Paul looks into the dawn

Paul rolled over, turning his back to the pink window and its piercing dawn. The days were already growing shorter, though even to an elf the change was imperceptible as yet. But he loved the sunrise, and he would soon rise himself to watch it as he did every day, no matter how short the night and how little he had slept.

Still, he found himself looking forward to the dark half of the year, and especially early winter, when the nights were longer than needed for sleep, and an elf and his wife would be obliged to find something else to do with their time in bed.

Catan too had her back to the dawn, but this was how she always slept. Her body’s memory still believed he was her sister, who always took up more than her fair share of the bed. He hoped that when it had learned the habit of his presence, she would instead sleep snuggled up against him, but for now she slept perilously close to the edge of the bed.

The best he could do was to snuggle up against her back – not that this was an unpleasant way to lie, not at all. He would simply have to be careful not to wake her… and not to wake himself too much.

He ran his hand down her side and over her hip, feeling out the fire in her. It always sank away when she slept, but he knew now that it was not hiding. It was simply that it was not a leaping, climbing fire such as he had in him, but a soaking fire, an imbuing fire, the like of which no other elf had.

His father had worried that he would not be satisfied with a mere woman who had a certain odd fire in her, but Paul had quite forgotten that he had ever desired a lady with water nature. Cat’s dark fire suited him perfectly.

It was so perfect, it almost felt like it was water. He slid his hand onto her belly, and her fire felt like dew on his skin, cool and clear. He paused to contemplate its nature: it was a small drop of dew slipping down a blade of grass, gathering up others to form a fat drop, rolling into still others until it grew so swollen and heavy that it fell – plink – into his palm.

Its nature was so obvious to him this morning that it seemed a wonder he had never noticed it before.

Unless it had not been there before.

He rolled away from her and sat up, startled.

Could it – ? But they had been sleeping! Of course, it had to happen some time… And perhaps it would not require any concentration on Cat’s part. And certainly not on his.

He carefully slid his legs out from beneath the sheets and began to rise, but Cat gasped as if startled herself and turned over onto her back.

Now he was startled and panicked. He did not want her to wake now. He would certainly say something stupid. He needed time to think.

Cat still slept, however, and he was able to climb out of the bed.

He needed to talk to his father… but his father would still be sleeping off the effects of scarcely having slept the night before.

The dawn light was harsh and hotly pink, promising another hazy-​​white sky, another baking day. A drop of dew would not last an hour in such an oven.

He needed to talk to Flann.