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The most charming way of describing the place would be "ramshackle."
Jayce thinks this and other, less poetic, things as he looks upon the site of their new home. It stands at the edge of the wild woods, the trees reaching out to cradle it from behind, as though seeking to pull it back into the forest's embrace. Four walls of pale grey and brown stone, the skill of their layering catching his engineer's eye, and a roof of dirty grey thatch that might once have been called harvest yellow. It sits within a protective square of dry stone wall, the place where the gate once stood now an open gap as prominent as a missing tooth. All of it is covered in ivy and brambles, the air thick with the blossoming of summer flowers, and the fluttering path of butterflies.
He hears Viktor behind him, and winces at the thump of the other man's bag hitting the overgrown path. Jayce can imagine the disappointment on his face, the way he'll master the expression so that Jayce doesn't see it. Really though, what had either of them expected? The town is remote, its trade is poro wool and some kind of local cheese, hardly anything to write home about. But that's the point, isn't it?
Remote. Quiet. Safe.
No-one will question them setting up out here, a young(ish) couple making a new life for themselves, and the price of the cottage had been set for a ruin and not a palace after all. It's going to take work, a lot of work, and he'll do whatever he can to make something of it for them both.
"It is beautiful," Viktor says.
Jayce starts with surprise, and turns. Viktor's expression is open, as full of wonder and transformative joy as the first time he'd laid eyes on the arcane. He sees beauty where Jayce sees an overgrown mess, and potential where Jayce fears pitfall. How things have changed.
Jayce turns back to the rundown old cottage, with its rotten shutters and armour of brambles, and thinks if Viktor sees it, then so can he.
Clear your workspace
It's almost midsummer and the days are long and the nights warm. The cottage is full of dust and a set of unexpectedly solid furniture. The floor is paved with flagstones that come up pale grey after the brutal administration of a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush, and the hearth is already surprisingly clean. There's a kitchen with a large old table in it, a back room with a rickety spinning wheel that turns easily beneath Jayce's curious touch, and an attic room that houses an ancient wood frame bed. No indoor bathroom though, only a shack out back and a large tin bath standing propped against the rear wall of the cottage, almost hidden behind the tanglevines. That makes Jayce frown and Viktor laugh, because apparently Jayce's desire to be clean is a point of great amusement to him.
That's fine though, because Jayce knows there's a competent smith in town and he's already had ideas about systems to collect, store, and later heat rainwater. Indoor plumbing is a must, no matter how much joy Viktor finds in poking fun at his apparently prim ways. Jayce's mother didn't raise him to be a slovenly man, and that's something Viktor will just have to tolerate. Besides, he'll be glad of hot running water come winter.
The garden is the place that needs the most work, and it's here that Viktor sets himself to begin. Between them lies a long list of tasks: clean everything, fix the shutters, paint the window frames, the back and front door too, get the roof thatch redone, whitewash the inside walls. Clear the path, set up water butts, cut back the ivy growing over the cottage walls, take control of the wilderness that's crept inside the garden walls and tame it.
They start with the structural integrity. The roof is old but good, as far as Jayce can tell at any rate - in all his long years at the Academy the maintenance and repair of thatched rooftops was never on the curriculum. There is however a family in the local town that knows the trade, and between them they've scraped together enough money from the odd job work carried out on the long journey here that they can just about afford that. So that has Jayce sorting the roof and thinking about patching up inside and Viktor...?
Viktor is in the garden with a machete and his sleeves rolled up. He prunes and hacks, trims and uproots. There's less being taken out than Jayce had expected, and Viktor has about him the kind of enthusiasm Jayce only really remembers from the early days of their partnership when he was working on the water filtration plant for Zaun. It's a different kind of enthusiasm to the febrile drive of the later years. This is something cleaner, something more grounded, out there in the midsummer sun with his hat shading his face and his forearms wiry with muscle.
They've both put on muscle again. Walking all the way south from where the Arcane dropped them to this place at the edge of the world has put the touch of the sun on Viktor's skin, making the traceries that remain of his arcane past glimmer in the sunlight. Three months of walking, Jayce's leg a bitter pain no matter how they adjusted the brace, and Viktor the opposite yet abruptly aware that all those miles take a toll no matter his new-given strength. From the outskirts of icy cities to isolated hamlets, along dusty village tracks from the frozen north down towards the coastal plains and obscurity.
And now here Jayce is, standing in the late afternoon sunlight watching Viktor work with a pair of thick leather gloves, cutting back brambles and revealing the earth beneath. Sorting through plants Jayce doesn't know the name of, working to some unknown list of requirement he can't even begin to guess at.
Viktor is humming softly, under his breath. Jayce doesn't recognise the tune, but he feels the emotion of it. He has a can of whitewash and a paintbrush, and a job to do inside, but still he lingers to hear that song, just for a little while longer.
Add Water
It turns out there's an old well in one corner of the yard. Viktor is the one to find it, and Jayce is the one to find him, hanging so far over the edge of the stone lip that Jayce surges forward to grab him, dropping in a panic the plank of wood he'd been carrying out to put back in the shed.
"Yes, pull me up, Jayce!" Viktor calls as Jayce gets a grip round his waist, his voice made muffled by the enclosing walls of the well. He comes up with a clattering noise, his arms still extended and body braced against the weight of something. It's a bucket, Jayce realises, as he helps set him back on his feet.
"Is that-?" Jayce asks, craning to look at it, still riding the rush of his hammering pulse.
"Water!" Viktor exclaims. "Fresh and-" he dips a finger into the liquid and sucks the moisture off. "-pure!"
There had been something on the bill of sale about a water source, hadn't there? Neither of them had looked all that closely, mostly interested in finding a place out of the way but adequately functional as quickly as possible.
"Huh," Jayce says, then moves to peer down into the darkness, bracing his hands on the cool stone lip of the well's wall. "That's going to be useful."
"More than useful, Jayce," Viktor says. "Pure, clean water is the wellspring and factotum of life."
"Hm," is all Jayce manages, because once he would have said that honour belonged to the spark of ingenuity and inventiveness that lies within all souls. But then, so many things are different now. Perspective is a great teacher.
"It'll be good for the garden," he offers.
Viktor relents, looking at him with a smile on his face. The one that says he understands where Jayce is coming from, and he had expected nothing less. There's a fondness in that look that still manages, somehow, to make Jayce shy. "And until we have the water butts in place, and the boiler running, it will be an easier source than walking out to the stream every day."
"Ah!" Jayce replies, reminded suddenly of something. "About that..."
Because he has drawn up a plan this morning, scratched out in chalk on a piece of slate, for just the device Viktor is referring to. "I need you to take a look at something..."
After all, water pumping systems are more Viktor's speciality than Jayce's, and this house is for the both of them.
Add vegetables, fruit, and flowers
"Now you boil it," Viktor declares. Then he pauses, peering down into the large pot, a dark crimson goo dripping from the end of the wooden spoon. "...I think."
"Eh," Jayce replies, with a shrug. "What's the worst that could happen?"
They make eye contact across the kitchen table and then both of them snort with laughter.
"I will hold you to that statement when the house is burning around us," Viktor informs him with a sniff, setting the spoon down carefully. He holds out a hand, palm up, fingers curled, and Jayce places a pair of cherry tomatoes into it.
The garden has been an unexpected treasure trove of bounty. Where Jayce had seen nothing but thorns and flowering weeds, Viktor has uncovered fruit trees and vegetables, berries and flower beds. Brought back under control by his skilled ministrations they now have tomatoes and potatoes, carrots and raspberries (so many raspberries), blackberries, apples and a whole bunch of berries neither of them recognise. Enough to make jams and chutneys into the next decade as far as Jayce can tell.
It is ...nice... to think that the food on their table has been harvested by their own hands. So they didn't make the bread or the cheese, or raise the pig that's providing the ham, but no-one does all of that themselves, right? And this is a start, this is better than just a start. This is tomatoes and a raspberry jam boiling away on the hob, with slices of fresh, crisp apple on the side of each of their plates. Tonight there'll be a stew of vegetables pulled from the earth outside and a fire to sit by fuelled from the wood they've gathered and dried out in the shed.
They have a book too, a precious volume on loan from the collection in the small library in town, which details plants that are safe to forage and eat. Jayce and Viktor have sat side-by-side in the long evenings, beneath the shelter of the back porch, picking through the pages and deciding just how confident they are about the hand drawn pictures of mushrooms. Viktor has heard worrying tales about picking the mushrooms in forests, but Jayce has travelled before. In fact he's travelled all over as a much younger man, in search of magic, and part of that had included doing a bit of foraging from time to time. So he's confidant. Sortof.
Regardless, sitting there as the evening faded gently towards night, a shared blanket across their knees and the early autumn lantern beetles just beginning to dance at the edge of the forest, had been a magic all of its own.
Add animals
"What's it going to eat?" Jayce asks, bewildered by this sudden turn of events.
Viktor tilts his head to one side, giving Jayce a look that says he cannot believe his ignorance, but before Jayce can ask him how many cows live down in the depths of Zaun for Viktor to know anything more than Jayce does about caring for one, the beast lets out a long, low bellow that could signify anything from rage to despair. They both look at the animal in concern, but as the echoes of that reverberating cry fade it gives no further utterances, only looking at them both from large, liquid eyes.
"It was this or the giant poro," Viktor tells him. "And I know how you feel about poros, Jayce."
Jayce represses a shudder that has only the tiniest bit of mock drama to it, and tries not to think back to the time he accidentally stood on one. Mind, it had been a small one, nothing like the giant, fluffy creatures they farm around here, but still. Back then the outcome would have been disastrous had he done more than trap some of its fluff beneath his shoe, particularly considering who the damned thing had belonged to.
"She's called Květa," Viktor tells him, smiling at the cow fondly and rubbing a spot in the middle of her broad forehead. "And she will give us milk. I was thinking of making cheese!"
"You don't like cheese," Jayce says, before he can stop the words from escaping. Viktor is unperturbed by this though. He shrugs, pulling playfully on one of Květa's horns so that she tosses her head and pushes forward into his palm again.
"You do though, Jayce," he replies.
And that, Jayce supposes, is true.
(Non-)Optional extras
So, it starts at the end of summer with Květa, who provides them with milk. They build her a barn, with hammer, nail and sweat, both of them cursing the lack of mechanical assistance throughout the process. But they don't dwell on the difficulties because each time they take a break they have apple juice cooled in the cellar (now that had been a discovery for the ages - the trapdoor being outside and previously hidden by a tangle of brambles), and sweet raspberry jam on fresh bread. Indeed Jayce has started making bread now, and the simple motions of creation are like a balm, and a reassurance that if nothing else at all gets done today he has already done one good thing.
Then comes a pair of geese - which Jayce doesn't call Cait and Vi, but it's a close thing - and they're the result of someone's bull poro taking a dislike to their presence on the farm down Taverham's Fields. He doesn't even have to pay for them so glad is the farmer to have the problem solved without bloodshed, but he does take over a small sack of apples the next day. They end up being called Wrench and Spanner in the end, and Viktor's still not anywhere close to forgiving him for that one, but these geese are Jayce's. Viktor gets Květa.
After that there's Turnip, Buttercup, and Maria, three chickens they picked up at market, because who doesn't like fresh eggs? And Jasper the cockerel, named for the brilliant red of his wattle.
And finally, finally there's Zora.
Late summer has long since made way for autumn, and the red and golds themselves have faded to bare black branches and the pale grey of a winter sky. They find Zora huddled in the ditch on their long walk back from town, up the dirt road that follows the slope of the land towards the high roads that lead ultimately to the far distant city. There's a point about a mile from town where they turn off to follow the narrow track that leads to their cottage and it's just before here that Jayce pauses and raises a hand. Viktor stops next to him, the last words of his argument about the benefits of expanding out into yeva beet crops fading in the air.
The pair of them stand in the middle of the road, far from anywhere in particular, a small breeze whispering along the plains around them. In the distance there's the musical lowing of the poro herds as their farmers bring them down to closer pastures before the snows hit. Already the colour has been washed from the world, the air chill with the oncoming turn towards the coldest months. Even now the ice on the animals' water trough must be broken each morning.
Viktor shakes his head in query and Jayce sets down the handles of the handcart in which they have stacked the last round of supplies to get them through the snows. Jayce heard something over the creak and clatter of the handcart wheels, but he's not sure what.
"There," Viktor says suddenly, pointing one slender finger towards the ditch at the side of the road.
They hurry over and there, amidst the muddy water and the detritus, is a small dog. Not a puppy, but an animal so young it's only just on the cusp of adulthood.
"What are you doing all the way out here?" Viktor asks softly, and Jayce gets down on one knee, mouth twisting as his bad leg complains, the damp earth seeping through his thick trousers and turning them dark and cold. He reaches down, bracing himself one-armed against the far side of the ditch, and hauls out the squirming scrap of fur and bone. She is afraid, but weak. Her coat is an indiscernible colour beneath the mud and grime that only much later will reveal itself as black and white.
They bring her home to their cottage, placed securely on the top of the handcart and wrapped in Viktor's scarf, just as the first flakes of snow are beginning to spiral down.
Later, when they talk about names (for keeping her is a foregone conclusion), Jayce looks down at the bundle of skin and bones settled on his lap, sleeping now after a hot bath and a bowl of food, and his mind goes blank. She's some kind of herding dog, he thinks, although her body suggests a wiriness more akin to the sheepdogs seen near Piltover than the lumbering, dark brown herd guardians they use around these parts.
Viktor reaches across from his place beside him on the sofa and gently strokes her ears.
"Zora," he says. "For the dawn, and a new beginning."
So Zora it is.
Sit back and enjoy
It's cold up on the roof, but the blanket they're sharing is made of thick poro wool, so soft and insulating it's not entirely certain there's not some otherworldly property to it. It would make sense after all, for many poro are magical creatures and their link to the arcane is poorly understood. What Jayce does know is that the wool resists water and cold, shrugging off both with the same easy indifference, and as one of their first purchases made locally it's been almost the best thing they've ever bought out here.
Viktor, ever slender, always at the mercy of the cold - even now, after everything - is a warmth against Jayce's side where they squeeze together on the tiny balcony the Friedrich brothers restored for them when they fixed up the roof. It's so small that the entry onto it is more window than door, and the attic bedroom behind is going to suffer from the draught it lets in, but all those little downsides are more than made up for by the benefits of this experience. Namely, the view.
Their cottage sits at the very edge of the woods, halfway up the slope of land that leads on to the highway miles to the south, and from their place on the balcony they can see out along the valley, across the plains where the poro graze to where the mountains rise in the distance. They travelled those mountains to get here, taking the dangerous passes as soon as the thaws of spring made the roads safe enough. A long trek, full of aching feet and blisters and sore shoulders where their pack straps dug in. But they're here now and safe, and with a new life ahead of them.
To the left where the land dips they can see the warm glow of the town of Ostergrad, with its bakery that buys their apples and the smith that leans against her worktop and discusses the ins and outs of the forge with Jayce. There's the town hall with its roof of grey slate where they bought the deed for this cottage with the money they made fixing an ancient and convoluted heating system for a warmother's honoured parent in the Freljord, and the little houses that make up the residential areas, for the weavers and farmers and all the people associated with the complex trade of raising wool poro. It's a quiet town, sleepy and kind, and it's welcomed them both in a way that neither of them quite expected.
"This is really quite satisfactory," Viktor says, tilting his mug back to look down into its depths. Scented steam rises from within, and Jayce can see the white and red of Viktor's skin where his fingers grip the hot ceramic tightly. He's taken his gloves off for a better grip, which is up to him because Jayce is not going to do the same - it's freezing out here. And he's teasing of course. Or maybe it's simply his usual understatement, but Jayce doesn't think so because he can see the curve of Viktor's smile from behind the fall of his hair, and Jayce knows that he's pleased.
Chocolate of any kind is difficult and expensive to come by out here, and the work Jayce traded for the small amount he purchased when the caravan came through is nothing compared to the pleasure he gets from Viktor's happiness. Such a simple thing it is that makes him happy now. Sitting in the bitter cold of midwinter in the house he owns with the man he loves, hot chocolate together on the cramped little rooftop balcony with a red and white poro wool blanket across their legs, and a wiry herding dog squashed in under their chairs, so close behind Jayce's heels he has to be careful not to tread on her.
A cottage restored through a season of hard work. Fruit trees and vegetable patches. Animals and a well Jayce suspects might have a sprite living in it. Lantern beetles dancing in the dark before the winter sets in. A dog that leaps into the air to catch the flying mechanical trinkets Viktor still makes in the long evenings, and a fire that roars and settles to embers in the night, filling the cottage with warmth. The man he's called partner for all the time that's ever mattered, at his side now, then, and for all the time that will ever matter from here on out.
Once Jayce thought his success would be measured in how resolutely he brought magic to the world, in how monumental the demonstration of its power would be. How vibrant the changes, how appreciative the people for the way he'd change their lives. Now he understands that success is uncovering the magic that was already there, in the unquestioning welcome of a warmother that brings two strangers in from the bitter cold of the Freljord when the winter had almost taken them both. In the way a town didn't bat an eyelid at their unscheduled appearance when they walked in with the spring breeze, down from the mountain passes. How not a single person recognises the Golden Boy who had a seat on Piltover's Council, or the Zaunite Herald of the Arcane. Now Jayce's only seat is at the kitchen table, and Viktor is only herald of another new fruit or berry Jayce didn't realise was growing out in that bountiful garden of theirs, placed as reverently as an offering on his dinner plate.
Now, life is simple in a way Jayce never realised it could be.
He feels Viktor press his shoulder against his own, and when the movement in the air catches his eye he turns his face to the sky and draws in a breath of the midwinter air.
"Snow," Viktor muses, at the same time as Jayce says, "We should go back inside."
Instead they tough it out on the balcony for a few minutes longer, just watching the flakes spiral down, and then, frost threatening to creep into their fingers and burn the tips of their noses, they retreat inside. The fire in the hearth is warm, and once it's stoked they can sit on the old sofa whose leg Jayce repaired a few months back. Zora will lie at their feet, and Jayce and the man that is his entire world, always has been and always will be, will sit in the house they have remade together and finally call it home.