Work Text:
Love is real
Our love was real
It’s a hand
It’s a hold
It’s a shield.
Our love was real
It’s to hope
It’s to dream
It’s to heal,
It’s to heal.
Future Islands - Aladdin
***
I am Frain, and I can tell you exactly when it was that my own healing began.
It was in that beautiful place of fens and clear water that Dair touched me for the first time, and not as a brother, or a friend had ever touched me. This was something different, something borne of spring in that place, something borne of his love for me. Something like what men and women share, but not. Not that either.
In any case, it was so very Dair. His wants were pure and clean and not at all troubled by what should be or what men think is right or honorable or any of those things. I was half wild myself by that point; both of us unkempt and burnt brown by the sun, and when he tugged me away from Maeve and our tiny fire, I went with him willingly enough. I trusted him absolutely, and thought he had something he wanted to show me. Instead, he led me by the hand to a little hillock with a dip in the center of it, a place of soft green grass. I could just see the warm light of our fire in the distance; we were still within shouting distance of Maeve. His hand was very warm in my good one, and I had just opened my mouth to speak when he embraced me. The night was cool, but refreshingly so, and both our chests were bare and it had felt good, that touching of skin. He was almost fever-warm against me.
I still didn’t know what it was that he wanted.
“Dair?” I kept my voice to a whisper; it felt appropriate. “Is there something the matter? What’s wrong,” for I could feel him shake against me a little, his finely muscled body a-tremble. I put my good arm around his broad shoulders, warm and familiar to me by that point. He had an arm around mine too. We were almost of a size; the same height, and if it weren’t for my crippled arm and damaged shoulder we would have been equal in width as well. He didn’t seem inclined to answer me though, and I worried until he put his mouth against my ear and made a sound, a needy sort of sound that I couldn’t interpret; not that I could interpret many of the sounds he made. I pushed him back a bit so I could look into his eyes.
The moon was nearing full in the clear sky and I could see him well enough; that silvery light reflected in his beautiful eyes, like amethyst jewels. It wasn’t until that night that I could see just how gorgeous they really were, that he was a child of elves and gods and the wild and moonlight. Magical. I held magic against me, which might have been a little frightening but for the look in those eyes, all too human at that moment…the heat, the love, the desire in the depths of them. Desire like a man has for a woman, for me, for the cripple, the one made of base earth-stuff who had feared and shunned him at first. Who was tainted and poisoned by grief and rage and killing, who was in thrall to something wicked that had betrayed me and murdered my own father. Thinking about these things…my throat burned with the pain of it, with tears, but Dair saw it. He saw everything and made a sound like a rumble of thunder, but it was soothing, soft. I could feel it vibrating against my very heart; our chests were still pressed together.
Dair twined his fingers into the back of my tangled and filthy hair, leaned forward, and captured my mouth with his.
It was my first real kiss, and it shot sensation from my lips all the way down into my lower belly. I couldn’t have named that feeling for anything; not then, not now. Heat trailed after it, completely unexpected, followed by shock. I jerked back in sheer surprise I think, and the look on his face was as surprised as mine. I don’t think Dair meant to do it until it was done, but he also wanted more of it, that feeling. I could see that in his face, too. Instinct sent him seeking my mouth again, and instinct set me to meeting him; there under that surreal light, I was as much an animal as he was, adrift in time. No fear, or pain, or sin; even the thrall-chain around my heart felt lessened by the sweetness of his lips against mine. And it was sweet, as sweet as Dair himself, sweet as his love and loyalty and devotion, that owed nothing to the tangled webs of honor and fealty that men weave around themselves.
No, Dair was achingly simple, in some ways. He loved me, he wanted me, and he meant to have me, if I were willing to have him too. If I had refused, he would have melted into the shadows, and not a word said about it. It’s not like we even had words to use, not really. But I found myself more than willing.
Virgin fools, the both of us, running on purest instinct as he drew me down, as we drew each other down to the soft grass of that bower he found for us. No thought, just sensation as I touched my tongue to his lower lip, our mouths still on each other. I had no idea what I was doing, but Dair opened his mouth and touched his tongue to mine, and the sweet shock of that pooled heavily in my belly, liquid pleasure that soon had my manhood hard and stiff against him. It was like a dream, moonlit and unreal but Dair’s hands running over my sides, hot fingers dragging over my ribs felt very, very real, my own running along his back, the divot of his spine. Learning each other’s bodies. I suddenly wanted to be touching all of him at once and set to wriggling out of my tattered pants as Dair dragged his makeshift loincloth out of the way.
I gasped when I felt the velvety heat of his length against mine. He rubbed his entire body against me, full-length with a happy sound that was almost a purr, more big cat than wolf. It was all still so innocent and I could sense Dair’s joy that I hadn’t rejected him and was touching him too, and the heated pleasure of his hands on my skin felt like its own kind of healing. Dazed by sensation and letting those instincts take over, I wrapped my good arm around his neck and rutted against him, my forehead pressed to his. He panted and moaned and I breathed it in, and then it was my turn to make those sounds as he got a hand in between our bodies and took both of us together in his hot palm. We were both dripping and so ready by that point, but he stopped and seemed to think for a moment…and brought his hand to my mouth. I understood, and laved his palm with my tongue, almost dizzy with the heat coiling in my belly, spreading outward from that place we touched. He took us up again in his slick hand.
When we moved together it was a different kind of magic, an ancient one, as old as the first people, the first animals. The two of us concentrated on those sensations as we pressed ourselves together, rubbing and twisting and building that tension higher, and higher. It didn’t take long for that melting, shuddering pleasure to coalesce, and I muffled his sharp cries with my mouth, groaning into him as we both came undone at once. We shivered and trembled in each other’s arms as the world blew apart into heat and light, and I had not a thought in my head but love and him.
Some time later, I felt like I was coming back to myself after a period of bonelessly drifting in the dark. Our limbs were still entangled as I listened to the steady, slow thrumming of Dair’s heart under my cheek. I had never felt more sated, more content. I felt more at peace in that moment than I did at any time in the past seven years, and I marveled at it. I shifted off to the side as my weight must have been heavy on him, but I didn’t want to break that contact.
I watched his face in the cool light as he ran his hand down his own chest and belly in wonder and dragged his fingers through our combined seed. Wolflike, he sniffed at them and brought them to his mouth and tasted. He laughed, seemingly surprised and delighted at once. Had he never touched himself as a man, I mused? Perhaps not; he was frightfully young, for all that he had a body of a man in his early twenties. A disarming innocence.
Dair was always, always himself; nothing more, nothing less, and he was pleased and delighted with me, with what we’d done, with that overwhelming, melting pleasure we’d generated between us.
In Vale, every boy was taught that what we’d done was wrong, to touch ourselves was wrong, that the seed was sacred and anything other than what would produce children within marriage was a misuse of it. But how could it be wrong, what we did, when it felt like love condensed, distilled into some pure substance? But it was Dair that made it feel that way, as he pulled me on top of him again and kissed me slow with the taste of our essences combined in his mouth.
That second time was even better than the first, if it can be believed.
There might have even been a third, but we were both nervous about leaving Maeve on her own for so long. She was almost as powerful as Dair in her own right, as capable of defending herself, but it was still safer for the three of us to be together in that strange and beautiful land. Before we went back, we bathed together in one of the deep but narrow channels between the hillocks, using the golden sand at the bottom to scrub our bodies clean, and that water was so clear that I could see the moon’s light catching that sand and making it sparkle. That truly was a beautiful land, that springtime place where Dair and I first made love in the moonlight.
We crept back to the fireside and I had hoped that Maeve might be asleep, but of course she wasn’t, and of course she knew exactly what we’d been up to. The little smile she had was teasing, just shy of mockery. My face burned hot, but her smile changed when she spotted it and she patted my knee as I passed her.
I later learned that she acted as a mother to me as well as Dair because the alternative was for her to bed me herself. This information earned her my surprise, but not shock. They were of the wild, she and Dair, and magical to boot; there was no shame or embarrassment for them in matters of love.
Still cold from our bath, I laid down facing our tiny fire, and Dair went wolf and lay behind me. He could always sense when I grew chilled. I rolled over so my back was to the fire’s heat and settled myself against his warmth, my arm around him and my face buried in his ruff. I loved him no less no matter what skin he wore, and I told him that, and how beautiful he was, and how wonderful; soft whispers into his furry, pricked ear. I don’t know what other love talk I murmured at him as I fell asleep somewhere in the middle. Maeve watched us with amusement, as the elders tend to do with all young fools in love.
We wandered through that land at the height of spring, enthralled by its beauty. A hush lay on it that we also were a part of; since our encounter with Alys, Maeve could no longer speak, and thus I lost my interpreter for Dair’s wild language. That didn’t seem to trouble any of us very much though. That hush, unbroken except for the hum of life all around us and my occasional quiet voice was like a balm on my sore and battered heart. I spoke more out of habit than anything, I think. It wasn’t necessary. We were rarely out of sight of each other, and what really needed communicating could be done so through a touch on the arm, a pointing finger, a gesture. My fingers combing through the fur on Dair’s back as we walked by day. Our hands on each other by night.
We chased each other under the stars, laughing, and shoved and tumbled each other in the soft grass. Dair was always careful to let me catch him; he was an unprecedented runner on four legs or two. Hands and mouths and skin against skin were our language, and the sounds that all lovers make in the dark.
Maeve ignored us and our antics with a veritable fount of patience.
We travelled for weeks through that lovely place, until we came to the edge of that great water and got our first glimpse of what we’d all come so very far to find. The Source of all things, of all life. The closer we got, the easier and easier I went, that black shadow that was on me grown light, the shadow of the swan. Black swan with a broken wing was I, and I had sought death for so long…but Maeve helped me see what I needed to see. For the first time in a long, long time, I felt healthy fear of that dissolution, the release I had once so ardently sought. Dair pressed himself against me with a shiver, with his own instinctual fear. I stroked his fur and knelt and put my arms around him and held him against my chest. Life. Warm and rough and real, so real under my hands. He taught me about a different kind of release and dissolution; he took me apart and put me back together again and again, just as I took him apart, him trembling and shuddering all over, and then holding him so close afterwards, his lips warm against my throat.
I feared, and Dair feared, but he shielded me from death anyway; he leapt in front of me when the griffin attacked and put his body in between mine and danger. He was always so brave, and that barbed tail would have surely killed me.
The closer we got to the Source, the more and more beautiful the landscape became as it tugged at my heart with love, love all around me. I think I was lulled by that beauty into complacency, as I didn’t even notice the cut on Dair’s arm until it got bad. Until it was killing him, but, wolf-wise, he never let on. Like a wild animal, he accepted fate, accepted each day as it came and what it brought, and he never ever felt pity for himself. Or, he understood that if there was to be a different fate, I would be the one to make it happen. That was how much he trusted me.
By the time he became well and truly sick, I felt so ashamed that I hadn’t been paying more attention. Dair was…not patient with my attempts to nurse him back to health; it surprised me that he could be so gentle with me when we slept together and so rough when I was trying to help him. We wrestled and not in play this time. He outright growled at me; I thought he might even bite. My sheer terror made me rough with him in turn and I’m afraid that I hurt him with my clumsy efforts when I was only trying to make him better.
As he sickened further I felt like a panicked animal myself, like a horse trapped in a burning barn and desperately trying to find the way out. I knew it was bad, very bad, when he laid there curled in the soft moss beside the World Tree without moving and let me do with him what I would. The interest in me, in his mother, in the world slowly draining out of his eyes. The light dimming in his eyes.
The night I thought he would surely die in my arms I went mad with grief; a black madness descended over my mind. I sliced my arm deeply and tried to feed him my own blood. When that didn’t work I howled like a wolf myself; I tore the branches from the trees while my heart slammed in my chest in rage and pain and a fear so strong it wouldn’t let me think, let me rest, wouldn’t let me hold him and comfort him like I should have. Like a mate, a lover, a friend.
I flung rocks; at the Tree, at poor Maeve, at anything in my sight. All of the bitter poison in me began to flow out like water, out with the spit and tears running down my face, the blood from my arm. It hurt immensely, but scars will do that, if you tear them open to let the festering infection out. My rage against my father, my bitter anger for my brother, the shame of how Shamarra treated me poured out of me as I ran through that gorgeous place, bloody and desperate and aching. It poured out of me like my heart’s blood, the enormity of that hate and fear, and that was what saved Dair.
My pain woke the flower, and the flower woke me.
I had to be empty, empty as a shell for healing to happen, and I was so empty when I stumbled back to the clearing on that bright Midsummer morning with the fernflower in my hand. I was sure that Dair was dead, had died in the night and I hadn’t been there to comfort him. But he was raggedly, desperately clinging to life; tough as nails, as old boot leather, my Dair. He was lying in the shadow of that immense presence, his face a pallid gray and I almost couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest, it was that faint. I lifted him from the moss with my good arm and held him so gently to my chest. He was shockingly light.
When I pressed Dair to the bark of the Tree, the healing that lanced through me felt like too much, like I was a conduit for something that would burn me out. But it had also felt like that hot and melting pleasure that Dair could wring from my body with his hands, his mouth. I held his broken body against the great Tree with mine, full-length, and gave myself over to those sensations. I healed him with our mutual power. I healed him with our love, as I pressed my trembling lips to his throat as he would with me and he shuddered against me with life. Life. Us. He’d been scarcely breathing for hours, and I felt the hot tears roll down my face as he came back to me. I poured everything I had…no, I let everything pour from me into him. In that moment, I cared not at all if that pleasure killed me, if it burned me up like a moth in the candle’s flame. If he lived, only that. That was all I cared about.
Silent tears poured down my face, down Dair’s neck as that mingled pain and pleasure became a mere flood instead of a torrent, then a flow, then a trickle, just as the last of my strength failed me. I clung to him as hard as I could, never even noticing that I did so…with two whole arms. “Dair!” my mouth cried, but my heart whispered, never let go of you go again, no, no…
The first words that he said to me that I understood were him calling me an idiot, but that didn’t matter. I was an idiot, but a joyful one. Maeve could speak again, I could understand Dair, the flower was safe in Maeve’s keeping…my purpose had been, at least temporarily, fulfilled. I let go then, overwhelmed with weakness and joy, and fainted in Dair’s arms.
Days and days we spent there, in the cool and pleasant shadow of that great Tree, Alys herself, the Source of everything, the beginning and the end. Also, the end of our quest. I slowly recovered my strength there, walking; slowly at first, and then for longer and longer distances. Dair and I talked for hours, days on end, making up for lost time, perhaps. We talked about everything under the sun, we made love, we slept against each other every night, warm and safe. Until the day Alys called for us.
Dair was shocked to the core by what the goddess said; his tanned face actually blanched, and I put my arm around him and held him. But I think I knew, or a part of me did, that we didn’t share the same destiny. A part of me might have always known that we couldn’t stay together.
That what we had couldn’t last.
That night he was nearly frantic with sorrow and love and need, all mixed bittersweet like the taste of him as I held him down, pinned his hips to the soft forest floor and took his length in my mouth. I wanted to take him inside of myself in a way that neither of us could articulate, and he surged up under me, nearly choking me...but what he did was move so he could also put his mouth on me. I moaned at the heat and wetness engulfing me, and the sensation of me moaning around Dair had him shuddering and moaning too. The rightness of that connection threatened to melt my insides and I wrapped an arm around his hip and pulled him to me and took him in as deep as I dared, as he did the same, trying to match me. It was a wonder that I could think at all, sinking quickly into mindless pleasure but I was suddenly struck by some impulse, some instinct, and I reached further and gently rubbed my fingers against the entrance to his body.
Dair gasped and then did the same to me, and I was suddenly torn between his mouth and his fingers and my body didn’t know which way to move as I shuddered in place and came, surprising myself and certainly surprising him. He managed not to choke as I sat up, apologizing profusely. Dair found that funny, however. My apology. In answer, he climbed into my lap and guided one of my hands underneath him, wanting more of that sensation. Struck by another instinct, I wetted my finger in my mouth and that made it easier and better, and as my finger slipped into his body he arched against me, trying to get me in deeper. He was so warm around me, almost hot.
I would never have suspected that this would be pleasurable if I hadn’t just felt a hint of it myself. I have no idea what mad, pleasure-fogged impulse made me touch him there in the first place, but Dair loved it, rocking against me, and I thanked Alys for two good hands as I stroked him in time with his thrusts until his eyes went wide and he buried his face against my throat, shaking and spilling his seed all over the both of us.
He pulled me down into his arms and I went with him, pressed against him full length. Even our feet were entwined. I was tired and ready to sleep, boneless and unwilling to worry about what the future held for us. Even bathing could wait. Right here, right now was enough for me.
But after a time, I heard him sniffing and gulping in the velvety dark.
“Dair, are you crying?” I whispered, rubbing the satiny skin of his chest as it hitched a little.
I don’t know. Is that what this is? I’ve never done it before, he said, touching my hair, my shoulders. It feels like my heart has nowhere to go; it’s so full that it’s leaking out of my eyes...Frain, I love you. I have to leave you and you have to leave me and I love you so much it hurts.
“I know, Dair, I know.” I pressed my hot face to his shoulder. “I love you, too.” I had been saying it a hundred different ways for months, but that was the first time I’d ever said it aloud like that. Reverent.
He went wolf so that he could deal with his emotions in a way that made sense to him. He pointed his nose at his mother, the bright silver moon, and sang. He sang, and his audience was all of his mothers. He sang to her, he sang to his mother Maeve, he sang to Alys, the Great Tree, the Mother of us all. Of everything, since the world began. His song was so mournful and so full of love that the tears started in my eyes too, swelling and spilling over and burning in my throat. He sang for hours. Eventually, still weak and exhausted, I fell asleep curled in the soft moss, my fingers tangled in the fur of his flank. I expected to dream of him, my lovely Dair.
But what I dreamed about was the buffet of wingbeats, of feathers brushing against my face. I woke with the sound of rushing air in my ears even though it was still and shady in our little copse, Dair fast asleep against my side with his arm warm around me. I shivered with some emotion I couldn’t name.
Just as Alys said I would, I knew when it was time to go, to leave that soft and lovely world. My dreams had become full of fluttering wings and yearning for the open air; that pulling in my soul was becoming more and more difficult to deny. So we said our goodbyes, and I watched as Dair nuzzled at Maeve, the mother he hadn’t had a chance to know until this journey. She had become my mother too, and both our goodbyes were with voices that were thick and rough with tears.
The yearning and urgency that lay on me made the change easy enough, but still frightening. Much like healing or loving, it was like falling off a cliff, like letting go. Until Dair and I actually took to the sky, and then it was a dizzying, dazzling freedom with him at my side, red hawk and gray falcon, wingtip to wingtip. I wish that we could have taken more time to enjoy that leg of our journey together, but everything in me shouted haste, haste. We barely stopped for food or rest; no time for lovemaking, though we both dearly wanted it. The little we slept we did so entwined in each other’s arms, however.
Even so, for all our urgency we were too late. I fought as I had never fought before and slaughtered my brother’s enemies but still I lost him, still lost Tirell. Lost him and Shamarra both. That fate of mutual destruction was set as heavily on them as mine sat on me. Dair and I flew with them both and set them on their way, and that cursed thrall pull was so great that I tried to follow her even then, swearing bitterly until I could break free of it. I had my brother to bury, my lover to say goodbye to, and my sore heart twisted hard in me at both those thoughts.
I came back to Melior to find Dair weeping, sobbing over Tirell’s body, the fernflower clutched in his human hand. Others stared openly at his nakedness, his muscular beauty, and ignoring them I reached for him and held him, caressed his shoulders. Let Tirell’s folk stare, if they wished. We were coming to the end of our time together, and everything in me ached.
Dair and I comforted each other that night. We were given a rich bedchamber and clean clothing and all such comforts as we could want, but we were both still upset and fearful. I had regained my brother only to see him and Shamarra kill each other in front of my very eyes. I had also never been in an actual battle before, not like that, not on that scale. Neither had Dair, and he had been terrified. I had felt his body trembling as he pressed himself against me on the field, and from his view it had been a veritable stampede of screaming men in glittering metal and charging horses towering over him. His fear hadn’t stopped him from insane bravery though, as he had leaped and sank his teeth into the Shamarra thing’s neck and had been carried along with her rushing charge like he’d weighed nothing, like a leaf in a torrent. Attempting to stop what was fated, for my sake. My heart had gone up into my throat to see it. But here he was, unscathed; the both of us miraculously unscathed. We were both exhausted but couldn’t stop touching each other for comfort, with murmured words when one or the other would drift off and then wake with little cries from bad dreams: it’s all right, I’m here, I love you. Safe, safe here with me.
It was our first night in a real bed. We managed to sleep somewhat peacefully for a little while, and in the darkest part of the night I woke hard against him, his hands sleepily running over my sides. I dragged my fingers across his nipples to hear his little hiss of intaken breath, and in that moment I was struck by a thought. I wanted Dair in me. I wanted to be in him. I wanted him the way a woman wants a man, but…no, that wasn’t right. What other men and women might want didn’t matter in the slightest. We were just us, our love was ours and unique and I throbbed at the thought of his long fingers in me, his velvety length pushing into me, the pleasure of doing the same to him…I shuddered all over.
“I want you,” I whispered. “Want you inside.” At first, he didn’t understand what I meant, gentle confusion on his face. And then he did, and I watched his beautiful eyes dilate in arousal at the very idea.
Are you sure that’s what you want though? Frain, I’m not entirely sure it will fit, he said, a little dubiously. I wasn’t sure either, to be honest, and that it wouldn’t hurt…but I was struck by another thought and got up and went to get the little night-lamp. I lit another from it and removed the wick and the oil in it was warm and good and sweet-smelling when I rubbed a drop of it between my fingers. I set the lamp down in easy reach and oiled his fingers myself as he gulped and surged up to kiss me hard, then softly, his tongue sliding against mine, his hand sliding, fingers slick as he touched me so gently in that most vulnerable place. But I trusted him absolutely as he began to tease at my entrance, circling hotly and dipping in, just a little. I have no words for what it felt like, except that I wanted more of it and was soon pushing back against his hand.
When he slid a finger deep into my body for the first time it felt so strange but wonderful too, and there was no pain, even when he added another, just pleasure, just the pleasure of his touch. And then he did…something, brushed something deep inside me that sent a jolt of raw, hot need coursing through me. I’d never felt anything like it. I gasped. He froze in place, convinced that he’d caused me pain somehow, and I had to reassure him. “No…no, that was…” I got more oil on my fingers and anointed him with it as he shivered all over, and then wrapped my arm around his neck, tugging him into place. “Please, Dair, please. You won’t hurt me.” And he didn’t; when he entered me it was just a slow, hot slide of intense pleasure that we built together, a wave we rode together, like flying, wingtip to wingtip, hot and good and shattering. Then a little later, when I slid inside him and watched my flesh disappear into his while he shuddered and moaned with how good it felt...it was like coming home.
The fernflower was right, but not the way I thought she meant it. She said I would not stay a virgin forever, and I thought she had meant Shamarra, and what was to come. But after that night I spent in Dair’s arms neither of us were, if indeed we even had been.
Finally, we could sleep, and slept like the dead until the dawning sun reached up and blazed through the window.
I attended to my duties, and Dair helped; together we smoothed Tirell’s face, made sure his eyes were closed, straightened his limbs. I got his cloak and arranged it in such a way so that it hid somewhat the gaping wounds in his shattered chest. It was Dair that gave him the most fitting memorial of all though; he spread those seeds and gave my brother the beauty of the goddess’s place. He brought the glory of the Tree to the center of Melior’s beaten mud, the green ferns curling over Tirell’s body and then exploding into flower, into those hot fire colors. The rightness of it made my chest ache.
We left after that, trudging with heavy hearts to the west. It was nearly the last day.
We ran together, wolf and dog, an ancient prophecy fulfilled. We ran and ran, like we could outrun sorrow, outrun fate. And when we were too tired and hungry to go on she appeared to us, the Mother of us all, in the guise of a peasant woman. Her apron was full of bread and meat and she sat with us as we ate, petting my silky fur and Dair’s rougher coat. Every time we grew hungry she was there, caring for us even then. I think a part of her sorrowed with us.
Before I was ready for it to happen, we reached the lake.
I warned him of how dangerous it was, but I needn’t have; Dair walked stiff-legged and anxious, the way a wolf will if he doesn’t trust his footing, his fur all bushed out in fear.
I’ve seen this place before. On the old woman’s loom. Oh, Frain…
I assumed my human form and he followed. I held him and tried to explain what I myself scarce understood; that this act would be the last healing, that I must become the swan in order to fulfill my destiny, that I loved Shamarra, I did. I had no choice about it, it was the hand of fate laid on me and it was so heavy and I was so tired, and part of me hated her still. But the swan wouldn’t hate her, couldn’t: the poor broken creature could be made whole again, and together Shamarra and I could heal the world.
I told him all of this and held him hard to me, for I loved him dearly and wanted to stay with him because our love was pure and whole already, untainted by old hurts and hatreds and scars. Complete unto itself, it needed no healing. It was healing, in its purest form. But to stay with Dair would be to turn my back on all the world in favor of my own happiness, and would that not turn bitter, in time? And I would still be enthralled, a cutting chain around my heart so that I couldn’t give it to Dair in its entirety, as he deserved. But by Alys, it was difficult to see the tears standing in his wild, beautiful eyes. My own were on his face, as I leaned in to nuzzle at him, and kiss him, and hold him hard.
Love you, love you, he whispered in my ear. And then there was nothing more to be said. I let him go; the hardest thing I have ever done. I turned my back on him and waded into the lake, and met my destiny.
I didn’t so much change form as the change exploded over me, sharp and wild and I was the swan, and it was right. When I was the hawk, I felt close to the right form, but this…
I spread my white wings, and flew.
Under me, I heard Dair singing; he sang of love and loss, he sang me to the edge of the world and beyond. Fly free, fly free. And in this form, I understood his song and could respond.
Farewell, Dair my love, farewell; I’ll love you to the end of the very world, and I pray this isn’t the end for us. Surely this isn’t the end. No matter what form I wear, I’ll never forget you. I trumpeted it to the wide sky, joy and love and sorrow all mixed bittersweet, and then I felt that pull on my heart…but this time, this time I went gladly to meet Shamarra, even through the pain. The hate was gone from my spirit, and my only sorrow was leaving Dair, my lovely Dair.
It struck me like a thunderbolt just how fortunate I really was, in spite of all the pain, all those years of strife, as I left Vale for the last time.
I learned to love him, and all else followed.
***
I am Dair, and I have come to the end of a long journey.
The years that I spent spreading the seeds of the fireflower were good ones, happy ones, even if they were lonely ones too. I roamed the land as the wind would take me, both in Isle and in Vale, spreading the fireflower’s seed as it seemed right to. Tirell’s grave was the first place; the barrow of a True King is a place of power.
As the years passed, Tirell’s young son Tinnian ascended the throne, and in turn his son Abadon. Lonn D’Aeric and Shammara’s peace, the Swan’s Peace, lay warm over the land, although there were few then that could remember Prince Frain of Melior. That name became lost to time.
I missed him terribly, love and desire undying in me.
As the years passed, I grew more and more restless, and one day I left Vale for good. For a time it seemed as if the seed pod would be limitless, but one day I discovered that there was actually very little of the precious stuff left, and an even stronger sense of wanderlust came over me. I found my heart set on the path that Frain and I travelled all those years ago, and I decided to go back to the beginning. I went to visit my father.
I hadn’t seen Trevyn since the day that Frain and I had started on our great quest, and when he saw me he held me so tightly in his strong arms, even though he seemed much smaller than I remembered. Trevyn was still taller than me, lithe and straight and strong and didn’t look a day older, but he was so towering in my puppy memories of him.
“He came to me, before he left Isle altogether, our Lonn D’Aeric,” he told me that night, as I ate a simple supper with him. “He loved you, so much. I’m sure he loves you still…yes, even now,” he said, catching the look in my eye. “He came to me as a mighty swan, white as driven snow. He barely remembered that he had been Frain, but he couldn’t even find words, for how he felt about you. How much he loved you. He talked of little else.” He reached and touched my hand. “My son, I have a feeling in my heart that your Swan Lord will fly across the great water from Elwestrand and find you again. I don’t know when, or how, but look for him in the dawn. I’m nearly sure of it, Dair.” I had my doubts of that, but I didn’t argue with him. He hadn’t seen the joyful light that had burned in Frain when he went to Shamarra.
Before I left his home, I spread the seeds there too. The hearth of a True King is almost as powerful as the barrow of one, and I anchored another point of magic in the world.
My next stop was the little house that had belonged to my mother. It was near to collapsing, but that was all right. That was only nature reclaiming what was hers, as was just. I opened the seedpod and spread a bit of the precious contents and watched in satisfaction as the ferns took root and grew right through the slats of the floor. The flowers looked like drops of fire against the dark and rotten wood. Now this place would be connected to her, the magic flowing strongly as she guarded the roots of the Great Tree.
I crossed that great desert, and this time waited patiently for Alys to send the rains to find me, just as she fed Frain and I on that last day. I laid on my back in human form and let that great torrent of cool water wash over me, my mouth open for it, and it tasted like the water of her place. The Source.
I stopped for a time and visited with the people who lived on the edge of the sacred lands. By then I was good at being a man, and while I couldn’t speak to them I smiled and gestured and they welcomed me, and fed me, and gave me a safe place to sleep. Soon after I left the next day a thicket of fernflowers sprang up and unfurled their rich green fronds, growing strong in the middle of what functioned as their village square.
By this time there was only the tiniest amount left in the seed pod...but I knew just where it should go.
I ran on tireless legs through the grasslands, sniffing a riot of smells, of everything exploding to life. I could have flown, of course, but the form I was born in was always the one I was most comfortable in, and I wanted to feel the good earth under my four paws.
Spring was in the air, and it smelled just as I remembered it from all those years ago. By the time I reached the fens it was in full flower. I was half-afraid that love and time had put a burnished glow on my memories of that place, but it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered: green hillocks with clear, deep streams cutting through them and a mighty hush, broken only by the sounds of wind and water and birds. The humming of new life breaking out all over.
The wheel of time and seasons turns, and turns again.
It didn’t take me as long to find that place as I was afraid it would. The remains of our little campfire were long, long gone, of course, but I stopped near where I thought it might be. My sense of direction has always been good, but I waited for nightfall to be sure. Everything looks different by moonlight, and the moon had been nearly full then.
After three nights of searching, I found the place. The little hillock with the depression in the center that I had brought Frain to, that first night that my arousal had burned in me, the first night that I realized it was more than friendship I felt for him. It had slammed into me and through me like a hot tide, and impulsive youngster that I was, I had jumped up and gone scouting for this very place. Once I had found it I had run back to the fire in joy and grabbed Frain’s hand, and the rest…well.
I turned human and ran my hands over the soft grasses of the safe little bower I had found for us. I took the fernflower’s seed pod from my mouth.
I think, my dear, that our long journey is finally done, I whispered to her, cradling her gently in my hands. She made a soft sleepy sound of acknowledgement; she had grown very tired of late. I sprinkled the last, the very last of her seeds in that beautiful place where Frain and I had first made love, and I fancied I could still smell a hint of sex, the good warm smell of us together on the spring breeze. My heart ached in my chest even as I felt that joy again. I placed the fernflower’s empty seed pod in the center of the ferns, so she could sleep there while her children burst forth in a riot of color.
I think I must have been very tired too, so tired that I didn’t remember doing it, but I curled up there in the soft grass with Frain in my nose and in my heart and fell into a deep sleep, watched over by my moon mother.
I woke to pale dawn light, and the sound of heavy wingbeats on the warm wind.
I stood up and rubbed my eyes, and there he was, just as sure as if I had called him to me. As a swan he was enormous, pure white but touched by the gold of dawn until he was bright and burnished with it. An overwhelming sense of awe sent me to my knees; Lonn D’Aeric was glorious, otherworldly.
As the Swan Lord he was stunning, the stuff of dreams. But when he shifted to his human form, to my rusty-haired, freckled Frain, the tears started in my eyes and blurred his beautiful face. I couldn’t look into his eyes, at what I might see there, so I looked at my own hands instead. They were shaking and I couldn’t get them to stop.
Swan Lord… I addressed him, and then halted awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Oh Dair, you great idiot, look at me,” he said then, and of a sudden he was on his knees too, was slapping my hands apart so that he could throw himself into my arms, all warm sweet breath and warm brown eyes, beloved eyes, and his had tears in them too. He held me hard, gripping with his strong hands. He whispered in my ear, “What is my name, Dair? I wasn’t sure if I could still change back to a man…oh, name me, my love, give me my name again.”
Oh Frain, Frain… As my tears spilled, as he slanted his mouth against mine.
When we broke apart for air, I realized that I had worked my fingers into his hair without realizing it. I pulled back a bit to look at him properly.
I’ve hoped and dreamed…I’ve dreamed so often that you came back to me, but…why are you here? Why now? I nuzzled at the soft skin behind his ear, our bare chests pressed together, unable to resist having as much contact as possible.
“You’ve finished what we started all those years ago, Dair…our journey is done. We’ve come full circle, don’t you see? Your destiny was just as important as mine; your quest made mine possible. We three brought the magic back.” He beamed at me in joy. At his mention of ‘we three’ there was a little prickling in the vicinity of my heart.
But you love Shamarra. That prickling grew a little stronger. You love her, she’s your mate and yet you’re here holding me, kissing me instead… That sensation began to turn to real pain, and I pushed him away in my hurt and confusion. I’ll ask again: why are you here?
Frain looked at me with pain of his own and let me put a little distance between us. “I will always love Shamarra. She is the moon to my sun, as you know. I was fated to love her. And that’s the key. Don’t you understand, Dair?” He reached out to hold my hand and I let him, let him run his thumb softly across the backs of my fingers like he was trying to communicate through touch.
“I was fated to love her, destined, but you I chose. Do you understand me? I chose you to love. My choice. And I make the same one over and over, always. You. Like I told your father Trevyn, I learned to love you, and all else followed. All healing came from that; mine, yours, Tirell’s, Shamarra’s, the very world’s. It was you, my beloved Dair, it was all because of you.” He squeezed my hand gently, so gently, and brushed the knuckles of his other hand along my cheek. “Oh Dair…I came to be with you. There will be times that I’ll have to go back to Shamarra, for a little while…but I came back for you. That’s why I’m here. I love you, I love you so much I ache with it, I’ve missed you so much…” Pain in his face. His hands were trembling too. “Dair, I never, ever wanted to let you go. I never did.”
This time, it was me who flung myself into his arms. I bowled him right over onto his back in that soft spring grass as his pain turned to joy and he laughed, a lovely sound. I muffled his laughter with my mouth, my tongue, until he was making happy sounds of a very different kind, equally lovely.
I touched him, ran my hands all over him and he touched me the same way, warm hands re-learning each other in a bed of rich spring grass, there under the golden swan’s sun in a mild blue sky.
End
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