm smiles and playful banter to serve as a balm over almost all wounds.

By the time Caitlin leaves, the sun is slowly descending over the mountain ridge. Assurances have been given that the baby is doing wonderfully, and Shawna trembled, eyes wet and smile fragile, at the thought that she should be able to hold her little one in a matter of weeks. Mark, like his dragon kin, is rarely for outward displays of emotion – softer emotions, that is, for the mountains and skies alike thundered with his rage when his brother was murdered, five years ago now, by the village constable – but tenderness has become a staple of his expressions since Shawna first conceived.

They deserve to show their happiness. Unions between human and dragon may not be uncommon – at least, far more common than the bigoted village minds may assume – but to conceive across the species can be an exhausting process…and sometimes, there is no light at the end of crushed dreams and wept sorrow.

“That looks like the face of someone thinking things she doesn’t need to think.” All tension bleeds out, all the way to her fingertips, at the low purr in her ear and a warm hand stroking her shoulder. “Care to share?”

“It’s nothing important.” Caitlin casts a soft smile, a private smile, to the matching smile on Mick’s face: all warmth and candlelight flickering in his dark eyes. “But to speak of happier thoughts – Mark and Shawna’s little one should be joining us within a few weeks, if that.”

“About time. Girl looks ready to pop.”

“When you start carrying the egg, you can make jokes.” Before he can make some crude remark on the matter, Caitlin calmly hefts her bag against his chest. “For now, you can make yourself useful.”

“As my lady commands.” Mick dips into an exaggerated bow, and Caitlin can’t hide her amusement this time. It escapes in a girlish giggle, almost embarrassing in its nature, but it broadens the smile on Mick’s face, softens some of the rougher edges, and that makes everything worth it. “And how was your little trek down the mountain?”

“Delightful.” Caitlin gathers her skirts in hand as they ascend the winding path to her room. “Would you like to hear the latest rumors?”

“Oh, do regale me.”

Again, a giggle. She has the worst time trying to keep silent around Mick and his insufferably perfect humor. Perfect for her, anyway, and Caitlin can’t be sure just what that says about herself. “They say, after you helped yourself to my humble abode and to certain delicacies of the flesh, you spirited me away for personal pleasures in the mountain.”

All humor drops and is replaced with an indignant growl. “So, they’ve taken to calling you a whore and me a ravaging beast, have they?”

“More like a lumbering brute. Their words, not mine.” Caitlin allows herself the rare luxury of a coy smile, a flirtatious nature she only indulges in his company – the sort of company which smoldered her guards to ash at an alarming rate when they first met, and she has never been able to fully reconstruct them. Then again, she reasoned with herself some time ago that if Mick was the only one who could do this, could manage this feat, then it wouldn’t be too terrible if she let it alone. What’s the harm in having a little something just for herself, after all? “I would have referenced your preference for brooding in the lava pits and your fabulous talent for startling young maids into a blushing fit.”

“Didn’t work on you, as I recall.” The doors to her living quarters are a handsome set of intricately carved structures, redwood to match all furnishings inside, but their weight is a struggle for Caitlin on the best of days. Mick, naturally, opens them with all the effort of rolling out of bed in the morning.

“Maybe I just have high standards.” A secret gentleman, Mick sets her bag aside before helping Caitlin out of her cloak. “Or maybe I know how much you like a challenge.”

“…yeah. Well, you wouldn’t be off the mark either way.” Mick has developed a curious habit in the past few months of glancing down, suddenly shy and wrong-footed, when they stand this close to each other. It certainly can’t be out of intimidation; his height towers over her and his broad stature, thick with muscle and layered with scars, makes other dragons take pause. The other thing he’s started doing is clearing his throat, like he just did. “Have a good night.” He mumbles, and then he’s gone.

He's been doing that a lot too, especially when he walks her home at night. He starts off with his easy confidence, delighted in their banter, but reverts to a shy schoolboy when they arrive in her room. Caitlin doesn’t understand it. Oh, she’s tried. Certainly, she’s tried to understand it. She asked Lisa a few weeks ago, confident that his blood-sister would be able to reveal the mystery. All she got was the strangest little smirk and some dry remark about how blissful oblivion must be before Lisa sauntered away.

Perhaps Barry will prove more helpful.

***

The fist he knocks against the wall doesn’t do much in terms of damage, mostly just a little chipping in the rock, but it makes Mick feel minutely better. Not as good as he would feel unleashing a firestorm across the mountain range, but a certain leader around these parts said he wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. Maybe Len will change his mind when Mick starts punching away at the mountain foundations – which is precisely what’s going to happen if he can’t figure this out.

It doesn’t make sense. He’s doing everything right, isn’t he? Walking Snow – Caitlin – whatever he’s allowed to call her – to her room. Being tender instead of his usual…well, as Lisa likes to tease, bullish mannerisms. And the gifts. Especially the gifts! She looked at the gold, the jewels – the sapphires he picked out because she seems so fond of blue, the emeralds because he thought she might like them, the diamonds because why not? – and smiled like he’d plucked a single rose from the garden. Which, by the way, he’s done that too, and got the same response for it. “You’re so good to me,” a light touch from the hand, and then she went about her day. What is he doing wrong?

A soft peal of laughter drags his thoughts in a full circle: right back to her. Caitlin. From the exposed ledge that serves as his hideaway (Lisa calls it his ‘sulking corner’ – he does not sulk!) Mick can see her in the gardens. Brown hair dragged off her neck, held in place with a simple clasp, and dove-white cloths fluttering in the wind while she talks with that groundskeeper Len is all over – Barry, though Mick just calls him “Red” for how easy it is to make the kid flush. At least he responds appropriately to Len’s gifts.

“I admire your tenacity, Rory.” Mick bristles at the intrusion of both uninvited company and the identity of this uninvited company. “But as I’ve said before, you’re wasting your time.”

“I give some impression that I care what you think, Garrick?” he puts a little teeth behind the words even when history proves it’s a wasted effort. Garrick, pompous bag of hot wind that he is, doesn’t seem bothered by Mick’s attitude – especially when he thinks he has something to prove.

Thing is, Mick used to not care about Garrick, and never had a reason to. Kept to themselves just fine. Then the ass decided he had a right to challenge Mick for Caitlin. Like he’d ever appreciate a damn thing about that woman.

“Consider it a wealth of sage advice for your personal wellbeing.” Garrick says, coming up much too close to Mick’s left side. He growls, twice when Garrick didn’t seem to hear the first one, and the response remains the same, which means the jackass is deliberately ignoring him now. “The reason she doesn’t appreciate your gifts is because they’re beneath her. Pedestrian. Antiquated.” The growling is getting louder, and the smug bastard is enjoying every bit of it – Mick can see it in his eyes and the insufferable smirk on his face. “Save yourself the pains of further effort, Rory. Let someone else step in who can appreciate her. Match her. Understand her on all fronts, not try to demean her with materialistic frivolities.”

“Demean her, huh?” A meaty hand to Garrick’s shoulder earns Mick his personal space again, but the smug look doesn’t go away and that pisses Mick off even more. “And putting words in her mouth doesn’t?”

“I’m hardly putting words in her mouth.” Garrick’s reply is the oil and slime left along by the little garden slugs. “Simply saying what she’s too polite to say.”

Oddly enough, though Mick won’t be bothered to consider why after the fact, that’s the final straw. His fist goes straight across Garrick’s smug face and Mick greatly enjoys the way Garrick drops to the ground for it. “And that’s proof you don’t know the first thing about her.” Mick rumbles. Fire crackles under his skin, licking softly at his fingertips, and he faintly purrs at the thought of watching the other dragon burn. Won’t kill him, but it’ll make Mick feel better. A lot better. “That you’re stupid enough to think she holds her tongue for anything or anyone.”

“You’re one to talk about being stupid, aren’t you, Rory?”

The insult isn’t new, by any means, but Mick will take any reason to knock this bastard when he’s down. Talk about Snow – his Snowflake, his Caitlin – like she’s some soft-spoken wilting lily in the corner, meekly conceding the point just to make people happy? He’ll flay Garrick for that! Flay him like a fat fish out of the river and turn him over on the pit until—

“That’s enough—Mick!” Len, with his impeccable timing, grabs Mick’s wrist before he can land another in the rapid successions of blows on the bastard, then yanks back – no doubt to make sure Mick gets the point. “I said, that’s enough!”

“He insulted Caitlin.” Mick snaps teeth around every word; the flame hasn’t been satisfied and it’s snarling for a proper fill. “I won’t have it – and you wouldn’t take it for Red, either!”

“Calm down.” The chill passes from Len’s hand to Mick’s wrist, enough to be uncomfortable but not enough that Mick fears losing his hand. He’s seen others – dragon and human alike – suffer that fate…not a pretty sight, especially after the wound thaws out. “Garrick was just leaving, weren’t you?”

Subtle. Cradling the burn crawling across his left arm, Garrick shoots a filthy glare at them both, but especially Mick. “You’re wasting your time. And you’ll always come in last with her.” He spits the words, then hurries off, tail between his legs like the bitch he is.

“Mick—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Len.” Mick snaps. “I won’t have anyone talk about her like that, and I stand by what I said – anyone was stupid enough to do that to Red, you’d give them a head cold for life.”

“I was going to say,” Len replies, in that sassy tone that goes out of its way to prove his little superiority complex, “there is one point to take away from this.” Before Mick can properly snarl at him for taking Garrick’s side, Len continues, “Perhaps subtlety isn’t the way to go. Barry was like that.”

That, at least, makes Mick perk up his attention a bit. “Contrary to what those single-minded village idiots thought, Barry isn’t oblivious. He just doesn’t do subtlety. The only difference between him and Caitlin is, Barry came to me and flat-out asked what the gifts were for. My guess is, Caitlin just appreciates them as gestures without grasping your intentions.”

…huh. It’s a little embarrassing to admit Mick never even considered that as a possibility. Lisa courting her little genius – some half-pint in need of a haircut and a dopey grin every time Lisa flutters in the room – took all of two weeks before he got the idea. Red, three months. Mark and Shawna…hell, he doesn’t even remember. Those two have been mated too long for his memory to make the effort. Mick always assumed courtship gifts were a given. Don’t humans even do something similar?

“…alright.” It pains him to give Len the credit, in anything, but he might have to concede this one. Despite their age difference, this is one area in which Len’s experience outmatches his own…maybe it’s worth a try.

***

The screams haven’t stopped for hours, and this most recent one nearly splits Caitlin’s eardrums.

“Breathe, Shawna – breathe!” obviously, Shawna is breathing if she can scream the foundations under threat, but it’s the principle of the thing. “It’s alright – it’s alright! Just stay strong, I’m almost done!”

“You said that three hours ago!!” Caitlin is pretty sure it hasn’t been that long, but arguing with the woman currently in labor, the sort of labor human female bodies were never meant to undergo with natural progression, is a wasted effort. “Hurry up and get it out!!”

A feat easier said than done – which certainly isn’t to suggest that natural human labor is an effortless task, but rather a reference to the technical complexities involved here. A woman’s womb is intended to host and then birth an offspring of her same species. To carry the conception of human and dragon intermarriage adds a while new set of difficulties, not least of which is the way her womb must be carved open to safely remove the egg.

“Barry, I need another cloth – this one is too far gone.” Their shared background in the village made Barry an easy choice to aid her in this endeavor. Cisco’s intentions were as pure as can be, but at the first sight of the knife on Shawna’s swollen belly, he swayed alarmingly. When Caitlin made the initial cut and the blood immediately gushed forth, Cisco fainted dead away.

“You need me to take over with the knife?” Barry asks, even as he pressed the fresh linen in place. “Your muscles have to be cramping up.”

They are. Her entire arm feels numb from tension and the careful precision with which she must make every single cut, lest she damage the egg or, worse yet, Shawna. Letting someone else take over mid-procedure is risky, but this of course is the precise moment Caitlin registers her hand is shaking. Badly. The decision is made for her, and she surrenders the knife to Barry’s equally nimble hands. Caitlin has personally seen these hands dissect a cow in distress and deliver the calf manually.

Finally, the full incision is made. Despite her hands still shaking, Caitlin wills them back into proper action and reaches inside the open womb. The more difficult part is getting a good hold on the egg, but she refuses to enlist Barry’s aid on this. He needs to focus on the wound – more specifically, making sure Shawna doesn’t bleed out before her baby is safely delivered.

“I got it.” Caitlin pulls the last of the egg free. “Sew her up – hurry!”

With Shawna’s screams faded to low whimpers as Barry hurriedly sutures the wound, Caitlin focuses on the egg. She doesn’t bother cleaning it off. Ultimately, it is truly nothing but a protective layer to further insulate the baby’s development – and it’s reached the end of usefulness. Not half a minute after Caitlin sets it within a little nest of cloth does a large crack appear along the side. Then, a tiny hand smacks its way to the open air. A foot follows, and then the other hand. The shell cracks along the center with the next blow. The bottom half folds entirely while the top drapes comically over a little head. Caitlin carefully plucks it away, smile stretched so wide across her face that it nearly hurts.

“Hello, little one.” She murmurs. No longer needed to balance the egg, she grabs the linens and, with some warm water, begins to clean away the unattractive residue smeared over little limbs. “We’ve been waiting for you. Oh, shh…it’s alright.” She coos when the infant begins to fuss. “I know you want your mommy and daddy…just a minute, now. We’re almost done.”

The cries of her baby perk Shawna back into focus, and Mark even more so. “Is it alright?” he asks, right before the baby chooses to answer with a hearty wail that promises a healthy pair of lungs.

“He is fine.” Caitlin tosses the dirty cloths aside, grabs a proper blanket, and gently hands the bundle of squirming limbs into Shawna’s eager arms. As soon as the baby is set to his mother’s chest with the father’s hand across his small brow, he quiets and burrows into the blanket folds.

“Clyde.” Shawna whispers into the downy tuft of hair on an otherwise naked head, and Mark pulls her in tight with his free arm, emotion lining his face even though he won’t flood her ear with spoken endearments. At least not now.

Outside, arms filled with the used linens (several of them past of the point of reuse), Caitlin draws in the cooling air and pushes out a long breath in the same fashion. “Yeah.” Barry leans into her from the left. “You okay?”

“Exhausted. But I’m fine.” Caitlin smiles tiredly. “And right now, I think I could really use a long hot bath.”

“I think that sounds fantastic. Do you need any help with those?”

“I’ll pull out what can be saved for washing.” There won’t be many – of that, Caitlin is quite certain. “The rest, I’ll just burn.”

Barry makes an affirming noise before heading in the opposite direction, to the elevated chamber which he calls home with Leonard – Len, to those who have received permission to call him so informally. The list is a short one, and Caitlin isn’t entirely sure that she’s on it.

Her room is dark upon arrival, but a soft glow emits from the bath chamber. Despite curiosity nagging at her, Caitlin elects to handle the linens first – a short task, just as she suspected – before venturing to explore. Barely one step inside, her breath catches at the sight.

The entire chamber is alight with the flickering glow of tiny candles, dozens and dozens of them along the walls and lining the stone basin of the bath. A set of her best towels, thick and plush, rests neatly to the side – directly next to a pair of small crystal bottles she doesn’t recognize. With great care, she lifts one bottle for inspection, then opens the wax seal to further examine the contents. Bath salts, the most luxurious scents she has ever breathed in: lavender and rosemary and jasmine, all mixed together with wafts of something else she can’t quite place. Fingers shaking with excitement, Caitlin can barely hold the bottle steady while she coaxes water from brass pipes – the concept of plumbing, of a network of pipes bringing water directly from the hot springs to an indoor accommodation, was a luxury that nearly broke her mind a year ago, when she was still a village girl drawn into this strange new world with promises of a life where her talents would be revered and cherished, not mocked and dismissed, especially by reluctant patients – and sprinkles the salts along the churning streams as they fill the basin.

She nearly rips multiple seams in eager haste to plunge into the steaming scented depths, then – with an enthusiasm she hasn’t indulged since early childhood – all-but tosses herself inside with a shriek of delight. The water immediately siphons away the sweat and grime of her labors and the mingled scents cocoon her senses in a glorious haven.

In the middle of working suds through her hair, Caitlin notices something else, a final gift left among the rest: a thick stack of parchment, tied smartly with a thin piece of leather. Not daring to touch the paper while her hands are still wet, she elects to wait until she’s had her fill of the bath and toweled herself dry with absolutely no rush. Once she’s wrapped snugly in her dressing gown, Caitlin carefully carries the parchment into her bedroom. Striking the bedside lantern, she settles into the comforts of feather-stuffed mattresses and embroidered sheets. Then she begins to read.

Poetry. Sheets and sheets of poetry written in black ink. Words – flowery endearments and tender sentiments that make her smile like a schoolgirl; articulate observations and compliments that make her cheeks flush; and unabashed descriptive fantasies that make Caitlin’s breath catch and heat pool deep in her belly. Page after page, line after line, word after word, she devours all of it. Some parts make her laugh, others make her cry, and the rest swell inside her chest until she can scarcely breathe. Some pages she reads again and again, unwilling to reconcile the idea that these might be the last words she ever reads from the author.

The mere thought brings tears to her eyes all night, sorrow and despair. The next morning, new tears emerge – this time of relief and adoration – when she finds a new stack politely waiting outside her door.

***

The writings continue for days. Weeks. Most are poems, but the author has started to include freehand writings as well – narratives that fall along similar lines as the poetry, though with even more startingly frank declarations. Fantasies of a future, of building a home and filling it with all the silly things that make Caitlin smile and laugh – books and soft blankets and scented candles – and other things, the kind that bring tears to her eyes and give rise to a host of new emotions – promises of children, little ones to hold her hands and call her “Mama,” that long-coveted title she’s kept buried in her heart, along with all the hopes and dreams and desires that accompany the idea of motherhood.

The most recent assortment ended with an intimately detailed account of watching the baby grow in her womb, of hands caressing and cradling the swell of belly with each passing day, of preparing a nest with the perfect view of her beloved mountains and ensuring she will want for nothing but only be treasured, coveted, and cherished. At the final lines, Caitlin falls to her knees, parchment clutched in shaking fingers, and openly weeps. This is how Barry finds her when he arrives for their morning walk. Words fail her entirely, but with a brief glance at the papers held to her chest, he seems to understand. It’s a staple of their relationship, really, established and refined after years of childhood friendship and later years sharing a home as two people alone in the world – the young Healer designated to take her mother’s role and the misplaced son of two doctors who ultimately succumbed to the very ailment they were trying to cure in others.

“They’re never signed.” Caitlin whispers, long after the tears have dried and she trusts her legs will function well enough to join Barry in the fields. “None of them. I’ve tried to…I don’t know, to read between the lines and try to find out who would…” She shakes her head, already feeling the tears creep back to the surface. “No one has ever said those things to me. Or…written them to me.”

“Some of these things are as personal as it gets.” Confidant as always, telling Barry some details was second nature, no hesitation on her part – especially with the hope that he might help prod her memory into identifying the mysterious author. “I mean, I know them about you, but we’ve told each other everything since we were nine. Is there someone else you would have told how hard it was when your mom died – not just because she was your mom but because you didn’t have the best relationship when she was alive – or how you felt like an outcast in the village even when you were helping people? Or how much you love the winter? Let alone your feelings about being a mom…you didn’t even tell me about that until two years ago.”

“No…no, there’s—” as quickly as the words began, they die in quick succession on her tongue. It’s true. It’s all true. Barry knows everything about her that this author does. And of course he does. He’s been her best friend, confidant, brother, the greatest form of support she could ask for. But it’s not just him.

There’s one other person to whom she confided everything. Everything.

***

A week later, the majority of which has seen her churning over phrasing, word choice, and anything else that will keep her from coming across as an absolute imbecile, Caitlin finds a small note tacked to her bedroom door. Not signed, but by now the print is as familiar as her own hand:

East side of the harvest field.

Curiosity once more getting the better part of her, Caitlin wraps herself in a cloak and follows her given instructions. At this early hour, there is only Jackson tending to the grounds. He greets her with a cheery wave as she passes, and Caitlin is once again reminded of just why she is so fond of both Jackson and his much-older mentor, Martin Stein. In his younger days, Stein was a scholar, resident of a village far from her own, and respected in his own eccentric way. But a terrible fire changed his family’s fortunes. The story says he and his beloved wife stumbled upon the mountain by accident and were invited to stay after Stein’s open admiration of the dragons – “Astonishing!” He likes to call them – preened their scales in all the right ways. When Jackson and his mother were brought in five years ago, endorsed by a younger dragon, Kendra, Stein took to the younger man as a pupil. Some minor personality differences aside, they make quite a remarkable pair and keep the grounds in pristine condition.

Around the east side, Caitlin’s thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a little songbird chirping away on a stone fence. A fat red-chested little thing, it hops along one rock to the next, twittering out a merry tune and fluttering its wings on occasion as if determined to put on a good show. When it flutters to the enclosed side and finds new perch on a tree branch, Caitlin abruptly realizes just what she’s looking at.

It's a garden.

At least twenty feet in both length and width, the area is carefully curtained off with a white stone fence, the structure of which is only broken by a small wooden gate of cherry planks and a little brass latch. Another note is secured to the gate:

The garden is yours. Only yours. Stein and the kid have already pitched in to help maintain it, if you want. Other than that, no one is allowed in without your permission. No exceptions.

No exceptions.

Caitlin unlatches the gate and carefully steps inside. The little bird is still merrily twittering on its chosen branch – the branch of a little apple tree. Two of them, nestled together in one corner. On the direct opposite side, a trio of peach trees. The corner closest to the gate is absent any towering foliage but is partitioned off with a half-moon of the same white stone which comprises the walls; the stone extends into the garden itself in the form of two walking paths, one on either side.

There is something beautifully wild about this place. Nothing is terribly strict or uniform in design. Flowery shrubs mix with the rose buds on their writhing vines, crawling up the stonework as a living and thriving piece of art. The tree branches are already creeping outward, fruit-promising canopies of lush green leaves. Stalks of lavender mix with bushels of mint leaves. A handful of tiny pine trees are scattered near the stone paths, their scent mixing wonderfully with the flowery perfume wafting thick in the air, framed by lilies and lilacs and irises and tiny snowdrops.

A cool breeze alerts her to something wet streaking down her face. Tears. She’s crying. Weeping tears in the same fashion she wept over written promises of her most coveted desire. Joy. Shock. A dozen other emotions she can’t quite put a name to but feels as strongly as anything.

***

The knock on his door comes late at night, while Mick is staring in frustration at what promises to be yet another wasted sheet of paper. He burned the rest an hour ago, mounds of crumpled parchment with weak attempts at another poem. The same poem he’s been wrestling with for over a week. It’s maddening. For days, weeks, he turned out pages and pages and pages like there was nothing else to life but to write. Write about her. Write for her. Now, nothing. The distraction of a visitor is almost welcome, even at an unholy hour.

“…Snow?”

The hood is sprinkled with raindrops that then spray across the floor when she casually flicks it back. “I think I like Snowflake better.” She murmurs, and Mick’s heart promptly lodges in his throat. “May I come in?”

…right. Manners. Decorum. Everything he’s terrible at doing. It’s not enough that he embarrasses himself, stumbling over two backward steps to allow her entry, but then almost swallows his tongue at the way she looks, framed in the thick velvet of her cloak and illuminated with a soft glow from the lantern in hand. Her hair is loose, wild curls tumbling around her face, slightly damp from the rain. The natural pink of her mouth is flushed red from the cold and Mick is having distressingly arousing thoughts about those lips. Most inopportune moment.

“I don’t…I don’t know how this works.” He just barely resists the urge to slap himself back into attention (too brash, too random) and instead pinches his arm. Hard. “Humans…well, we don’t really go to the same lengths to prove, or at least demonstrate our affections. Really, our ways are very…antiquated. Impersonal.” Mick can feel his heart punching its way up until he can just about taste it. “…nothing so carefully chosen as bath salts, or a garden of my very own…” the lantern flicks its light in just the right way, the right direction, that Mick can see tears glittering in her eyes. “…or pages and pages of promises. Promises of home. Of family. Of…children.” Even now, her throat closes around the word, just like the first time she confided it to his ears in a pained whisper.

“It’s what you deserve.” Nothing polished or elegant there – somehow, he always manages to sound on paper everything he isn’t in spoken word – but it’s sincere. As sincere as someone like him can ever be. Maybe even more so. She has a way of bringing things – thoughts, feelings, words – out of him without a drop of effort.

Caitlin’s smile is fragile. As fragile as stained-glass windows in the library, where Mick has found her dozens of times standing and caressing the woven shapes with a look of pure wonder. “You’ve left me in an obscure place, though.” She whispers. Mick wonders if she doesn’t trust herself to speak above it, or if she simply can’t. “I’ve agonized for days how to return the favor…if I’m even supposed to return the favor.”

His heart is now hammering like a drum. A fool’s hope, an old fool’s hope, but he…it almost sounds like…

“Then I remembered you find my complete lack of social awareness endearing.” The smile is a little brighter now, softer and somehow more confident, self-assured. “So…”

From the folds of her cloak, her free hand rises with a single rose bloom: petals a glorious shade of red, outspread as if to proudly showcase their splendor. Mick’s breath lodges in his throat, not because the sight of a flower makes him swoon, but because this bloom has tiny splotches of burnt orange, a natural imperfection unique to only it, splattered across the petals. His breath catches because he knows where this flower came from. He planted it himself.

“It was the first one to bloom.” Caitlin whispers as his fingers slowly close around the stem. “Seemed fitting that you should be the one to have it.”

The stem is cool to the touch and the petals shake free a bit of rain as Mick sets it on the mantle, right above the roaring fire in its stone belly. “…You were right. In a way.” He finally manages to speak. “The one being courted doesn’t give gifts in return. Traditionally speaking.”

“Does it offend you?” Her voice is still at a whisper, but there’s an undercurrent of humor that mixes beautifully with the way her eyes are glittering in the fire – and not from tears. “That I don’t adhere to tradition? That I don’t follow the rules?”

“It does a lot of things to me.” He rumbles. “Offend isn’t one of them.”

This time, her smile is dripping with coy amusement and confidence and a few other things – things that churn his blood into a frenzy. The limited space between them, warmth radiating and her scent dizzying on the air, isn’t aiding his paltry attempts to stamp out the scalding blaze in the veins. “Good.” Caitlin whispers, barely blinking, and – with a single sharp exhale – blows out the flame.

***

They don’t as much gently tumble onto the bed as they collectively crash onto it: piles of soft animal pelts and buttery sheets. Mick knows he started on top, guiding her backward movement, but by the time they hit the mattress, the cloak is a fluttering shadow across the room and Caitlin’s skirt is riding around her thighs the way she’s straddling his. Lovely view.

“Just so I don’t continue to be oblivious,” because now is really the time to have a casual conversation, when she’s got those long legs tossed over his hips and a rumpled skirt is giving him a clear view of milky skin, “how long?”

It takes a minute for his brain to remember how words work, and even then he has to clear his throat twice before he manages, “Pretty much from the beginning.”

Caitlin slowly blinks at him, which would be cute if not for a couple more pressing matters. “…when I was treating Lisa for an infection? But…I told you to stop hovering and let me do my job.”

“More specifically,” Mick grins at the memory, “you told me to get out of your way or you’d relieve me of some personal property.”

He can see her cheeks flush even in the half-light of darkness and the hearth, but her laughter is the true thing of beauty. “…from the beginning?”

“Always.”

For half a beat, it looks like she might cry. Then, her hands are on either side of his face and her kiss tastes like all the good things in this world. “I have a lot of time to make up for.” She whispers, lips warm on his and hair smelling of rain and pine.

Patience having run its course, Mick’s hands steal under the cool satin skirts and trace invisible paths over both legs until she’s quivering. “You’re worth the wait.” He murmurs into her cheek, the soft line of jaw, the warm curve of throat and shoulder. A kiss to each place. Hands run heavy over her hips, waist, and finally to the crossed lines of fabric across her breasts. Tempting as it is to rip it away, he’s waited too long, too damn long, for this to be hasty. He unwraps her like a gift, a delicacy, while smearing kisses over uncovered skin. Caitlin mewls when he finds the soft valley between her breasts, then folds shaking hands over the back of his head when Mick decides to stay there for a while.

“Mick…” he needs to make her say his name, exactly like that, as many times as he can, as many ways as he can. He must. Just like he needs to breathe in her scent, feel her heat, feel her skin every moment of every day for the rest of his life. After tonight, after he’s finally had her, made her his, every minute without her will be his personal hell – relieved only when she’s back in his arms again.

“You know you’re talking.” Caitlin whispers, and the slide of loose curls down his back when she buries her face in his neck overrides whatever embarrassment he might have felt towards that little revelation – which, to be honest, wasn’t much. “And you don’t need to worry. I’ll always come back to you. Always. I love you.”

The noise he makes might have been a growl or it might have been a sob. Mick doesn’t care to pinpoint the difference. All that matters is her. Heat. Scent. Skin. Her. All of it, her. Against him, around him, with him inside her. The first press is slow – she shivers, whimpers a bit, and her nails bite into his shoulders – and every inch after is a trial and tribulation for his sense of control, but he must keep it together. He must. Nothing about this moment can hurt her. Not the way he fully slides inside, every inch of her inner walls conforming around him until he’s dizzied with it, and not the way Caitlin slowly begins to ride him, uncoordinated at first then guided into steady rhythm by his hands on her hips and encouraging whispers in her ear.

“Do it.” She whispers, abruptly and (as far as Mick is concerned) out of context. Then her hand grabs his and presses the palm hard, harder than he would like, to her skin. “It doesn’t matter where you do it, just do it.”

Circumstances as they are, it takes a little longer for the meaning to fully circulate and make an impression. When it does, a knot lodges in Mick’s chest. Feels like fear. Maybe nerves. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It only hurts for a short while. Barry told me.” She kisses him again, several times. When she finally pulls back, he’s almost forgotten what they were talking about. “Please, Mick. Do it.” Her face burrows into his neck again, tongue shyly tasting the salt on his skin. “I want them to see. I want them to know I’m yours.”

This time, it’s definitely a growl that tears free of Mick’s throat and vibrates into her skin. “Damn it, woman…what are you doing to me?”

“Seducing my mate.” He feels the smile as much as he hears it in her voice, lips pressed against his ear and nipping in just the right way. “Is it working?”

Mick growls again, teeth scraping over her throat in half an answer. The rest of his answer comes from his right hand catching Caitlin by the shoulder blade and pressing deep. A startled gasp echoes in his ear, then another. When he slowly, cautiously, moves his hand away, she leans heavy into his chest, panting softly and shivering. He kisses her damp curls, partly an apology and mostly an assurance that the pain, indeed, will fade soon. A few minutes, and the burn mark across her shoulder will be a distant ache. And then he’ll drive it out of her mind – all night, and every night still to come.

He'll spend the rest of his life reminding, proving to her, this beautiful goddess, that he’s worth – worthy of – her choice.

***

One year later:

“The roses look bigger this year. Like they’re trying to best their own record.” Caitlin lightly passes a touch over the blooms, a lazy smile on her lips. “In another year, they may engulf the whole garden.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad sight, if they did.” Mick rumbles into her hair, where he’s presently nuzzling and rubbing his cheek against the strands. Caitlin can’t help but think of a kitten making a nest. “You like them the best.”

“I do.” Her hand drifts back to his and slots fingers together against her belly. “It will feel even better when I can safely touch them again.”

He chuckles. “You’ll get the hang of it soon, love.” Her heart flutters at the endearment – one of the many Mick tends to lavish on her for no reason, no occasion, and uses almost more than her given name these days. “I have absolute faith in you.”

A gentle breeze passes and ruffles her hair in the process: snow white streaking through her natural brown. Though, really, it feels wrong to consider the white anything less than normal. When she finds herself lost in thought, as she often does, being confined to walks in the garden and residing in the beautiful nest Mick spent the better part of six months perfecting and agonizing over until completion, she lets herself consider that the white of her hair, the chilled undercurrent to her skin, and the tiny ice crystals which gather at her fingertips when she least expects it might be unexpected, a little strange, but nothing to fear. This is just her – her body awakening after a long sleep.

The way Mick looks at her every morning, naked skin glittering in the sunrise and new white streaks joining their fellows to steadily coax out the plain brown, certainly enforces the idea that there is nothing to fear.

“…you promise it won’t hurt him?” she whispers, fingers tightening in his own.

“You keep saying ‘him’.” Mick chuckles warmly. “What if it’s a girl?”

“Do you want it to be a girl?”

He grins, which means some mischievous thought is about to be spoken, and he doesn’t disappoint. “Maybe I got it right the first time and put two of them in you.”

Caitlin swats the bulk of his left arm, which equates to a flea bite but it’s the principle of the thing. “Don’t even joke.” She growls, earning another chuckle, but the fight may already be lost before it ever began: images of tiny feet, a boy with his father’s dark eyes and a girl with Caitlin’s wild tumble of white flying behind her, rushing along stone paths, chasing each other through fields and garden while the delighted shrieks of combined laughter sing the song of home.