My Fairy Queen Anne

wherever i go, you bring me home

"Are you sure you're--"

"I'm fine," Gilbert protested, frowning as Anne tried to wave over a nurse. He placed a reassuring hand on hers to stop her. "Really, Anne. I'm not lying. I'm ready to go home. I want to spend Christmas with our family."

Her lips set into a tight-lipped frown, and her eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion, but she nodded anyways.

"Okay," she exhaled with uncertainty. "We'll check out, but you are sleeping on the way back! You have fourteen more days to dance away with me and our friends and family, but depend on this one to catch up on rest."

"Of course. I intend on being as sprightly as I can for the rest of the trip but not at the expense of putting you through more grief than the trouble I've already caused you," he agreed solemnly, looking down at her with charming hazel eyes.

She sighed hopelessly, rolling her eyes. "You're the one who caught a horrendous bout of typhoid, but you're worried about putting me through more grief?"

"You're the one that has to tolerate me forever now. You know that the worst sight in the world is seeing you weep, though you are just the embodiment of a tragical beauty when you cry," he teased, grinning crookedly at her.

She groaned in false weariness. "What ever am I to do with you, dear Gilbert?"

"Marry me, I suppose."

She giggled like a schoolgirl despite herself, ducked her head as her cheeks went aflame as they always did around him, and stood on the tips of her toes to plant a kiss on his lips.

"I don't have a problem with that, but I do have one with missing the train. Now, do you need me to carry you, your excellency Princess Gilbert, or shall we go?" she drawled, pulling him by the arm.

He chuckled at her moxie, letting her grab his sleeve and weave around the crowd towards their luggage sitting by Alex and Josie. She took a bag in each hand, one hers and one Gilbert's. He had almost attempted to carry his, but that had earned him a menacing glare and a gentle swat on the arm as he had reached for it, followed by a loving sentiment about how it was her turn to take care of him for once. That was his Anne, impassioned in even her softest love, not a care in the world for the odd laughs and lingering stares they got seeing a woman holding heavy bags and leading a man to the train. 

After about ten minutes, the train was whizzing away from the station, the sky a blur of sunset reds and pinks and blues. Across from them, Josie and Alex were fast asleep. Josie's head slumped against her beau's shoulder, and his head rested on top of hers. Their hands were intertwined between them. Anne wished that having pictures taken could be easier and instantaneous, for it would have been the most romantical picture of them.

The setting sun reminded Gilbert of the woman sitting next to him, his most beloved Anne. The vivid red of the sun setting on the horizon was like her absolute flame of thick and wavy hair. The vibrant sun was only intensified by the brilliant blue that only a small portion of the sky was now, a mesmerizing color that reminded him of her eyes that he could look into for centuries if he was allowed, the eyes that could reflect so many emotions yet reveal nothing at all about what wheels were working inside her magnificent brain.

As if instinct, his eyes naturally turned away from the sky and onto her. Her face was balanced in her left hand, sighing contently as she peered out of the window. What had he done to deserve her, his most beautiful fairy queen, the love of his life, his future wife? It seemed so surreal.

She turned around to check if he was asleep yet and frowned disapprovingly as he grinned at her. "I told you to rest. What are you looking so intently at?"