"Roses?" Ormiss asked, ignoring Ethat.
"Are any of my twilight garden roses?" I asked again.
"Let's see what your magic told you," Ethat said with atypical viciousness.
"None of these are roses," Ormiss gestured to the garden. "It's not the right time of year to plant them. But yes, my love, your twilight garden has roses."
"Which flowers were they?"
He cupped my hands in his. "The pale lavenders and blues rimmed with red-brushed petals."
"Those were roses?" I asked. "But the ones I ate in the market were red."
"Common roses are red. Twilight roses have been bred under the sea for... a long time now. You will not find blues and lavenders here in the sunlight." He kissed my hands. The sunlight shone off his bronze skin and dark hair and the wickedness in his dark eyes.
Ethat huffed and crawled back to his feet.
I hooked one arm around Ormiss' neck. He held me tenderly, simply smiling in the quiet, gentle way he didn't let very many see. "Of course you have roses. I knew you would want them. And I have roses planned for this, but it's not time to plant them. We will probably miss the fall window, you may have to wait, my love."
Apparently, I'd been waiting a few hundred years. "I am patient."
"Mostly."
Itek came through the back gate, bags over his arms. He noted Ormiss and I, then Ethat, then Ormiss and I, then Ethat, then the sticky mess Ethat had made of himself, and then the general sweaty nudity. He walked over to Ormiss and me, and traced his lips along the line of my scarred shoulder before kissing my neck gently, and heading into the house. "I hope that garden won't die without you here to look after it."
Ormiss glared at Itek's retreating back. Ethat picked up his discarded coat and headed after Itek, trailing pollen and fireflies after him.
"It's fine it if it does," I told Ormiss.
Ormiss scoffed. "It will be fine. I only regret I won't be able to get your fall roses in."
"You know I won't hold it against you."
"I wish you would. You're barely demanding in bed." He caressed my lips with his thumb. "And that's the most demanding you ever are."
"I don't know how to be demanding." How could one be demanding in bed, anyway? What did that even mean?
"You manage it for Ethat."
"That's just a game." Ethat liked what he liked, and somehow I knew the rules of the game. It wasn't my game or preference, but Ethat enjoyed it, and I loved playing it just to make him happy. And it was very fun when we got past his little game and he showed his real self...
Ormiss caressed my hair. "You're the Lady-Consort of the Hippocamp. Be a trifle demanding."
"I only want you," I said honestly. "...and Korr, and Asund, and Ethat, and Itek. Isn't that demanding enough? Asking you to share me?"
"Maybe I should bristle at sharing you, and I love our quiet time together, but this feels right too. It would feel too quiet if it was just you and I all the time."
"It does feel that way, doesn't it," I said softly. Although I worried constantly that I wasn't loving any of them enough, and someone was getting left out. Especially Itek, but Itek seemed happy enough. Maybe because he was part raptor, part cat, and neither were especially needy?
I worried all the same. Especially when they squabbled.
"You think I cannot let you have your other toys and grant your other wishes?" Ormiss asked, drawing himself up with all his regal dignity, but a smile in his dark garnet-and-obsidian eyes.
I laughed. "Fine. I want roses. Beautiful roses. Rare roses. There are colors of rose that are rare, right?"
"Yes."
"I want those roses." I didn't actually care, but he cared. "And I want one rose that is the most typical rose out there. I want to know what 'a rose' is."
He smiled and caressed my hair and face again. "You know Ethat loves to play that game, you know I tremble at the thought of my gardens pleasing you--how do you know these gifts are more for us than you?"
"Don't be dramatic."
"Is this the love of a unicorn?" he peered at me. "Because the serpents were fools to abandon the love of unicorns to pursue deep magic."
For an instant, something... odd... cut through me. Deep, like a gasp, a flinch, the slice of that whip he wielded when necessary. For a split second, my mind splintered, and I was in that dark, stone corridor, with its flickering lanterns, being carried, the sound of boots echoing against damp stones, strange, flickering lanterns, the gentle, slow rocking of his gait, my hair swinging back and forth...
or was that my skin...
...so tired...
...so done...
...Is it all of her?...
...no, it could never be, never again...
....[My Name]...
...[My Name]...
..drip, drip, drip....
...step step step...
I snapped back into sunlight and hot summer.
...step... step... step...
Ormiss still held me. The sun hadn't moved in the sky.
"What did you remember?" Ormiss asked.
"... nothing," I said, trying to shake off the echoes in my head, which only made me feel hollow and stitched together. My scars oozed and shifted. "It was the same thing I saw before. The hallway. Being carried. My... my name. Someone's saying my name, but I can't hear it. I just know what they're saying is my name. And those strange sconces on the wall..."
"Was Korr there?" Ormiss asked.
"Yes. Yes, he was. And someone else too. They were... talking. I knew what they're talking about, but... I couldn't hear. But it couldn't have been Korr... could it?"
He caressed stray strands of hair at my temple. "With the God of Barren Branches involved, we can rule nothing out."
"But Korr isn't old enough. Dragons saw him and Ethat being born. Or hatched. Or whatever."
"We can rule nothing out," he repeated.
"Even... Korr having been... " I grasped for the word I knew, but didn't know.
"Reincarnated?"
"I guess," I whispered.
"The God of Barren Branches brought you back to this world. Who is to say He did not bring Korr back? Or any of us back?"
"That sounds insane."
"One of the first things a magic-weilding Hippocamp learns is that to never presume any power is out of reach," Ormiss said, tone somber. "And to never underestimate the depths to which sea-serpents went to pursue magic. The sea serpents did not believe that the gods had put any power truly out of our reach, and that there is no hard, firm limit. No wall we will encounter where we can go no further. The sea serpents," he lowered his tone, "believed we could become gods."
I gasped.
"And that was the great trap," Ormiss added. "That they are all destroyed, or they are all tangled up in a puzzle made by the God of Dark and Cutting Feathers, pursuing a prize they will never be allowed to have, punished eternally and too blind to see they are damned. And that the God of Dark and Cutting Feathers lured them into the deepest oceans, where they remain, to this day, trapped in a puzzle by their own ambition."
That was a lot to take in.
Ormiss resettled his grip on me. "I think that is why the unicorns exist. Because the love of a unicorn reminds you what is best in life, what matters, what is real. The sea serpents forsook the unicorns to chase magic. Given I love a unicorn, and she loves me, and I bask in the pure sweetness of that love," he caressed his knuckles along my scarred cheek, "a love that asks nothing of me save I love her, as much as I worship magic, I could never abandon you to chase it."
/***********
Peeps:
I am the sick. I am allergic AF to tree pollen and mold, and guess what's happening here now? TREE POLLEN! Mold! (Because it's been SO wet) So now I have a minor sinus infection and I'm all kind of like :: makes sad pitiful noises :: Ug. I really hope this is not my spring. ._.
And want to know the funny part? Our TV died. Like I'm not joking. My poor husband (the movie buff) is like NOOOOOOO. We have some parts coming and I'm gonna see if we can get that bad boy fixed rather than go buy something new, but my skills when it comes to this sorta thing are pretty limited. The last TV died while playing Dark Souls, which is pretty hilarious. (S+O NG+1, if you're curious, haha. The TV was like "f this, I'm out. Bye.")
Anyone doing anything cool this weekend? Any neat plans? Isn't it SuperBowl weekend? Maybe this was a dumb question with an obvious answer...
~Merry
(phhhhht pantster)
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