Title: The Waking 1/2
Author: Mad Poetess (abbyty@lycos.com)
Rating: R
Pairing: Giles/f, though it also includes Giles/Ethan
Spoilers: All of BtVS through Chosen
Distribution: List archives, my place; others, please ask.
My place: http://www.hawksong.com/~mpoetess/stakes
Disclaimer: Joss owns BtVS and its characters; I, sadly, do not. Theodore Roethke's poem of the same title inspired the story's title and epigraph. I suspect Shel Silverstein deserves an apology at some point, as well.
Notes: Written for Wolfling's Giles-fic-a-thon, whose index is here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wolfling/156930.html. Many thanks to Magpie and Justhuman for beta-above-and-beyond.

Summary: "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow; I learn by going where I have to go." Giles is loved.

Opening epigraph from *The Waking* by Theodore Roethke; direct Willow dialogue from *Grave* by David Fury.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
~Theodore Roethke

When he was eight years old, he carved his name into her skin with a penknife. She was green and wet with spring, and the cut burned deep, bled clear. When she'd finished screaming, she thought, 'So this is love, then.'

He'd been just another boy, one day ago, moving like a clumsy squirrel over her body until he found a place to wedge himself and read. In the autumn, like every child before him, faceless in her memory, he'd circled her endlessly. Bucket in hand, he had picked her cast-off seeds from the earth to pierce and string them for his games. He'd never looked up at her, nor had she looked down at him.

Now, though, he had scored her with his letters. Scarred her with his name. His precious, powerful human name -- for names were magic, he whispered to her as he cut -- forever printed on her flesh. It buzzed at her constantly, once the pain had faded, like bees had set up housekeeping in her trunk. 'Love,' she told the kestrel who nested alone in her uppermost branches, as she thought it might appreciate the advice, 'itches.'

This was good to know about love. As were these things: the sharpness of his nose, the soft wave of his hair like new leaves opening to the light. The way he'd run through the grass, arms outstretched, airplane noises sputtering from his mouth. Small play-soiled hands on her boughs as he climbed, up and up. The sureness of his grip that made her, in those moments, the tallest, strongest tree that ever grew.

Everything she could learn was good to know about love. It didn't happen often for her kind -- perhaps because there were so few *of* her kind -- or did that go the other way round? Her mother had scarcely had the time to tell her much about these things, anyway, in her one short season growing before she'd been flung out into the world, curled tiny and safe in the darkness of her prickly shell. She had to learn as she went.

She couldn't know for sure that this feeling, this itch, was even love, the willow at the end of the garden pointed out. It could be melancholy, or scrofula, or indigestion -- those human moods, so hard to tell apart. So undignified, all of them, and fleeting. Not made at all for creatures such as them.

'You know nothing.' She rustled her leaves at it. 'Nor am I a creature such as you.' Shaking herself loose from her skin, she walked and stood beneath the other tree -- hands planted fast on slim green hips. 'Nothing like you at all.' She had eyes, for instance, deep reddish-brown, to glare up at it with. 'And I know what love is.'

The willow laughed at her, in the slow silent language of plants, the language in which you could scream as a boy wrote love into your skin and not be heard at all. 'Boys climb in trees, and swing from us, and grow, and the men they become forget that they ever knew us, if we are lucky. Boys do not love trees, and trees should not love boys. This is no less true for trees with human feet, than us with only roots. I am older than you. I know.'

She turned her back on it, leaves tumbling from her hair. Not worth arguing with, that one. It didn't understand. Could be a thousand years older than her, rings packed so close inside its trunk that you couldn't see where one ended and the next began, roots grown down to the heart of the world, and it would never understand. Of course she loved him. How could she not, when Rupert Giles loved *her*?

She was his tree now, bound to him by his own hand. His name lived in her flesh, and who would give away their magic to someone they didn't love?

*****

Rupert ran away when he was ten. Oh, not very far away. There wasn't very far to run -- forest in one direction, town in the other where everyone knew whose son he was, and the only way out was a rail ticket he hadn't the money to buy, even if they'd let him. He wasn't a fool; he wasn't *really* leaving.

But he ran a little way, anyway. Just enough to be out of the house, away from his father's study. Away from words that fell on his chest and crushed the breath out as surely as the fifty pound barbell had when he'd made the mistake of playing about by himself at the sports complex. Tradition. Honour. Responsibility. Black and heavy as an iron weight. Too much; too hard to hold it up.

He packed a rucksack in the kitchen. Bottled milk and apples; jam sandwiches. The things he'd sometimes take just for a walk outside, to spend an afternoon in the sun. But now he was running away, and these things were more important, somehow. They had to last, had to keep him safe while he hid. While he figured things out.

In the middle of the night, he clambered out of his window, bundled against the cold in a pullover, jacket, boots. He could have made it down the steps and out the back door without being caught, probably, but the window seemed right. No need to pass bedrooms with lights that might be on and ears that might hear him creeping. No study door gaping wide, smelling of book-dust and destiny.

Out the window; down the trellis. Across the wide expanse of lawn, dew-slick in the night, and up. To his safe place. His thinking place. His tree.

It was dark, but Rupert didn't need to see, to climb. Not this tree. Not these boughs whose every gnarl he knew with the memory of his hands, where to grasp, where to brace, where to lean. It seemed as he climbed as if the branches almost fell into place, there before he even remembered which one to reach for. Seemed, too, when he glanced down, like they closed in below him, so he *couldn't* fall, even if he slipped.

He climbed high -- not higher than he'd gone before, but higher than he'd ever stayed to settle in and sit -- and then he did just that. Hung his rucksack on a half-broken branch, leaned against the trunk, and wrapped his arms around one knee.

"They can't make me do what they want," he whispered. Not to himself, exactly, but not to anyone real. Just to give them shape, and power, and weight, these things that he was saying. "They can't. I *won't*. It's my life."

>From where he sat, he could see the sky overhead as if it were painted on his bedroom ceiling, like he could stand up on a chair and a pile of books and touch it with his fingertips. Stars winked on and off in the blue-black, as the thinnest, highest branches swayed above him, gently.

"Don't want to look after some stupid..." He stopped, grinding his teeth, then went on. Not as if anyone could hear him out here and chide him for his language. "...stupid *bloody* girl somewhere. Don't want his ugly scratchy suits and his library and his people in London that he has to go see and stays away for weeks on end. Don't want to be what *he* is. I want to be what *I* am."

Whatever that might be. He wanted to grow up to be a pilot, with flying goggles and a beat-up leather jacket. Or a fireman, maybe, with a bright red engine to drive. Or he could have a shop like Mr. Parker's, and wear a blue and white striped apron as he stood behind the counter, wrapping up fish in crisp clean paper to sell.

It didn't matter, now, what Rupert did when he became a man. He wasn't *supposed* to decide now. They said that, in school. He could grow up to be anything he wanted to be. Prime Minister, even. Or a taxi driver.

They weren't allowed to decide for him. Not his father, not his mother. Not even grandmum, who wore blue jeans when she took him riding, and always played conkers with him when he asked. Not even her; he wasn't going to be what they wanted just because she'd been it, before his father had. Nobody got to say what Rupert Giles was but Rupert Giles.

"I won't." He pulled an apple from his bag and crunched it soundly, gnashing his teeth at them all. "Whatever they try to make me do, I won't ever be what they expect."

The fruit was dry in his throat, though, when he tried to swallow. He set it aside in the crook of two branches, and leaned his head back against the tree. He stared at the stars for a very long time, before he finally fell asleep.

He woke to sunlight and the screeching of birds, and the sound of his mother's voice calling his name, sharp and tuneless with worry. He watched her for a moment as she stood in the garden, right beneath his tree. Surely she could see him up here, same as he could see between the branches himself? But it didn't seem so, for she called his name again, peering upwards, then shook her head and started for the road.

His legs were stiff from sitting here so long, and cold, despite the layers of clothes. He'd be in more trouble, too, the longer he hid himself away. "I won't do it," Rupert whispered again, a promise to himself. "I'll be what I want to be."

Then he grabbed his bag and slowly climbed back down.

*****

Seasons passed quickly when you were in love, she discovered. Oh, the white flowers candled into bloom on her limbs no sooner than they always did, and the leaves fell no faster in the autumn. Nothing changed in the turning of the world -- but boys grew faster than the world could turn.

Time moved now with the speed of outgrown shoes, of shirts with sleeves too short, and long arms reaching for a higher branch. He *changed*, her boy, so very quickly that, watching him, she lost track of sunlight, snow, the length of days. She noted them, but only in passing. Only to remember, for instance, that the cold snap in the air meant he would bring fresh apples again, strange sweet fruit so different from her own, to eat beneath her shade.

She counted them, though, the seasons, so she would always know how old he was. You had to know these things -- had to know everything, after all, about the one you loved.

Six autumns after the spring that he first cut her, Rupert introduced her to a friend.

He'd brought boys there before, to climb and play, kick at footballs or throw sticks up to knock the pricklies from her branches and harvest the auburn seeds that lay inside. He wasn't friendless, not at all, though there was a distance between himself and his playmates. He was paler, spent more time indoors than they did, in that room whose walls -- she'd seen when she'd crept up rootless and feet-footed in the night to peek inside -- were made of books. But he never lacked for company, those days that he didn't choose to be alone.

This one, though, was different. This was no boy, for one, and nothing like any girl-child she had seen before. Tall. Strong and long of limb -- taller than Rupert even, for all that he'd been growing like a sapling in the sun. Her hair was short, black, curled like lambswool close to her scalp, and her skin was as brown as Rupert's was pale. Twice that, even, plum-blue shadows in the hollows of her throat.

The tree didn't quite know what to make of this stranger, or the way that Rupert glanced up at her through his lashes, uncertain. Looking for approval, the way he would when he walked with his father through the garden and named the names of the handful of plants that humans thought were the only ones who had magic in them. A sharpness, an echo of the burning of his cut, tried to strike at the tree from inside, made her uppermost leaves shake nervously in the windless sky.

There was a word she had, in her notes on love, called jealousy. She thought she understood what it might mean, but couldn't tell if that was this. Love -- despite the willow who never stopped smirking at her -- she knew, and learned more about every day, but this... This shaky, fearful feeling would not give itself a name, just yet.

Then Rupert pointed at his name, on her skin where it still burned still strong and clear. "This is my favourite tree," he explained, and this girl, she stooped to look at it, and smiled.

Then, still smiling, the girl looked up, and bent her knees beneath her, and jumped. Straight up, her long arms high above her head. Strong fingers grasped and held a branch so high that Rupert could only reach it by two steps worth of climbing. Then she swung herself up -- so fast that she made the tree feel windblown in her wake -- and hooked her legs around the branch. Grinned happily at Rupert as she hung there, upside down.

Sudden as the ending of a summer storm, the tree's fear disappeared. So quickly that she grasped at its ghost, desperate to note it down so the next time that it happened, she could learn what it was. But it was gone, even the memory softening to relief. Something about the sound of Rupert's voice, the bright crescent of the girl-child's open mouth... Like the feeling itself, the reasons for its sudden absence could not be touched, could not be pinned in place. She only knew that whatever the newcomer was, it was nothing dangerous. Not to Rupert, not to the tree herself. Nothing that could take him away from her.

The girl didn't play with Rupert often; for long weeks she would be gone from the house just as his father often was, and when she was there, she spent more time within the book-walled room than Rupert did. Even her outside hours were spent more often running down the paths, or along the grassy verge, Rupert's father standing by the road, arms crossed. Watching.

But some afternoons, some evenings, the two of them would be free at the same time, and would chase each other through the garden, laughing, though the girl would always win. She would do chin-ups from a branch, while Rupert sat below and read aloud. Sometimes the girl would read, the warm, smooth up-and-down of her voice like a small song in the garden, as she retold the adventures of pirates and caliphs, and agreed with Rupert that this sort of book was much better than Fleisshocher's Treatise on Thaumaturgy, whatever that might be. Once, they both put down the book, and climbed up very high, to look at the nest where the kestrel, mated now for years, had laid her eggs, then climbed back down without disturbing them.

One night in early autumn, conkers just about to fall, Rupert's father and the girl drove away down the road. Rupert waved at them from the grass, then ran back to the garden to read, bookmark neatly placed at the spot where they had stopped last time. "It's not cheating," he muttered aloud. "I'll just read the same bit over when Solange gets back."

Two nights later, his father returned -- alone. Silent as he entered the house, his face the empty grey of long-dead leaves.

A day went by, and no one left the house. Rupert's face didn't even appear in the book-room window, bored and longing for the outside, as it often did. There was only silence, silence, from the house -- so heavy that it seemed to escape the walls, push outwards to the garden, to the grass and trees and birds. Even the wind grew somber and still.

Shadows lengthened, pooled and crept, the only thing that moved -- then finally, an hour after dark, he came. Her boy, running from the back door like a maddened bull had once run through from the fields, long ago, head down and nothing in his way that seemed to matter. She was sure he would hurt himself before he stopped in time, trip and fall, or failing that, smash his forehead flat against her trunk.

But he did stop, standing there beneath her, breathing hard. He looked up, and if his father's face had been bleached of colour, this must be where it had all escaped to. Red and white, blotches high on his cheeks, and a fury so dark in his grey-green eyes that they seemed to roil with blackness, like a thunderhead.

It frightened her, an icy shiver-shake like nothing she had felt before, not like that fleeting nameless, long-gone fear. She had never seen this anger in his face; in any human's face, in all her years. She'd seen it in the sky, when lightning slashed it open, in the wind, the night it raged so hard that it ripped a tiny poplar from the soil, roots and all. But not in him.

He drew back his arm, and for a moment, a second, she knew only mindless terror. Of him, of his hand, of this thing in his eyes. Of love itself, that it could hide this horror in its name, that she had never guessed. For what else could it be but love, to be this strong? She'd seen hatred on the faces of men, and it was paltry, weak, compared to this.

Then he hit her, hard, and everything came clear. Like that moment of beginning when his knifeblade touched her skin, but deeper. Sharper. Calmer, and the terror was gone. It didn't hurt at all, when he did it again. And again. Didn't hurt her flesh, anyway, though inside, every cell, every ring, the ghost-shape of her two-legged self, all ached as if the world had fallen on her, crushing her to dust. He hit until his fingers bled, until his knuckles split, until the thunderclouds in his eyes burst open and the rain washed down his face, and she understood, for he was hers, and so was all his hurt.

She wanted more than ever, more than she'd ever dared to want, to step out of herself in front of him. To kneel on two legs by his side, and wrap her arms around him, hold him tight. Rock him as she'd seen his mother do, or some child's mother in those days when they were all the same, until he quieted in her embrace, and fell asleep.

But that, she couldn't do. One thing -- the *first* thing, the most important thing, her mother had taught her when she grew inside her shell, was this: 'You do not let them see. Not men. Birds, bugs, badgers, other trees, they know what you are. They will not harm. But men must never see you wearing their form, not when they are clear of mind and will not take you for a dream. No man, no woman, no matter how kind they seem. No matter if you love him, or he you. Humanity is our undoing, our danger, for we are not what they are. They know it, but do not understand how it can be, and it drives them mad.'

She suspected her mother of dramatics, in her moments of clearer thought. There were stories in Rupert's books about her kind, or near enough, and true they ended badly, most of them, but... surely not all. Or even so, she could be different, be the first... But it was too strong, this rule of being. An older, colder fear than any other, written in her cells. She couldn't show herself to him, went limb-locked when she even thought of it.

So she gave him what she was, what she could. Strength and stillness, and a hard surface to batter himself against, until he finally slid to the earth. Until he finally slept, there amid the moss and fallen twigs, and she could slip free without him seeing, to press her lips against his forehead.

*****

"Happy...ow...damn..." Must have been moles in the lawn again. Really... subtle moles, with really tiny hills that looked just like flat grass in the dark. "Happy..." Or he could just be drunker than he thought. Was it *possible* to be drunker than that? "...sodding birthday to me..." Rupert toasted the back garden with his half-empty bottle of Strongbow. If it'd been the *first* half-empty bottle, he'd have been sure of the moles-in-the-grass theory, but given it was the second -- no, third...

Bed. Bed would be good. Bed was, he felt distinctly sure, soft, and clean, and much warmer than the chill of a night's walk home from the pub. Barry'd offered him a lift, but Barry'd had more to drink than Rupert had. That'd be a happy sodding birthday, all right, neck broken in a ditch somewhere. Or maybe it'd be the best going-away-to-uni present he'd ever get; he wasn't entirely sure.

He'd started across the flagstones -- moles beneath those too? -- towards the back door, digging in his pocket for his keys, when he noticed the light on in the study. His father was still up. That was all he needed, the look he'd get for stumbling in past midnight, pissed to the wind. The speech he'd get in the morning about responsibility, how he wouldn't be able to booze it up in Oxford, and he ought to be studying now, preparing, not staying out all hours of the night with his friends.

Not a speech he hadn't heard before, these last few months. They couldn't leave off, it seemed. School was out; it was summer. His last days as a free man, was what these were supposed to be, before... Before he reported to Simon Weatherby in the Council office at St. John's College, and turned himself over, lock, stock and barrel, to his destiny.

"Des...destiny...right. Ha, bloody ha..." He didn't particularly like the sound he made when he laughed drunk -- high and giggling, and hard to stop, once he started. Rupert turned back off the path, stumbling away from the house and the lights and... destiny, whatever the hell that was. One night, at least, he could be free of that, before he started packing up his things tomorrow morning, right?

Quite a few molehills over here, as well. He found that watching his feet worked fairly well for not tripping over them. Molehills, or feet. Made him a bit dizzy, looking down as he walked, but seemed a fair trade. At least until he ran bang-smack into something tall and broad and harder than his forehead.

He looked up, dizzier than ever. "Oh, hello there, tree, old thing. We must stop meeting like this, you know. People will say we're in love." He warbled a bit of the song to it, but the tree, unsurprisingly, didn't come back with the girl's part, and Rupert wasn't about to go for the high notes. Instead, he gave it a half-hearted hug round the middle, then rubbed at his forehead and slid down to sit with his back against the trunk.

"S'my birthday, did you know?" he asked aloud, then took a swig of cider. "They bought me a great big booze-up in town, to celebrate. Eighteen, free at last, kiss the girls and make 'em cry, and off into the world you go, little man."

And not a one of his cheering mates knew that off into the world meant off to a life his parents had planned out for him before he was even born. There was a *retirement account* set up in his name already, for Christ's sake. With the balance paid out to his family if anything... happened to him, before he went old and grey and got... he giggled again, but it didn't sound so bad this time. The booze softened his ears, maybe. Before he went old and grey and got put out to stud.

"What if I want to get put out to stud now, eh? What would they do if I...I.. put Annie Mayrose up the duff and had to settle down, right now? Send me off to Oxford anyway? Buy her off, take it out of my retirement funds?" Not that there was a chance of that; they'd been careful and they were neither of them fools. Not much chance of Annie Mayrose settling down with him even if it had happened; no love between them, just friendship and a bit of fun, now finished by mutual, sensible agreement.

"We're so very, very sensible, we are. We Gileseses." He rather thought one too many esses had slipped out of his mouth, but perhaps there was just an echo. "Sens-si-ble." He gave the tree a small, fond pat. "We're like you. Tall and stodgy and... steadfast. That's the word. Stuck in place. 'Cept when our dads say go, it's the smart thing to do. Then we go. 'Cos it's the smart thing to do. Sensible."

Even if... He stared at the third of his bottle left, then drank it down, letting the bottle fall with a clink against a half-buried root. Even if they'd promised themselves that they wouldn't. That they'd be.... What? What had he thought that he wanted, back then? "Ha! I was going to fly a plane. Or maybe a fire engine. Drive one. 'Cos you can't fly those."

Even if. Sensible, even if. Because those were kid promises, weren't they. And he wasn't a kid anymore. Hadn't been a kid for a long time, really; today was just the day it went legal. "Happy Birthday to me, then. Happy off to destiny." Rupert gave the tree another pat. "I'll miss you when I go, old tree. You're a good tree. Best conkers ever."

He reached for a drink that wasn't there, and found himself staring at his empty hand for a second longer than felt quite right. Closed his eyes for another second, just to break the spell. Just a bit of dark and cool to sort things out. Seemed like he was falling into it, tumbling down into the dark, the tree against his back the only solid thing, and even that felt soft enough to lean his head against.

When he opened his eyes again, the lids were heavy. Everything was heavy. Wet cotton filled his skull. Couldn't be morning yet. Too soon to be hung over. Not fair. "Nah...fair," he murmured, with a tongue that didn't want to move. But it didn't hurt like a hangover, just felt warm and soft, despite the night air's nip. Comfortable. No reason to move at all. Wasn't dawn -- the sky was dark above, streaked white with blurry stars.

He sat there, looking but not looking. Eyelids drifting open and closed as they pleased. Floating, like they had that holiday on the river: his father at the oar, and grandmum with a hat to shade her face curled up in the end of the boat with Rupert, stroking his hair as he dozed.

Someone was stroking his hair, though she didn't smell of peppermint and lemon, like his grandmother had. More like... nothing. Like tree bark and leaves wet with dew. Nothing that wasn't always there. It came to him dimly that he was dreaming, but he leaned into the touch anyway. Felt good against his scalp, and tracing down his face.

When it touched his lips, his eyes flickered open, and he knew he was dreaming for sure.

Wide eyes stared down at him, the rich red brown of conker shells, from a woman's pale, fey face. Pale, fey, *green* face. Her hair was green too, but a darker shade, bushing out around her face, long and thick and tangled with leaves. It fell past bare, green shoulders, and brushed the tops of... had to be a dream. Small, high breasts, the nipples just a shadow-smudge darker than the rest of her skin.

"You're a very pretty dream," he told her clearly, amazed he could make his lips move. He usually couldn't in his sleep; not at his own command, anyhow. "I like you."

She smiled, and her teeth were white, at least. Small and even, and her tongue was... Rupert peered. Yes. Green, in her thin-lipped, wide green mouth. Of course. "Stay?" she said, and her voice was the sound of wind through leaves. It seemed to come more from the air around him than from her moving lips.

He grinned back at her, and lifted his arm a bit only to let it flop heavily back down at his side. "M' not going anywhere at the moment, love."

Her eyes came very close as she knelt down in front of him, peering into his face, and she frowned. "Stay?" she said again. "Stay here."

As things often do in dreams, the words fell with another sort of meaning, one he couldn't mistake or talk his way around. "I can't. I wish I could. But you know. Destiny. Duty. Something else that starts with a D." Delirium tremens, he thought with another half-giggle.

She just kept frowning at him. Crossed her arms, even, over those pretty naked breasts. An unpleasant echo of his father's frown, the few times he'd dared to bring up the idea that he might want something else besides an Oxford education and a retirement fund.

Seemed like she'd stare and frown until this dream went sour and all he'd have to show for it in the morning would be an aching head and the memory of yet another disappointed face, if he didn't say something soon. "I--- all right, you caught me then. It's bollocks, all of it. Duty, destiny, d-thing I can't remember. It's just... there's this girl." His dream-girl's eyes widened at that, then narrowed. "No, not like that, sweetheart. I haven't even met her. Just this girl, somewhere. And someday, she's going to need me. Need somebody, anyway. Ah, look, I'm drunk, all right, and dreaming and, and I can't talk straight. This girl, this destiny thing's got her by the throat and she's got no choice, and somebody needs to look after her, or..."

God, the quiet in that house, and the words nobody would say. The staccato explanations and then nothing, 'til the silence and his dad's grey face weighed down twice as hard as all those d-words ever had, and Rupert couldn't take it any longer, had to run out in the night. Take out his helpless anger on... this very tree he leaned against, it was.

"Somebody needs to look after her, or she'll die. Can't let that happen, you know? Not again."

His father had told him as much, later, with the words he hadn't said, as much as those he had. Someone had to look after them, and if tradition meant nothing to him, wouldn't Rupert think of that? Who better than someone who knew the things the Gileses knew? Like how it felt to fail, and lose the one you had.

"Tradition, destiny...pfaha. We're the best there is at it because we know what happens when you fuck it up."

A warm green finger traced his lips again, but this time, covered them. Hushing him. Probably all for the best, really. He didn't want to hear himself say this stuff.

Then... it seemed as if he drifted again, but it couldn't have been long. A second. Two. Warm finger on his mouth became warm lips. Warm fingers free to move beneath his jacket, then once she had it off his shoulders, start on the buttons of his shirt. Leaf-tossed hair tickled against his face, and he smiled. Gormlessly, he suspected, but he couldn't see his face, and she didn't seem to care.

She moved in his arms like a ghost might, light and quick. Somehow barely there and solid as a stone, as the treetrunk at his back, at the same time. It made sense in the dream, as everything makes sense in dreams, that she would touch him like this. Want him, apparently, like this, some fairy girl he'd never seen before in his life. That she could light up his body like a bonfire, like nothing he'd ever done with Annie Mayrose or his own more expert hands.

Rupert kissed her back, touched her temples, her shoulders, her smooth, green skin that moved and rippled like any girl's beneath his fingers, but he couldn't catch up with her at all. When she finally sank down onto him, it was all he could do to hold onto her, hands on her waist as for one moment she stopped stock still. Her mouth opened wide as her eyes did, and the sound she made was nothing like her speech. It was a cry like nothing he'd ever heard, half moan, half scream, and it echoed in his bones.

Then she was moving again, and he didn't even try to keep up, just held on as if the ground might fall away beneath him if he let go, and he'd fly off into the darkness. Faster and faster, so tight around him that he thought he knew now why she'd cried out, in the seconds before he couldn't think at all.

Then she ground herself against him, fingers splayed against his chest, and the darkness did close in. He did fly off. He heard her wind-voice whisper after him, "Come back, then, if you cannot stay," but he was too far gone to answer.

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