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Timeless
Yneari and Grace stood in their bedroom getting ready for Emerys’s party. Age was just finally starting to touch their faces, and the faint lines and wrinkles of years gone by was beginning to etch gently into their features. Grace’s hair was still russet red but held a few streaks of straw now, and Yneari—always the beautiful blonde—had begun lamenting his streaks of white.
Grace tied the bow around his neck as he stood, chin raised, before her.
“Do you think I’m old, Gracie?” Yneari asked as he considered his complexion in the mirror.
“Yes, I do,” Grace answered as her fingers, still nimble, twisted the fabric.
“Do you really?” Yneari asked her with a frown, turning to watch as she focused on the knot about his neck.
“I do. Old, decrepit, practically dying. You have one foot in the grave, Yneari Malfin. Your bones ache, your joints creak, and your hair—”
“Is still quite golden and lovely?”
“Is beginning to turn white.” Grace grinned up at him as she finished the knot and patted his shoulders. It wasn't like they hadn't already had this conversation half a dozen times in the last week. She turned to get her own wrap.
Yneari looked back at his reflection and frowned.
“You don’t really think that, do you?”
“I think…” Grace began imperiously as she settled the satin wrap around her shoulders. Its fabric flowed like water over her skin, a deep emerald very complimentary of her polished figure. “…That you are risking being late to the only guest Emerys will kill you for if you keep them waiting. Come on. Lord Enchanter Evariste and Lady Enchantress Angelique will already be at the palace with Emerys and Quinn.”
Yneari took one final look at his appearance in the mirror before following his wife toward the doorway. “Am I as stunning to you as I always was?” he persisted. Grace took the stairs carefully but quickly as she descended to the ground level.
“You are a vain man, Yneari. What’s brought on this sudden concern?” she asked as she wiggled into a pair of elven slippers. Yneari held her cloak for her, helping to affix it under her chin.
Yneari didn’t answer at first, fiddling with the clasp about her shoulders, and Grace batted an arm at him.
“Come on now, spill it out. What has the great and valiant Yneari Malfin in a twist today? Did something happen?”
“Someone called me sir today,” Yneari frowned as he lifted his own cloak.
“Yneari, you were a General, and now you are in Emerys’s cabinet. People have been calling you ‘sir’ all your life.”
“Yes, my dear, but this time it was said with the reverence due somebody that is old.”
“As compared to the reverence due a statesman?” Grace raised her eyebrows, and Yneari scoffed as he adjusted his cloak. Grace smoothed a wrinkle out of a spot on his shoulder as Yneari glowered at the floor.
“You do know you are a statesman now, Yneari? You’ve been Emerys’s diplomatic advisor for almost twelve years—”
“That’s mostly just supporting your work as the Erlaufian ambassador,” Yneari argued, and Grace rolled her eyes.
“I help with Erlauf, yes, and sometimes Loire but the rest of the continent has been yours for…oh, well over a decade, my good sir.” Grace grinned at him as she opened their door and Yneari used his magic to dim their lights. "Everyone knows you're the man about nations now. Just the other day the Grocer was asking me when we could expect more winter squash from Verglas because 'he thinks I have connections,' and I have nothing to do with Verglas, my dear."
“It was different, Gracie, I swear it," he insisted as he twisted his magic to pull aside a handful of loose dirt and leaves that had scattered by their doorstep. Satisfied, he turned to rejoin his wife on their excursion.
“Oh, I’m sure it was. Your sensitive elven ears couldn’t possibly be inventing a midlife crisis from thin air. No, never, not you,” Grace teased him. She beat him to the main pathway leading from their home in the forest toward the palace and waited for him to catch up. Yneari extended his arm as he rejoined her, and the pair began walking in companionship towards the elven palace.
Yneari walked in silence as his frown persisted. “I’m not that old. In elven years I’m not even middle aged.”
Grace rolled her eyes again but laughed. “Speaking of middle-aged, Mathienne is bringing her younglings tomorrow for their lessons, and Finya said he wants to discuss some historical battle strategies with you. I trust you’ve cleared your schedule as promised?”
Finya was their middle grandnephew. The boy was bright and reminded Yneari much of himself at that age. Tannearan had grown exhausted of the boy’s endless questions, and Yneari had volunteered to take on their grandfather’s old post as tutor.
Yneari nodded his concurrence. “Provided we aren’t mirrored by Arcania regarding their request for rights of first refusal on the newly hewn patch of Alabaster wood,” he agreed, then sighed. “Sometimes I miss Elise. She drove a hard bargain, but she knew when she was pushing her luck. These new misers…"
Grace chuckled again. “Tell them that Elle’s spawn helped to chop it down with their teeth, and we can’t guarantee that it isn’t were-squirrel infested. They could be turned."
Yneari looked to Grace and smiled at her, watching her face in the moonlight. Given his odd mood today Grace quirked her brow and tilted her head at him. “What?” she asked, curiosity lingering in her still beautiful eyes.
“Just thinking,” Yneari replied, “about how wonderful it is to hear you use such names so casually now. You would have died of horror only seventy years ago if someone here had overheard you.”
Grace snorted as they walked down the lane. “Oh, quiet you.”
“I’m serious,” he teased her. “Do you remember yourself, Gracie? You about had a heart attack when you found out you’d be sitting with them to dinner for an evening, much less when you were titled.”
“And I had every right to be nervous,” Grace said firmly. “I was a member of the lower class then, and it was not seemly to consider myself privileged to cavort with kings and queens. This is different, literally one hundred years later, when I have a wholly different post and schooling.”
Yneari just grinned. “I always thought it was amusing, given that you were brazen enough to throw a boot at me the first time we met. And I was trying to help you!” he declared cheekily. Grace’s face blushed rose, but she said nothing, so he taunted her further. “You do remember how you used to throw shoes at me, yes?”
“And I still can—two of them, in fact, though they are closer to beaded slippers now,” she warned him. Yneari, far from being dissuaded, chuckled.
“Tell me, Grace. Do you still love me, my dear, after all these years?” he begged of her as he lifted one hand and kissed up her arm.
Grace, blushing more fiercely now, pulled her arm away and adjusted her cloak again, but slipped their hands back together. “After one hundred and twenty-two years of marriage, you know I do, you insufferable man. Be careful. The trees are watching.”
As usual, Grace’s reluctance only made the pursuit sweeter, and Yneari quickly stepped to her other side, repeating his action. Grace blushed even harder and gave him one of her trademark warning looks, but the smile belying her frown gave him courage. He kissed her hand and then, when she pulled it away again, began serenading her loudly in elvish love songs as they walked.
Only a handful of elves turned their heads, used to the old General’s antics when he was around his beloved. Those who were near simply shook their heads and smiled, continuing on their own way. It was good to see a pair so in love, even in peaceful Sideralis.
“Yneari!” Grace hissed, reaching to cover his mouth with her hands. Yneari grasped her hands dramatically instead, singing just as loudly as he leaned in, eyebrows waggling, before kissing her.
“You sound like an old crow,” Grace lied when he released her lips.
“You love my singing,” Yneari countered.
“Drat. You’ve discovered me.” Grace’s nose wrinkled playfully, as if a secret pleasure had been exposed. In truth, Yneari often sang to Grace while they sat together, walked together, at night, or while she read in their garden. It was a favorite pastime for them both now, one they hadn’t expected all those years ago but had somehow grown to love.
“You could join me,” he invited devilishly, and Grace swatted his shoulder as he chuckled while taking her arm anew.
“Then I would sound like an old crow, and we are far too near the palace for that. Emerys’s own menagerie would be quite confused at the disturbance.”
“What do you say we secret ourselves away?” Yneari offered mischievously, still strolling arm in arm toward the palace. “There’s a little hollow not far from here. I could take you, and we could—”
“Lord Yneari Malfin,” Grace said warningly. “You are not about to invite me to a tryst in the woods in these clothes and at this hour when we are overdue at the palace. By all the stars in heaven, I know even you are not foolish enough for that.”
“Does that mean in different clothes or a later hour you might be interested?” he asked, earning himself another swat.
“You seem fond of hitting me today, my love,” Yneari complained, though Grace’s swats were more like the brush of a butterfly wing. There was no actual bite to them, it was more humor than anything else.
“You seem intent on being insufferable. I thought you grew out of that habit, my love?” Grace quipped back and Yneari grinned. Bringing her hand from his arm to his lips again he kissed it. “Have I told you yet that I love you today?”
“At least a thousand times, but I won’t stop you from a thousand and one,” Grace encouraged him.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Yneari.”
“I love you.”
“I heard you, Yneari. I’m fond of you as well.”
“I love you, Grace.”
“I am flattered, truly I assure you, but one thousand and three might be pushing it even for me, darling.”
“I’ll love you forever, Lady Gracie Malfin, elven cursebreaker and honored ambassador, seamstress-cobbler-mage extraordinaire, until the moon falls away and the stars cease to shine. Maybe even thereafter, if I’m lucky.”
“Mmm. Tell me, Yneari, is there a reason you are waxing near poetic now?”
Yneari grinned. “Yes. Love, specifically my love for you.”
“I’m sorry I missed that last one. Did you say you love me?” Grace asked, humoring him as they walked.
“It would appear so.”
Now Grace did push him and he laughed, then pointed. “We’re very near the palace now, Gracie. You can’t be caught assaulting a statesman diplomat. You said so yourself earlier, I am a proud, valued member of Emerys’s court, deserving of both honor and respect.” Yneari sped up his walk a little as he baited his wife with a too-broad grin and his falsely innocent eyes.
“I’ll respect you with my slipper, Yneari Malfin, you insufferable genius savant,” Grace threatened. Yneari grinned boyishly as Grace picked up her skirts before he jogged off into the gardens. Grace, skirts firmly in hand, chased after him, and the pair quickly made their way past the palace’s main entrance and into the gardens.
The palace guards were also used to their antics and didn’t even turn their heads as they sprinted past their posts.
Grace, still slower than her elven husband, stepped into a clearing decorated with large hedges and fountains. She caught her breath as she scanned the gardens, but Yneari was nowhere in sight. Grace turned about in a circle then, attempting to spy him. First she was confused, then mildly worried.
He didn’t get that far in front of me, did he? She questioned herself.
“Yneari?” she called as she peeked around the edge of a hedgerow. She’d barely made it to the second line of brush before a force was upon her, lifting her by her waist into the air.
She squealed—not from fright, because she knew the feel of these hands, these arms and this chest against her—but from tickling. Yneari decorated her neck with kisses next, and she pushed his arms nearer her waist so she could turn around to glare at him.
The elf was wholly unrepentant as his wife twirled in his arms. Of course, the fact that her glare lasted all of two seconds before she threw her arms behind his neck and kissed him didn’t hurt.
The pair of lovebirds stood in the gardens then, sharing a moment between themselves. The years had changed their faces, but their love burned bright as ever. As their kiss broke, Yneari gently stroked his thumb along Grace’s cheek.
“I love you, Gracie. Forever and for always. Every day I’m still glad you’re mine.”
“I should hope so. You certainly hunted me long enough,” Grace teased him, but she leaned up and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek. “I love you too, Yneari. And you do not look old. You look distinguished, and there’s a difference. It’s very handsome on you.”
Yneari sighed and tucked Grace’s arm back into his, leading her back toward the main doorways. “I suppose my distinguished behind should get us to this dinner then. Shall we?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Grace said, grinning, as she leaned her head against his shoulder while they walked.
“Yneari!” came a call from above them, followed by the hiss of a woman’s voice. Emerys and Quinn were standing out on a balcony, enjoying the night air. “Stop flirting with Grace and get in here! Evar and I have an argument we need to settle, and we decided you’re just the man to do it!”
“Absolutely, your majesty!” Yneari called up to the king. From where they stood Yneari and Grace could see Queen Quinn bodily pushing her own elven husband with two hands back toward the dining room
“We’ll be along in just a minute!” Grace called helpfully with a wave.
“Take your time. Hello, Yneari! Hello, Grace!” Quinn called back from above. The sparkling laughter of another female—Enchantress Angelique’s laugh—tumbled down to Grace’s ears.
“She’s still the most stunning woman I think I’ve ever seen,” Grace whispered as if the mages could hear her, “even though she’s aged more than I have now.”
“Do you think so?” Yneari asked as he and Grace made their way to the palace, handing their cloaks to a servant at the door. “I disagree.”
“Oh?” Grace asked as she took his arm to ascend a grand staircase. “Who else could claim such a title?”
“Why, none other than my own wife,” he flattered her, and she snorted even as she blushed. “I’m not kidding,” he insisted. “You will always be the most beautiful woman to me.”
“I suppose that’s all that matters,” Grace mumbled, though she hid her face in part of his finery, and Yneari chuckled. “After all, you’ll always be the most handsome elf to me. But that’s much more believable, Yneari. You’ve always been good looking, along with smart, dashing, courageous, generous—”
“If you’re looking for me to kiss you again, my dear, you only need to ask.” Yneari grinned at her.
“Pfft.” Grace said, as they paused before the doors to the King’s private dining room. “I think we’re well beyond asking.”
“Well, if you insist,” Yneari said as he leaned forward to catch her lips again.
“Now announcing Lord Yneari Malfin and Lady Grace Malfin,” a servant announced, even as the pair were distracted with each other. Grace heard the noise remotely, but she was too invested in her husband to pay them any much mind. It wasn’t until she heard someone clearing their throat once, twice, three times that reality came back to her and she broke away, face flushing.
Emerys stood at the table where Quinn was already seated, drumming his fingers along its intricate wooden back. The Enchantress and Enchanter stood chatting by a painting near the hearth. The group looked over at the sound of Emerys’s clucking.
“Good gracious, Emerys,” Yneari teased. “You interrupted me while I was kissing my wife!”
Grace’s ears burned as she covered her eyes with a hand. They really were such children when they got together.
“Your kiss was interrupting my dinner,” Emerys said with mock offense. “Though how I can stomach one after this display, I don’t know.”
“Our kisses have never stopped you before,” Yneari challenged as he and Grace entered the room and Emerys grimaced.
“True, but Quinn made me promise I would behave myself through dinner, and it’s already been quite hard enough. I feel I have earned the right to complain about something, and you have made for an easy target.”
“Is there a reward for good behavior?” Enchanter Evariste joined the conversation, drawing nearer the chairs. He first drew out Angel’s chair to help her before taking a seat himself.
Enchantress Angelique rolled her own eyes as she unfolded a napkin and draped it elegantly across her lap. Her own hair had started fading toward a beautiful silver now, but it couldn’t match the sharpness of her eyes. “Don’t encourage them, Evariste, or we’ll never sit down to dinner.”
“I’m sitting. I’m sitting already,” the Enchanter pointed out, and Angel—just as gracefully—kicked him under the table.
Far from looking chastised, the Enchanter only looked engaged.
They have some traits in common, Grace observed. She shook her head as Yneari assisted her and she took her own seat.
“They are ridiculous, aren’t they?” Quinn asked Grace conspiratorially.
“Insufferable,” Grace agreed with a nod, and the table laughed.
Yneari, pleased as pie, took Grace’s hand under the table. “So. An argument. Tell me, gentlemen, what has made you so opposed this evening?”
“Well it began with someone eating one of Angel’s rolls this morning,” Evariste began, and the Enchantress’s eyes sparked at the obvious lure.
“There is no ‘someone’ about it. I know it was you, Evariste,” she said crisply.
“And in light of such accusations, I deduced the only thing reasonably possible. I insisted that in a fit of magic, the roll must have gotten up and walked away,” Evar replied.
Yneari nodded along, as did Emerys, as if this was totally feasible. “A distinct possibility,” he agreed, and grinned as all the females in the room simultaneously moved to rub their eyes or temples. “Magic is wild. Please, continue.”
“That necessarily brought up the question of how a roll would move if it could move,” Evariste. said, his own eyes grinning with barely restrained delight. Yneari could tell based on Evariste’s good humor, and Angelique’s exhaustion, that the Enchanter had been teasing his poor madam about the issue all day. “I, of course, assert it would simply scrunch itself up and move along, like a worm or a caterpillar. The roll was baguette shaped, after all.”
“And I said that’s preposterous,” Emerys argued. “The roll wouldn’t be able to scrunch up like a worm, or a caterpillar. The crust is too hard, it would be ruined, and they would have seen telltale cracks and fissures before sitting down to their meal. Naturally then, the only way such bread could walk away would be if it moved more like a water slug, stretching itself forward slightly and then pulling itself along, but without the middle bend.”
“What on earth is a water slug?” Quinn muttered.
“I’ll show you,” Evariste offered, and above his hands a weird creature much resembling a rotted cucumber appeared. “And they move like so,” he offered, as the image moved within his hand. “See? far too slow to accomplish much of anything,” the Enchanter added, as if this proved his point.
“They are faster when they swim, though not all do that,” Angelique added. She waved her hand and the image in Evariste’s palm began to flail instead.
“True, but see the middle bend!” the Enchanter insisted. “Which only further proves my point. Thank you, Angel, you are as brilliant as you are divine, and twice as lovely.” Evariste said, shooting a toothy grin at his own wife. Angel just shook her head and sipped from a glass of wine that was already placed upon the table.
“I’d like to present you two gentlemen with a third option,” Yneari said, grinning.
“Oh, good gracious,” Gracie said beside him as she lifted a wineglass herself.
“What if the loaf itself turned end over end?” Yneari asked. “That would require neither bending nor scrunching, and would be a much faster method of movement than either of those options.”
“Nonsense,” Emerys said flatly. “The ends would have been flattened by the impact. Evar would have noticed that.”
“Perhaps not if it were floured,” Yneari contended as the women at the table continued exchanging their looks, too used to such shenanigans.
“Wouldn’t that require the bread to turn itself head over heels repeatedly, as if flipping? Wouldn’t the bread get dizzy?” Evar posited.
“Could it get dizzy?” Emerys asked. “It has no inner ear, which is the mechanism by which dizziness is produced, such as my scholars and medics can tell.”
“It does have many airy holes, however, and even if the ends were floured as most honorable Malfin here suggests, the air would be at least somewhat dispersed and released from the pressure as it flipped, would it not?” Evar asked.
“Are you trying to deflate my theory, Lord Enchanter?” Yneari asked, and the three men chuckled between themselves.
“So how is Loire this time of year?” Quinn said abruptly, turning to Angel.
Angel smiled at Quinn, perfectly at ease. “Well. The summer season is upon them, and Severin’s grandchildren are excelling with his gardens. I swear they have plant magic in that family line.”
“Have you sent a fairy godmother?” Grace asked, and she caught Yneari’s smile. He waggled his eyebrows and she pointedly tried to ignore him. He would make her self-conscious about talking to Angel all over again at this rate, titled or not. Out of the corner of her eye she could see his smile widen, and he squeezed her hand affectionately under the table.
“We’ve had one drift by once or twice, but nothing strong enough to register,” Angelique said with a smile. “Though one of these days it will burst forth from one of them, I just know it. Even I can’t get plants to grow that well, and I’m an Enchantress.”
“With a new pupil now!” Evariste said excitedly.
“New pupil applications,” Angel corrected. “And I’m not too sure I’m taking on any apprentices at my age. Evariste, however, could do with another hobby.”
The group laughed and chatted amiably over dinner, and before long their brief interlude was over. Yneari had been right yet again, Grace noted. Emerys had declared it to be a dinner of state, but in truth, he just wanted to ensure the pair of them were present to have fun with he and Evar. Yneari had become too dedicated to his work lately, the King had chastised, and needed to take some time off.
Grace and Yneari ambled their way home together, enjoying the walk in the woods. As they crawled into bed that evening, Grace took comfort in the steady nature of Yneari’s arms around her. Her distinguished general turned statesman had held her like this every night he’d been home for over a hundred years. She couldn’t get enough of it and was thrilled he showed no indication of ever changing.
Her affection swelled within her and she murmured to him in the darkness. “I love you, Yneari Malfin,” Grace whispered as she kissed his cheek.
“I love you too, Gracie,” he offered back sleepily. “Was there something in particular to bring this one on?” he asked, raising a tired brow himself.
“Just thinking how happy I am to have you, and how lucky I am to boot.”
“Lucky boots.” Yneari murmured himself as his fingers ran through her hair. “Is that why you threw a boot at me all those years ago?” Yneari asked, playing off her words.
The dark didn’t blind her to his smile. Grace rolled her eyes but settled her head back upon its usual pillow. “As I always say: you are an insufferable man.”
“Would you rather I instruct you to go to sleep?” He posited.
Grace scoffed. “We’re already in bed together.”
“I know,” he said, and the roguish nature of his voice made her want to swat him again. He must have been able to tell, because the rumble of his laugh met her ears.
“I’m happy to have found you too, Gracie. Overjoyed in fact. I thank the stars each day to have found you.”
“Don’t flatter me now, Malfin. I’ll not forget that you, Emerys, and Evar debated the bread hypothetical for another thirty minutes at dinner tonight before the Enchanter broke down and confessed he had in fact eaten the roll.”
“That was under duress of knife point. You can hardly accept confessions based on threatened torture,” Yneari offered.
“Please. Angel was poking his arm with a toothpick.”
“A very sharp toothpick if it was Angel’s doing,” Yneari protested, and the pair of them chuckled.
Sighing she relaxed happily within his arms again. The sound of his breathing was hypnotizing, and it was only minutes before she was drifting.
Yneari, meanwhile, looked at the sleeping beauty in his arms. His fingers ran the length of her back and toyed with the tresses of her hair. He only stopped when Grace’s mumbling warned him his ministrations might wake her.
Settling his arms back around his wife he closed his eyes. It had been over one hundred wonderful years, and they yet had many hundreds indeed.