Work Text:
Comes the day, sheer and clear. Short, in midwinter, the horses' hooves muffled by snow. The road snakes past the town in the river valley, bright tile roofs amid the hatchwork fields. In the uphill meadows, shaggy sheep huddle in flocks, their coats like smears of charcoal on an artist's pale canvas.
Sheep pastures and vineyard valleys. Two days by river boat or swift horse to the nearest city. What matters, Bull opined, not half in jest, is that it's well away from the blighted border.
Dorian agreed. He rides bundled into wool and fur, but upright, his face turned to the scintillating sunlight, breathing free.
They're late, and it's Dorian's fault, both in the broad scale of years and the smaller one of this morning. His apologies for the former have been made, and accepted, over and over. Not always easily, but never grudgingly.
I promise you my heart, and all of my time that is mine to give.
The blame for the latter delay Dorian hoisted right back at Bull, for keeping him up until all hours as if they were men half their age. Which they never have been in each other's company, and the Maker be thanked for that. It’s been long enough.
They stop at a hillside farm to ask for hot water for their flasks, to some long looks from the matron of the household. They're headed for the old homestead by the western wood, Bull tells her, in Orlesian that's lost all hint of Qunlat. Dorian stirs tea leaves and honey right into the flasks; they'll drain them before the brew turns bitter.
They eat on horseback, too. Their pace is unrushed, but not without purpose. The road folds into a copse of ancient whitewoods, the trees silver as the strands of grey in Dorian's hair. Premature, he used to sigh. Distinguished, Bull told him, and Dorian desisted in his threats to dye them black again.
Twilight, then, before they're quite there.
The whitewoods recede before the final stretch of fallow field, hedged on one side by the bare branch crowns of apple trees. The horses huff, breathing the same warm woodsmoke smell that carries down to their riders from the house in the treeline. A roof of russet tile, walls of stone from a quarry in the hills.
A friend has been by, and slipped away in the nightfall. A hearth lit, a cupboard stocked, a bed piled with furs and pillows, and cookies in a red kerchief on the kitchen table--a favour returned.
Winter is an inclement time to move in. There could be no sweeter season.
Their hands meet in the space between the horses' steaming flanks, and never part, for that last half a mile home.