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“This is the worst idea you've ever had,” Felix announced. He faced the challenge before him with his spine erect.
“You'll be fine!” encouraged Annette, affectionately patting one of his stiff shoulders. It only stiffened further. That sort of tension couldn't be good for him. “Sunny's great! Super safe!”
Sunny (proper name: Sundial, for how particular she was about her feeding times), was the wyvern Annette had… procured toward the war’s end. She was an Imperial mount, donning black armor with red embellishments, although they were cracking and falling off when she came across her. Thunder magic had cooked the poor creature and sent it and its rider tumbling meteorically to the ground, but Sunny had survived. Perhaps the smarter thing would have been to put her out of her misery. Instead, Annette had damaged her fingers prying hot and broken armor off the wyvern and guided her carefully to the Kingdom healers, swearing up and down Sunny was one of theirs.
“She's not a horse,” Felix argued. “A horse won't take off my hand if it decides to bite me.”
Aghast, Annette took offense on Sunny's behalf. “She doesn't bite!” This was untrue. An animal trained for war used every claw and tooth to rend flesh from bone. “Sunny's a good girl!”
“Sunny's a giant maneater with wings. Wait, that's—”
“Be nice. Don't say Ingrid.”
Felix was nice and didn't say Ingrid.
“Look,” she said, “Constance taught me how to fly her without losing a hand, so we’ll be fine!”
“Flying. Right.” Felix didn't take his eyes away from Sunny. “I know how to ride a horse. Couldn't you have stolen a pegasus?”
“As if I would steal. Sunny's adopted!”
“If that makes you feel better about stealing.”
Annette flashed her hand in his direction, and he finally looked away from the wyvern to watch how the morning sun glittered off the aquamarine gemstone in the engagement ring. It was crystal clear like glass, the blue color sitting below the surface like a tiny sky encased within. Often, Annette found herself staring at it, full to bursting with awe. Less often but not significantly so, she caught Felix staring, too.
“You're marrying me,” she declared. “She's our first.”
“First…?”
“Child, of course!”
“A wyvern is not a child.”
Sunny's wings spread, leathery skin brushing along the edges of her stable stall as if to protest that she was anything other than The Best Baby. Felix liked assertiveness, so surely that would win him over!
Felix also liked cats, music, and Annette. None of these things were wyverns, and it became very clear a giant, flying reptile did not pass muster. With downturned lips and a pinched brow, he focused on dear Sunny again rather than becoming a man of mush from the sight of her ring.
“Felix, that is our daughter you're talking about!” chided Annette.
“No.”
Impatient, Sunny shook like a wet dog in her stable, kicking up sand and loose straw from her nest. Ignoring her soon-to-be-father's unyielding scrutiny, she rumbled for Annette's attention, the vocalization low and deep enough to make her ears buzz.
“Aw, she wants to come out,” she crooned. “C’mon, let’s saddle her up!”
Despite being as grumpy as he was, Felix followed her to the back of the stable to get Sunny’s riding gear and carried the hefty saddle and bridle back like a pack mule. When she thanked him, he only grunted a wordless acknowledgment.
Yeowch. He really was in a mood.
Since Felix seemed the most worried about the maneating and the losing a hand bit of befriending a perfectly affable wyvern, Annette took the strappy bridle from him and volunteered to show him how to put it on. “Sunny knows what this is,” she explained, righting the harness in her hands, “because she’s been trained, and knows what to do when she sees it. Watch.”
Annette held up the leather harness and Sunny obligingly stretched her head down on her long neck, sniffling and snuffling little huffs of breath that warmed Annette’s hands. The hardest part was slipping the straps around the deer-like antlers fanning from the wyvern’s skull, but Sunny made no fuss when they caught on her before settling into place. As the last straps were secured, Sunny dropped her jaw, revealing rows of pointed teeth.
“I don’t like that,” Felix commented, leaning down to glare into Sunny’s mouth like something truly putrid lived inside. “Keep your hands out of there, Annette.”
“So you want to give her the bit?”
“Don’t say ‘bit’,” he scolded, then set the saddle down on the ground to hold his hand out.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Annette unceremoniously dropped the smooth bar of metal the length of a man’s forearm into his hand, and it was only because of Felix’s impressive reflexes that he didn’t drop it to the floor when he fumbled it.
“You can go as slow as you need to,” she instructed. “Sunny won’t bite, I promise.”
Felix glanced at her, the bit, and Sunny’s waiting maw. Finally, he nodded his head.
“A promise from you means something,” he stated.
The scattered times Felix said something that endearing made Annette increasingly aware of the band around her finger. Felix had so little faith in others, and yet he trusted Annette without question at every turn. She returned that trust readily, their feelings slotting together as easily as their fingers.
Unaware of the tidal wave of affection stirring in Annette’s chest, Felix kept himself on task, asking about the bit, “How do I attach this?”
Gently, Annette took his hands in hers, guiding him to slide the bit into place behind Sunny’s back teeth and showing him how to attach it to the bridle’s rings. They tensed when Sunny closed her jaws around the metal, but she felt him relax again soon after.
“See? Not even a finger out of place,” she chirped. “She’s a gentle giant.”
“A gentle giant who’s killed men,” Felix refuted.
“Just like me!” Annette grinned and reached out to pat Sunny on her nose right where she liked it.
An uncomfortable noise caught in Felix’s throat. It was choked, dying in his throat with a wheeze.
“Felix,” she pressed, “are you laughing at me?”
Shaking his head, he cleared his throat. “No.”
“You know, if you were, I’m not that… short-tempered that I’d get mad about it.”
If Annette thought about it, the noise sounded a little like a frightened rabbit. She only made the association after he made it a second time. He might have a whole warren that she’d have to tickle out of his chest.
“I’m not laughing at you,” Felix lied, his voice tight.
“Uh-huh. Well, if you’re done not laughing at me, let’s start with the saddle,” suggested Annette. “It’s just like saddling a horse except you need to watch out for her wings. There are these soft spots—here, see?—that rest right against them.”
“That makes sense. The wings need that flexibility.”
“Can I leave you to it? I need to get the stirrups and reins.”
Felix frowned. “The stirrups?”
Shrugging, Annette offered, “Unless you want to try flying without them? You can do it, but since you haven’t flown before, I figured you’d prefer them.”
“Yes, I do,” he replied quickly. “I don’t want my feet to… dangle.”
“Oh, like a toddler’s!”
“Annette,” Felix said with deep suffering. “No.”
There were so many ways he said her name—a pleasant greeting, a proud introduction, a husky murmur in their bed, or a sleepy mumble in the morning—and it was an engaging game to categorize them all. Humbled and hen-pecked in Sunny’s stall was a new one.
Beaming, Annette stepped away and declared, “I’m going now. Remember the soft spots!”
She’d already turned away and made it around the corner when the first grumblings of “I know–” started. Returning to the back of the stable, Annette fondly noted the saddle’s empty rack, confident Felix could handle it. Hung on pegs beside it, the stirrup attachments called to her, and she gingerly plucked them free. After shuffling them into the crook of her arm, she grabbed the reins, swinging them to loop around her wrist. Gear obtained, she quickly scurried away to rejoin Felix, wary of leaving him and Sunny alone together for too long.
Turning the corner, Annette paused, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to stop. Before her eyes, she could see that Felix had managed to get the saddle on in its proper alignment, leaving the straps Annette needed for the stirrups to loosely hang at Sunny’s sides. She observed with a rush of adoration as Felix raised his hand and slowly, carefully, reached out to pet the wyvern’s snout.
“...I wish you had fur,” Felix said, “but you're not terrible to touch, even if you're dry like Alois's feet.”
It was Annette's turn to laugh, and Felix jumped at the peal.
“W-why do you know that?” she asked between giggles. Quickly, she closed the distance between them, eager to catch his answer.
“Annette,” he groused.
“You have to tell me! You can't run, my lord, or I'll send Sunny after you.”
She wouldn't.
“You wouldn't. I'll tell you, though. And don't call me your lord. We're engaged.”
“And I'm equally engaged in this discussion,” Annette badgered. “Spill!”
“It's not as glamorous as whatever fantasies are filling your head,” he warned. “I don't know what it was like in the women's camp on our marches, but with the men… Well. It wouldn't be the first time I've discovered things I never wanted to know about a person. Also, Alois is still spry enough to wrestle, and I will never forgive him for rolling into my tent and collapsing it.”
Delighted, she prompted, “How did you feel his feet?”
“When the tent went down, it was like cats in a bag. A lot of flailing. He kicked me in the head, that lout.”
Hysterical laughter bubbled in Annette's chest, but she held it back long enough to ask, “You let him keep his foot after?”
“What?” Felix wondered, bewildered. “Yes? What kind of animal do you take me for? What does it say about you for agreeing to marry me?”
“It says I have terrible taste,” she boasted. “I choose to marry a villain.”
“This again…” Felix muttered, turning to Sunny in commiseration before he realized he was doing it. When he did, his eyes widened in surprise, and he scowled.
No, Annette corrected, he pouted.
Sunny, an angel in all her scaled finery, huffed a big, reptilian sigh in his face.
“No one asked you,” he told her.
She blinked, slow and lazy. Sunny was remarkably patient, mostly suited up and waiting to stretch her wings while her parents idled the time away beside her.
“Make way,” Annette said, shuffling over to the wyvern’s flank. Remembering distant lessons from when Sunny was on the mend and Constance had found the time away from her pegasus to teach her how, she slid the stirrup into position, looping straps and tying knots. Felix backed away to give her space for the other side, and his boyish pout (that he would deny until his last breath, she wagered) had vanished into his resting expression. Annette could feel his eyes watching the process over her shoulder, so she made sure to slow herself down enough to teach.
Annette loved books. At the School of Sorcery and Garreg Mach, she’d been a regular at their respective libraries. With her nose in a book, she absorbed knowledge like a plant sucked up water. Of course, she’d always been afraid of the knowledge escaping her and studied frantically to prevent it, but reading a book was still her favorite way to learn. Felix, on the other hand, was much more practical. He liked demonstrations and he liked to apply the lessons learned. In their lives, these separate approaches to learning had only failed them once, and it was that matters of the heart could not be taught between pages. Their courtship had been rife with misunderstandings, and Annette had found herself clumsier than normal navigating Felix’s advances. Meanwhile, he’d always paid attention to all the little things that mattered and decided those things would matter to him, too. His pursuit of her would have made an epic poem in itself, one she would have flipped the pages of at record pace, and his feelings had finally reached her in time for the war to end and a new, happier ever-after could begin.
Even if it would have made things go a little smoother between them, Annette wouldn’t risk changing every fumbling step for anything. Once more, she glanced lovingly at the ring on her finger, thought of blue skies, and refreshed her excitement to teach.
“You know how to mount a horse, right?” she asked, glancing up at him.
Felix nodded. “It’s not my favorite thing to do, but I’m not incapable.”
“Good!” Annette cheered. “Lesson one, mount the wyvern.”
“I have to?” he asked.
“You said yes to flying lessons!”
“I also said this was the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“...”
Taking his hand in hers, Annette pulled him a step closer to Sunny. “You can do it,” she encouraged. “I’ll teach you exactly how Constance taught me. I’m still alive and breathing. I’ve got all my limbs. Trust me?”
It was an unfair tactic and she knew it, and judging by the raising of his eyebrows, Felix knew it, too. He didn’t call her out on it, though, and instead said, “Of course.”
Annette needed to get him up in the sky before her head ended up in the clouds. Luckily, Felix was always a brave man, and he stepped into the stirrup without hesitation. Once he settled, she attached the reins to the bit and surrendered them to him.
“Slow and steady, let’s walk her out,” Annette said, keeping a hand on Sunny’s neck. “To get her moving, press your heels in a little on both sides—right, like that! On the ground, it’s not so different from horseback, see?”
“On the ground,” she heard him grumble. More loudly, he confirmed, “Right.”
The cool shadows of the stable fell away to bright, late-morning sunlight and a cloudless sky. Annette had seen only wisps of white in the sea of blue at breakfast, and she’d craved the weightless feeling of flight more than the pastry on her plate. More than that, she wanted Felix to join her, and so she had offered to teach him to fly. It surprised them both when he agreed.
“So,” Annette said, which she probably should not have. No good news came after a So. “I said I’d teach you how Constance taught me. For your safety, though, know that I’ll direct the winds to keep you steady. She couldn’t do that for me.”
“...Why do you sound like you’re not getting in this saddle with me?” Felix questioned, and she heard the indignation rising in his tone.
“Do you think we can both fit? No way!” Annette refused.
“This is how she taught you? You’re just going to send me up?! I’ll wring her neck!”
“It was a crash course! Now watch my hands carefully, so you know how to direct Sunny to go higher or lower. Left and right are easy enough if you can handle a horse.” Annette hooked her fingers to mimic holding the reins, ignoring Felix’s spluttering. “Diagonal, one side up, one side down. Make sure to pull her head up or down so she knows which way to go, but don't pull hard enough to—”
“I’m mad,” Felix interrupted. With him, that could mean he was mad or almost any other emotion that wasn’t well-pleased.
“Are you mad, or is something else bothering you?” she asked, keeping her voice low enough so her tone didn’t read upset.
“...I'm nervous,” he hissed, the admission spat like a curse. The honesty came out like vomit, and his face paled as if he'd actually lost his breakfast.
Annette's hands fell to her sides. There was a time for instruction and a time for support. Any circumstance in which Felix exposed a vulnerability required attention. If he was expressing himself, he had a desire to be heard. There had been years before the war when no one had listened to him and yet he continued to speak. While he had been vindicated, that didn’t mean being written off for so long hadn’t done damage.
“Do we need to stop?” she asked, slowly reaching for Sunny's reins. If Felix said so, she would guide them back into the stable without question.
Hesitation flickered across Felix's face, and then frustration that there was hesitation—Annette knew him and his stubborn streak too well to misinterpret it now.
“I don't want to stop,” he admitted, “but I…”
The statement lingered, hovering noxiously between them. There were no words to fill the blank.
“What do you need, Felix? I want to give it to you,” she offered with complete sincerity. He would know; Felix could sniff out a lie with his lone wolf nose within minutes. This was never and had never been a problem, as Annette couldn't think of any reasons to lie.
“I don't know,” he snarled, but the viciousness of his words was aimed inward, slicing with a hundred tiny cuts.
Sensing Felix’s agitation, Sunny began to fidget, a warbling whine rolling through her throat. They couldn’t stay like this for much longer. They either needed to fly or go back into the stable. Felix said he wanted to continue, so instead of convincing him otherwise, maybe all Annette needed to do was distract him, or perhaps give him an incentive.
The idea she had was either very good or abysmal.
“How about—and it’s just a suggestion—a proposal?” she put forth.
“What do you mean a pro—what are you doing?” Felix’s tone soon went from tense to confused, and if Annette let that fester, it would lead to panic.
After all, she had just removed the ring he’d given her from her finger.
Without a moment to lose, Annette reached for one of Felix’s hands, pried the rein from his white-knuckled grip, and slid the ring onto one of his fingers. His ring finger was too big, but it sat easily around the base of his pinky.
“You have to give it back, okay?” Annette said seriously. “You have to be able to take it off your finger, hold it in your hands, and physically hand it over to me. You have to be alive to do that, right?”
She hoped she’d made the right decision, choosing to challenge him. Felix was a man of steely strength and conviction, and trying to draw his sharp edges to the surface to combat the nerves threatening to unravel him was a risk. What if he took it as an insult? What if he felt he mattered less to her than a silly flying lesson?
Luckily, he didn’t appear angry, only surprised. Felix’s eyes flicked back and forth between her and the ring as if he couldn’t believe he was wearing it.
“Are you still marrying me?” he asked, bewildered.
“Yes,” Annette clarified. “You’re just borrowing my ring. If you keep it, I’ll be cross with you.”
“And if I say no? If I decide I want to stay on the ground?”
“The terms are the same. You have to hand it to me.”
“Terms, huh?” Felix focused on the ring again. “Do I get to set any?”
Annette, unshaken but still surprised, said, “Um, sure. Of course. Gotta keep it fair.”
“Swordplay.”
“Huh?”
Felix sat straight in the saddle, reclaiming his grip on the reins. His hands looked relaxed as if he did this every day.
“Swordplay,” he repeated. “I’m going to teach you.”
That was… something. Annette couldn’t claim it was wholly unexpected if she considered how often Felix kept up with his training. He’d always allowed Annette to train however she wished, be it with her spell tomes or a hand axe, or even from the back of a wyvern obtained through contentious means. There had never been any attempts by either of them to rope them into each others’ worlds, but it was Annette herself who had finally breached that barrier. Maybe Felix had been asking her to integrate their lives like this ever since he offered her that ring, and wasn’t that food for thought?
How was she supposed to say no? More importantly, she didn’t want to.
“Okay!” Annette agreed, clapping her hands decisively. “After lunch, we can go to the training pitch!”
“I look forward to it. Now,” Felix said, jerking his chin to gesture her forward. “Teach me how to lift off and land this thing.”
“Do not call our child a thing!”