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“Cullen?” Ingrid’s voice rang out from the house. “Could you please come in for a moment?”
He hadn’t expected her back so soon, and he recognized that tone; irritation. He grimaced as he split one more piece of wood before sticking the axe and heading into the house. They bickered and argued, just like any couple would after years together, but he wouldn’t trade it for any other life.
He swept a sleeve across his brow as he entered and found her waiting for him, a piece of paper clutched in her hand.
“Do you remember signing this?” she waved the parchment to and fro. “Our last order from the grocer?”
He grabbed a nearby cloth and wiped the sweat from his neck. “Of course.”
“Do you notice anything unusual about it?” She thrust it at him, and he took it.
“What’s this about?”
“Just read it,” she insisted.
He frowned and looked down at the order, filled in with the grocer’s neat blocky handwriting. He had trouble making out the black lettering, but it was probably because he’d just been out in the bright sun. He held it out further, then further still, eyelids narrowing down to slits.
“Well?” she asked.
“Just a moment, my eyes are still adjusting to the…change in light.” He extended his arm as far as it would go, then she snatched the paper from his fingers.
“Hey!” he protested.
“Cow’s blood, toad legs, sheep heads, snake glands, and a long list of exotic herbs,” she read from the page, giving it a shake. “This isn’t our order, it’s for that creepy old mage that lives nearby! The grocer put our name on it by mistake, and you signed for it. Imagine my shock when I arrived to pick up our supplies and saw a whole crate of heads staring back at me. He never put in ours, now we’re almost out of food!”
“What? Let me see that.” He grabbed it back and focused his eyes. Finally the words became a little clearer, and it was just as she said, his signature at the bottom underlining it like a giant middle finger.
“Cullen,” her voice softened, “I’ve watched you squinting and straining at papers for far too long, even going back to the final days of the Inquisition.” She placed her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Admit it; you need spectacles.”
“Nonsense.” The response was knee-jerk, but he committed to it anyway. “I just neglected to proofread the order is all, and for that I’m sorry. But my eyes are perfectly fine”.
He went to the window and peered out, pointing. “There - I can see a bird perched on that tree in the distance, clear as day. It’s a bluish-gray with red feathers on it’s wing.” He turned to her, triumphant. “See? Nothing wrong with my eyes.”
“That’s probably because you’re farsighted,” she explained. “I read about it in one of those quarterly journals; you know, advancements in science and medicine. You can see far away, which is why you have no problems sparring, or recognizing one enemy from a great distance, but not up close. Spectacles can fix that.”
Not the Samson jab again. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”
She huffed with amusement. “Not when I had to convince some of the survivors that you weren’t secretly a mage.”
He rolled his eyes, tossing the paper on the kitchen table. He’d heard the Herald’s Rest story many times now, usually told with great dramatic flair to someone else. “Ingrid, I appreciate your concern, but I really don’t think-“
“Cullen!” She cut him off, but not unkindly. “Sheep. Heads.”
He crossed his arms and stood tall, she did the same. They stood in the kitchen, stares locked, neither blinking, until an image popped into his mind.
Ingrid, hating being awake that early and probably grumpy, accepting the crate of goods from the sweet but ditzy grocer, expecting to see the usual rations like eggs and cheese and rashers of bacon and being shocked out of her wits at the sight of dead sheep faces peering up at her instead. She probably dropped it, too, and he imagined the heads rolling grotesquely across her feet and onto the floor.
A snort escaped from the back of his throat, and try as he might, he couldn’t hold it back. He sputtered once, then he began to giggle, then let out a full-blown belly laugh. He laughed, not only at the image of her hopping over animal heads at the store, but at his stubbornness. As if the change in his eyesight was anything deeper than an inconvenience, as if he could deny the unstoppable forces of time.
She watched him with suspicion. “What’s so funny?”
He waved his hand before running it through his sweat dampened hair. “I’m sorry, just the image of you…” He trailed off as he composed himself. “You’re right. I’ll send a raven to Dagna, I remember she sourced some spectacles for members of the Inquisition.”
He placed a light kiss on her forehead, only having to lean down slightly. Sometimes he could swear that she had grown taller since they left the Inquisition.
“Forgive me. I suppose I let my pride get in the way. I’ll go to the next village over to scrounge up supplies.”
“Oh Cullen,” she sighed, sliding her arm around his waist. “I don’t care about the bloody supplies. I worry about you. What if you cut off a finger when cutting the meat? This sort of thing only gets worse with age, you know.”
He embraced her. “I promise you that won’t happen. I’ll be careful.”
She stepped back, took his hand and softly pressed her lips to the tips of his fingers, a spark in her eye.
“Good. Because I can’t have you losing any of these.”
A crooked grin spread across his lips.