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The morning had the particular softness that arrived only in the deep forest.
It lingered in pale drifts between the roots of the old oaks, curling around the bases of the berry bushes that lined the gentle slope at the edge of the forest. Sunlight moved through the canopy in broad panels, falling across the forest floor in shifting pools that warmed the moss and drew fragrance from crushed leaves. The undergrowth had thickened with the season, dense and layered, every shadow between the trunks concealing something alive and quietly productive.
Artemis moved through it the way she moved through everything, with the calm awareness of someone for whom the forest was not a place visited but a place inhabited. She wore only her hunting tunic, her auburn curls caught loosely at the nape of her neck, a wide woven basket hanging from the crook of her arm. She did not need to look at the ground to walk without sound, her feet found the soft places between roots and stone with the unconscious precision of long familiarity.
Beside her, Percy was doing his best, and his best meant he was managing not to step on anything catastrophic approximately every fourth step rather than every second, which he privately considered an improvement. He had the other basket, slightly larger, and he carried it with the earnest attention of someone given a responsibility and intending to fulfill it honorably.
“This one,” she spoke, stopping before a low sprawling shrub whose branches bent under the weight of small, dark clusters, she reached and plucked one, holding it between them, “Black elderberry, sweet when fully ripe, useful for many things, you will know them ripe by this color and this yield,” she pressed it lightly between her fingertips, showing him the depth of color it released, a rich violet, “Underripe, they are bitter enough to be unpleasant and will give you a stomach that aches for several hours.”
Percy examined the berry with genuine attention, tilting his head to study the color, “And how do you tell when it has fully ripened?”
“Color first, then yield, then scent,” she brought the berry close and breathed once, then offered it toward him, he leaned forward, his shoulder brushing hers, brows drawing slightly together with the focused expression he wore when he was actually paying attention, “Sweet and faintly earthy, not sharp, not green.”
He nodded, then looked at the cluster on the branch, then looked at her with a question already forming, “Can I?”
“They are edible,” she confirmed, and walked toward the bush to begin picking, “Begin on this side.”
They worked together in comfortable silence, the soft sounds of berries releasing from stems threading through the broader quiet of the forest, beside her, Percy worked his section with reasonable efficiency, his hands had learned patience from his time with the Hunt, the same patience she had watched him apply when he would brush her auburn curls before they leave their tent.
Behind her, a very small, very deliberate sound occurred, it was the sound of a berry not landing in a basket, Artemis proceeded picking berries, she filed the sound away and said nothing.
The second location required ducking through a gap between ancient oaks, their roots creating a raised mossy platform. Artemis stepped over with fluid grace, Percy followed, his hand briefly finding her shoulder for balance. This shrub was different, lower to the ground, sprawling wide, its berries small and vivid red, clustered in groups that caught the afternoon light like scattered sparks, she stopped before it and turned to Percy, who came to stand at her side.
“Wild strawberries, among the sweetest things the forest offers in this season,” she crouched, indicating a cluster near the base of the plant, bright red and glistening with remnant dew, “You can identify them by the leaves, three lobed, slightly serrated at the edge, and by the flower scars here at the stem end.”
Percy crouched beside her, elbows on his knees, sea green eyes bright as he studied the plant, “And these are just, completely fine to eat?”
“Completely fine,” she confirmed, already picking, “Though I would advise against eating them faster than you collect them, as we do require enough to bring back to camp.”
Percy picked a wild strawberry, studied it briefly, then placed it in his basket with noteworthy virtue, Artemis picked steadily, the small red berries accumulating with satisfying consistency. Behind her, a familiar sound occurred, followed almost immediately by a second, quieter sound, then a third. Her fingers worked without interruption, she moved along the plant toward a particularly dense cluster near the base of the leftmost oak root.
She did not look at his basket.
Not yet.
The third location required ducking beneath the low sweep of a willow whose branches had found the edge of a narrow stream and cascaded across it, trailing into the water in long, moving curtains of pale green. The wind here was cold, damp from the stream, and the light came in different, broken by the willow into fragments that shivered with the movement of the leaves. Along the near bank grew something else entirely, a dense, dark leafed plant whose berries were an intense, matte black, so dark they seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it.
Artemis stopped and held out her arm, halting him at her side, “These,” she said, her voice carrying the particular shift in tone she used when something required full attention, “Are not for eating.”
Percy looked at the berries, his brows slightly frowned, then at her, “Poisonous?”
“Significantly,” she turned to face him, silver eyes meeting his with direct focus, “Deadly nightshade, the berries are sweet, which is the particular cruelty of them, and they are appealing to look at, they are also lethal enough to kill a mortal in quantity,” she watched his face absorb this, saw the appropriate gravity settle there, “You should be fine, as the Curse of Achilles makes you immune, still, remember them by this leaf, and by this growth pattern close to water, nothing edible in this forest has this exact depth of matte black.”
Percy studied the plant with the focused attention of someone committing something to memory, then he said quietly, “Noted.”
“Good,” she turned back along the stream bank toward a different section, “There is nothing to gather here.”
They picked their way along the stream until the undergrowth opened again, and Artemis located what she had been searching for, a patch of low bramble spreading across a section of forest floor where a fallen oak had let light through the canopy, the berries were dark as night with the faintest purple undertone, fat and heavy, the kind that would only take root where sunlight and water had been equally generous.
“These,” she said, and allowed herself a small, private satisfaction at the sight of them because the patch was genuinely excellent, “Are the best the season has offered this year.”
“Blackberries,” he said, the word carrying the tone of someone greeting an old friend, and stepped forward, the gravity of the nightshade discussion dissolving into something considerably enthusiastic.
They picked in companionable quiet, birdsong drifting from above the canopy, the stream soft behind them, Artemis worked methodically, her basket filling with quiet consistency, for several minutes she was absorbed entirely in the work, the particular meditative pleasure of gathering something pleasant in a pleasant place on a pleasant morning with pleasant company.
Then she glanced at his basket.
She looked at it for a long, still moment, then at Percy, who was picking with absolute concentration and the slightly elevated posture of someone who was not doing anything whatsoever and was very comfortable with that. He reached for a blackberry, placed it in the basket with deliberate care, and breathed through his nose with the serene expression of a man at peace with himself and his choices.
The basket was perhaps a third less full than it should have been.
Artemis set her own basket down on the flat surface of the fallen log with quiet precision, she folded her arms and looked at Percy with the specific gaze that her hunters, over the millennia, had come to recognize as the one that preceded a correction.
“Perseus.”
“Hm?”
“Look at me.”
He turned, calm, a berry in hand, his sea green eyes met hers with the perfectly composed expression of a man who had done nothing, had never done anything, and had in fact been a model of responsible berry collection since the moment they arrived. The expression was practiced, she had seen it deployed against her hunters, against his mortal friends, and even against gods at Olympus.
It had never once worked on her. She looked pointedly at his basket, then at him.
He looked at the basket, as though seeing it for the first time, with an expression of faint, scholarly puzzlement, “Hm,” he said, and blinked innocently, just the way he knew that she relished, but she stood her ground, “The yield on this section might be lower than expected.”
“The yield,” she said, and folded her arms, she would not be fooled by his stunt, “Is precisely what I would expect from a section of this density in this season. What is lower than expected is the quantity in your basket relative to the time we have been picking.”
He placed another blackberry in the basket with exaggerated ceremony and said thoughtfully, “There might be a hole.”
Artemis looked at the basket, which was woven solid and without any holes, then turned her gaze at him, visibly not convinced, he held it to the light with the critical eye of a craftsman evaluating his materials, then lowered it and met her gaze, and muttered, “I may have eaten some along the way.”
“Several.”
“The number could be open to interpretation.”
She reached out and plucked a small dark smudge from the corner of his mouth with her thumb, held it up between them, one brow arched, Percy looked at the evidence, then at her, then back at the evidence. “Many,” he admitted, shoulders dropping with defeat, “I may have eaten many.”
“You ate them at the elderberry bush as well.”
“You heard that.”
“I heard that.”
He had the decency to look slightly abashed, which on him manifested as a faint warmth in his cheeks and a small rueful pull at the corner of his mouth he was trying not to let become a smile, “And the strawberries.”
“And the strawberries,” she confirmed, though the sharpness she had intended for the words did not quite arrive intact, something about the blackberry smudge was working against her, “You were meant to be collecting.”
“I was collecting,” he said, lifting the basket slightly as though it might defend him, “And also tasting, for quality assessment.”
She pressed her lips together, the corners threatening to betray her, “Quality assessment?”
“Someone has to ensure the berries are fit for the camp,” he said, with the earnest gravity of a man performing a public service, “I took it upon myself, you were busy, and it seemed irresponsible not to.”
Artemis looked at him for a long moment, silver eyes holding his with an expression that was supposed to communicate the full weight of the millennia and her authority and her position as a goddess who had asked him to do one simple task.
He looked back at her with the blackberry smudge still on his face, the faint suppressed smile, and the sea green eyes beneath his dark locks that had been steadily unraveling her composure since long before she had admitted to herself that they had any particular effect.
She sighed.
It was the same sigh she had given over each and every time where he had said exactly one thing too many and she had found herself not capable of marshalling the appropriate response because the appropriate response required not finding him completely impossible and completely beloved in equal measure.
She reached into her own basket, selected the best blackberry she could find, and held it before him, his expression shifted immediately, she pulled it back an inch, silver eyes narrowing, “You will pick properly for the remainder of the afternoon.”
“Absolutely.”
“Every berry goes in the basket.”
“Every single one,” he agreed, with a conviction that would have been entirely convincing if she had not spent her time counting how many times this particular expression had preceded exactly the behavior it was promising to cease ever since they became a couple.
She placed the blackberry in his mouth anyway.
She watched his expression change as the sweetness arrived, the small involuntary closing of his eyes, the faint sound of appreciation, the way his face settled into something simple and utterly content. Then his eyes opened and found hers, bright and soft in the way they became when she had done something that pleased him, which was, she had long since discovered, a remarkable number of things.
He reached and caught her hand before she withdrew it, his fingers wrapping around hers.
“You could have just asked,” she spoke quietly, her voice did not carry any of the exasperation of moments before, only the particular softness she kept for him, the register she had not known she possessed until he had, through patience and steadiness and an irrepressible fondness for small joys, drawn it out of her.
“I know,” he said, and brought her hand to his lips to plant a soft kiss, “But then I would have missed the face you made when you found the smudge.”
She looked at him a moment, then reached into his basket, picked out a blackberry, and placed it in her own mouth, he watched this with open delight, she said nothing, only picked up her basket and turned back toward the remaining bramble, her hand still in his, drawing him along behind her.
They picked for another hour in the golden warmth of the morning, Percy, to his credit, made a genuine effort, the sound of berries landing in his basket arriving with real consistency. She monitored him at intervals with the peripheral attention of a huntress, and noted, with something she refused to call fondness, that the lapses, when they occurred, were smaller now.
Though they did still occur.
On the walk back toward camp, she noticed him slip a berry into his mouth with the casual ease of someone who had long stopped requiring conscious thought for it. She said nothing, and simply reached over, without looking at him, and held out her open hand, a pause, then a blackberry was placed in her palm.
She ate it as they walked, and the sweetness of it was exactly what the morning had been, her fingers found his, they walked back through the golden light, the baskets swaying with their steps.
The berries, mostly, made it back.