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Sloane coughs into her hand, slowing her steps so she won’t outpace her companion. “Uh. Not to sound racist, but. The ‘halfling’ gardens are called that because they’re small, or…?”
Hurley laughs as they ascend the stone steps, pigtails bouncing. “They’re not big gardens, no. We have to be used to putting perfection into smaller spaces, and— well, I think it’s an aesthetic of its own.” She adjusts her picnic basket over one shoulder. “One of the first things we always put down are gardens, roots. A promise that we can grow something out of nothing.” She bites her cheek, fighting down a nervous giggle. “Come on, I think you’ll enjoy it.”
The garden is in one of the nicer section of Goldcliff, though admission is free when Hurley shows her militia badge to the halfling woman at the entrance. The attendant waves them through, smiling.
The central area consists of a large rectangular plot of small stones, with broad walls around the perimeter where the visitors can walk and admire the pattern from above. There are several mossy islands with larger stones and boulders, set at irregular distances in the sea of grey pebbles.
Sloane chews her lip, leaning over the railing. It’s scaled for halflings rather than half-elves, so she awkwardly slumps to set her hands on it. “Shouldn’t a garden have more flowers?”
“Oh, there are flowers too. But this is the central spot. Meditative, isn’t it?” Hurley sets her basket on the ground, stepping next to Sloane. Their hands lace together, Sloane’s skin leaf-cool beneath hers.
Sloane makes a noncommittal ‘hm.’
“Look, it’s… think of it as nature, distilled. See how the pebbles are raked into a sort of rippling pattern?” Hurley lifts her finger, miming wavy motions in the air. “We are a oasis in a desert, and it only makes sense we have a dry ocean in the midst of our water.”
“Sounds like an exercise in contradictions, Hurley.”
“Well…” Hurley laughs, cheeks flushed warm and tingling. “So are we, aren’t we? With what you do, and what I do—”
She realizes she’s babbling as Sloane twists down, her lips soft, a lemongrass sweetness on her breath as Sloane breathes, “Enough, Hurley,” and they kiss.
And it’s so easy to forget who they are, their different heights, their different backgrounds, the fact that technically Hurley should have arrested Sloane long ago but they’re not two people anymore but one couple, one living thing that passes breath between shared lungs and that kisses like jasmine and honey and she loves Sloane, she loves Sloane so much—
Sloane pulls back with a laugh, catching Hurley as the dazed woman slumps forward. “This is supposed to be a nice date, alright? Just us. None of the other stuff.” Her lips gleam wet and amber in the sun.
They stand in silence, admiring a garden at its most basic and elemental— stone and sky, moss and long lines raked across the pebbles. The illusion of untouched tranquility, the same stones that could look just like this a year from now, a decade from now, a century. This garden could well outlive them.
Really, Hurley knows the stone landscape is meant to be viewed from the pavilion, but Sloane’s too much of a wanderer to be content sitting here too long. Hurley supposes it makes sense a battle wagon racer wouldn’t be the type to stand still, but she worries sometimes. She’s the placid one, and if Sloane ever grows weary of her…
Sloane picks up the basket. “You said there are trees?”
Hurley nods, leading Sloane along the paths she knows by memory. The last time she’d been here with anyone had been with her mother, drinking tea on the pavilion. It’s different to retrace these steps with Sloane; a new season, a new shadow across the ground. Hurley follows the path across a stone bridge, near a pile of rocky slabs stacked to mimic a waterfall rippling into a spill of sand. Tall trees shade the path, a necessity against the desert heat. The one that Hurley seeks is a cherry tree in full bloom, pink petals carpeting the grass around it.
“Ohhh, now this is gorgeous,” Sloane purrs, setting down the basket. She stretches her arms as if to embrace the tree, sniffing deep, then crinkles her nose. “Why can’t I smell anything?”
“This type of tree was cultivated for its looks, not its scent,” Hurley explains. She pulls a blanket from the basket, shaking it once before allowing it to settle across the ground. Then she pulls out a flask of green tea and two sweet pork buns from her favorite bakery, settling next to Sloane. They pass the flask back and forth, the rim still wet from Sloane’s mouth as Hurley takes her sip.
Sloane bites into her bun, the soft bread pillowing around her lips as she rips away. Hurley instead tears off pieces of bun, nibbling more sedately about the edges. When Sloane finishes first, as she always does, Hurley wordlessly hands her the extra bun from the basket.
“Ahhh, you’re too good to me, Hurls,” Sloane chuckles, smacking her lips.
Hurley giggles. “You big silly.”
For dessert, Hurley produces two red apples, cellar-wrinkled but still sound.
Sloane takes her apple, tossing it in the air and catching it against her shoulder. She rolls it down her arm and into her palm with a flourish before twisting the stem. Grinning, she asks, “You ever played the apple-twist game?”
Hurley crinkles her eyebrows. “No?”
“It’s a game we used to play. Like one of those kid superstitions?” Sloane twiddles the stem with her thumb, chuckling. “Funny to think how they stick. I mean, we deal with magic and some things linger. Like this one? You twist the stem and sing the alphabet. It’ll snap off on the letter of your true love’s name.”
“So we only get one true love in a lifetime?” Hurley can’t help how the words leave her lips, soft and bittersweet. She doesn’t want a world without Sloane, but she also respects her mother’s remarriage. They’ve swept her father’s grave and danced in his honor. Even death can be an affirmation, if respected.
Sloane’s grin widens; sweet and sharp, unbent by cruelty. “If you’re not my one, you’re my close-enough. My one point one. My point nine eight.” Sloane waggles her eyebrows. “And you may be a halfling, but I can always round up—”
“You dork!” Hurley laughs, flinging her arms around Sloane. Sloane dips her head, stealing a bite from Hurley’s apple (”hey!”) with a crunch of flesh, juice spraying across Hurley’s cheek but they’re still laughing, and it’s one of those perfect moments that she wishes could last forever, like crystal. String these moments onto a necklace, something she can keep close and hold and wear and…
They finally finish eating their apples, rosy-cheeked and with petals falling into Sloane’s long hair. Sloane pulls a blossom from her hair, twisting the stem to make a ring that she slips onto Hurley’s finger.
. . .
Sloane sprawls across the mattress, feet dangling off the edge of the halfling-sized bedframe and her hair mussed against the pillow. Sweat cools between them, bodies dappled silver in the moonlight coming through the half-cracked window, one long finger of shadow stretching out from the money tree on the window sill. Sloane fits well to shadow; the dark sweep of her hair, the faint lines around her eyes, the way her warmth shimmers like the far side of sleep.
Hurley kisses her cheek, nestled in the crook of Sloane’s shoulder. There’s a meditation to this, a sort of peace— all other thoughts banished, single-minded in the pursuit of pleasure, though she knows Sloane would laugh if Hurley told her so.
Hurley knows who brings her alive.
“You’re the best, Hurls,” Sloane murmurs, kissing the top of Hurley’s head.
Hurley giggles, pigtails coming loose against her shoulder. She can always rebraid them in the morning. “I think you’re a strong contender there.” There’s a serenity here, a knowledge that this is her place, this is her partner. Small steps, little bites of happiness that ripple out through the rest of her life. She wouldn’t be nearly as happy if it weren’t for these quiet moments with Sloane.
“Mm. Tell me a bedtime story,” Sloane murmurs, like she’s done so many times before.
Small moments, large ripples.
Hurley knows the story she wants to tell.
“In a long ago kingdom, there’s this scholar had done this— this really big favor for the king,” she starts, then crinkles her nose, burying her face against Sloane’s neck. “My mother tells the story much better. The favor’s not important anyway. But the scholar, she asks permission to court the king’s daughter. The king says no, but says she can have anything else she likes.” Hurley wets her lips, nuzzles her words against Sloane’s ear.
“So she asks for rice.”
“Rice?”
Hurley bops her fingers against Sloane’s lips. “Sh, don’t interrupt. The king thinks it’s a big show of humility and offers gold, jewels, so on, but the scholar says, ‘Thank you very much sir, but just rice will do. If you want to be generous, double my allotment every day for a year.’
“So the king makes a big show of it, gives her the first tiny grain of rice on a red silken pillow in a golden box, all ornamented in dragons. The second day, he gives her two tiny grains of rice in a silver nest with a ruby swallow perched on the edge.” Hurley pauses to take a deep breath. “After a week, there’s enough rice to fill a small cup, and the king starts to realize he made a mistake.” Hurley pauses; if she had Sloane’s flair, she’d be milking this for drama, but she’s still not certain on the delivery. “After a month, they’re pulling from the granaries and the king can’t give up on his lavish gifts because it would mean defeat, so he delivers the sacks of rice in silk bags. He finally realizes that the scholar’s threatened the kingdom with bankruptcy, so goes back to plead for forgiveness and grants the scholar permission to court his daughter.”
Sloane snickers, sneaking her hand down to cup Hurley’s breast. “What does the princess think about all this?”
Hurley giggles, squeezing Sloane’s wrist. “I think she was in on it, honestly? I can’t imagine the scholar going ‘aha, I am going to threaten her dad with financial ruin, of course that’s the way to her heart.’”
“So you think you are the scholar?” Sloane asks, rubbing her thumb along the slope of Hurley’s breast, where flesh meets sternum.
It’s a distraction, as always, a sort of kinetic energy that Sloane can never restrain. Not that Hurley would ever want her to. “No, but I like the idea that small things add up. That it’s the little things, the things we hardly notice— like a smile, a little bit of trust— that make the big differences in our lives.”
. . .
They cross the finish line in a spray of sand and cheers, Sloane whooping loud and wild. She barely waits for the wagon to come to a stop before sweeping Hurley into her arms, crushing her mouth in a kiss that’s as wild and unfettered as anything else she does, a seven-year impulse in lips and teeth, even as their masks crash with a click of wood and bone and Hurley’s nose mashes into the leather guard.
Sloane pulls away, still grinning, shark-tooth smile beneath the curved beak of her raven mask. “To victory!”
“To hot apple fritters!” Hurley whoops, fist in the air. She can already smell the hot-sweet of fried apples and cinnamon, her stomach rumbling.
“To cherry cider!” Sloane cheers, and like that they sweep into the aftermath of the race, the party that erupts as explosively as any of the vehicles. Street vendors know the clink of good coin, never mind that it was for an illicit race. There is nothing against selling food, especially out of city limits. And far be it for Hurley to check any of them for vending licenses.
So they weave, hand-in-hand, through the hordes of onlookers and well-wishers. Sloane raises her bottle in cheer, almost twice for every sip she actually takes, a slop of tart cherry splashing out onto her wrist. Hurley takes her hand, kisses it. Not quite uninhibited enough to lick her dry, especially not with an audience— but she loves this, the clean smell of cherry above Sloane’s own salt and leather, the way it blends together with lingering adrenalin and the thrill of victory. This could be them, forever, tangled like vines, like memory and half-dreamt futures spun out like fairytales.
They could stay like this forever, and that would be enough.
. . .
“Fantasy Costco, where all your dreams come true!” Sloane sings lustily, wheeling the cart into the building.
Hurley covers her face in her hands, giggling through her fingers as the cart rattles beneath her. It had only taken a few moments of half-hearted resistance before she gave in to Sloane’s coaxing, and Hurley sits inside the shopping cart (or “shopping wagon!” as Sloane called it) as Sloane maneuvers them about the warehouse.
While Hurley tries to keep them on track, searching for shampoo and healthy snacks, Sloane creates blatant distractions as she sneaks extra goodies into their cart.
“Hurls, look!” she crows, pointing at a display of jodhpurs while dropping peanut butter M&Ms into the cart.
“Those are the most aesthetically distasteful…!” Hurley twists as she hears the box rattle. “Sloane, that’s candy!”
“It’s peanut butter and that means protein!” Sloane protests.
“We can get beef jerky!” Hurley sets the box back on the shelf.
Sloane drops it back in. “Oh no, look! A distraction!” She lowers her voice. “For reals, does everything have to be healthy? I figure we can get one treat each. And they do have those little ice creams that you like…”
Hurley wavers, chewing on her lip.
Sloane presses the advantage, murmuring, “And I promise not to eat any of the strawberry ones. They’d be all yours.”
“Well…” Hurley relents. “One treat is okay, I guess.”
“And we can load up on samples!” Sloane exclaims, wheeling over to the first of the many vendors.
Six stops later, they’ve acquired everything on their list, Hurley’s ice cream, and have sampled pineapple sausage, cherry preserves on squares of white bread, a mysterious ‘green smoothie’ that Hurley discreetly shudders at, and dried dates that end up in the shopping cart as well.
Afterward, they chow down on hot dogs in the food court. Sloane had slammed her coins into the cashier’s hand before Hurley could pull out her money, insisting, “You bought the picnic, so it’s my turn!” They both eat their dogs slathered in ketchup and mustard, though Hurley prefers more ketchup, and Sloane uses more mustard. They find equal ground on the chopped onion, both sprinkling it with wild abandon before munching away happily.
“It’s a good thing you love onion,” Sloane mumbles, licking mustard off her lips.
Hurley gulps down her mouthful. “Why?”
“’Cuz you’d never kiss me with onion-breath.”
Hurley giggles, kicking out her foot to touch Sloane’s calf. “I don’t know if anyone could make you give up onions, Sloane.”
“I know!” Sloane moans theatrically, fluttering her wrist over her forehead. “And it’d be a tragedy because we’d never smooch.”
Fortunately, they smooch, and smooch, and smooch some more, and only stop when Hurley squeals that they have to take the ice cream home before it melts.
. . .
Sloane kicks her heels against the wall, hands slung into her pockets and elbows braced wide. Cricket-like, all restless energy.
Hurley breathes out through her mouth, keeps her limbs loose, fluid. Starts the first form. She flows through her katas like water, a chained pattern-dance even as she consciously remembers each block, each phantom blow. Patterns unending, like the miniature trees and sand gardens her mother tends— patterns that can be altered, diversified, a thousand minute variations for every circumstance. It is important to remember the function, not just the form, to instill muscle memory and action and reaction more than a limp dance-pattern.
Forearm raised, twist, block to fend off an incoming punch, other fist punching out to take advantage of the foe’s exposed belly—
“Don’t you get enough of that with the militia?” Sloane asks.
Hurley hums. Responds. Learning to split one’s attention is not always a bad thing, and Sloane is always worth the conversation. “It’s calming.” She snaps a kick into an imaginary kneecap, sliding forward to chop at the neck as her opponent drops to her level.
“Surprised you didn’t try becoming an adventurer.”
“Oh no— some of them do good work, sure, but it always seems so chancy to me.” Hurley grimaces. The next pattern is for if an opponent is grabbing her shoulder, so she grips tight to the person’s hand, stepping back to elbow them. “So mercenary. No order to it.”
“Yeah, like what’s right is always the same as what’s lawful,” Sloane huffs. She blows her bangs out of her eyes. “There are plenty of ways to legally make life unfair.”
“But society falls apart without law. What about duty? Righteousness? Order?”
Sloane smirks. “Has Hurley tried telling the Ram that?”
Hurley feels her cheeks grow warm, and twists into the next pattern. “There are unfair laws, yes. I agree with you. But I just don’t think I’d be a very good adventurer. I like the certainty of my next paycheck too much.”
“You and your nice stable job,” Sloane teases.
“You could always be an adventurer.”
Sloane bursts into laughter, slapping her thigh. “Yeah, me! City girl that hates dungeons, dragons, and pissing in the woods! Yeah, right!”
Hurley finally gives up on her katas, hands dropping to her sides as she walks towards Sloane. “But you could use your rogue skills for good! Lawful good! Justice and returning stolen treasure—”
“But I can’t kill. I won’t kill. These jobs I take don’t hurt anyone except in the pocket.” Sloane slouches against the wall, gathering her lips like she’s about to spit. She stops, swallowing it when Hurley glares at her. “Ever heard of a pacifist adventurer, huh? I’d last real long.” She twists her words softer, holding out her arms and folding Hurley into her embrace. “I’d rather sneak past guard dogs than deal with a dungeon or a dragon.”
. . .
“You’re getting slo-o-ow,” Hurley sing-songs, leaning against the counter as she watches the closed door.
The knob jiggles, one last scrape of metal on metal before Sloane picks the lock and the door pops open. “Well, you changed the lock.”
“You were getting cocky with the old one.”
“I’m just insulted that you gave me the key! Like you lacked faith in me, Hurls!”
“You could always give it back…”
“Ooh, only if you find it.” Sloane waggles her eyebrows, shutting the door behind her. “Want to strip-search me, officer?”
“Now now. We’re here for our book club,” Hurley says severely, pulling out a dog-eared novel. “And you keep bending the pages!”
“Only to give you the juiciest bits,” Sloane protests. “Look, the bit where they’re all bosoms heaving after driving their battle wagon into the whipped cream factory is nothing but the finest literature of our time. The author combines raw imagery and perfect comedic timing to—”
“But it’s nothing compared to the restrained sensuality of their first kiss beneath the cherry tree!” Hurley exclaims, thumping her book to the counter. “It’s the build-up that makes the later scenes more explosive! It creates an emotional investment in the reader and—”
Sloane grins, and if she waggled her eyebrows any more furiously it would start a cyclone. “And that has nothing to do with your self-insert fantasy?”
“Look! The author obviously based his stories on the city’s gossip, but that has nothing to do with my favorites!” Hurley sputters.
“So if, say, the dread battle wagon team of Horns and Feathers were to break up—” Sloane can’t even finish the sentence, interrupted by Hurley’s anguished wail. “Don’t worry, don’t worry! I bet he wouldn’t! And even if we did, we can write our own ending!”
“Is that allowed?”
“Pshaw, yeah! Like a sleepover when you’re a kid and you forget the end of the story? If we don’t like the way it ends, we’ll make our own.”
Hurley laces her fingers into Sloane’s, pulling her into a devouring kiss.
. . .
The thing about writing your own ending is that it assumes you can rewrite the beginnings, the middle, the end, that everything has a set ending and it’s anything other than immutable, anything other than words on a page.
Or so Hurley would say, if they had words left to say. If there was anything other than a resigned sigh as a black-clad figure falls into step beside her. Her boots scuff off the cobblestones, the night air cold in her throat.
“Is Bane still looking for the Blink Dogs?” Sloane asks, voice rough. She’s still wearing that raven mask, never mind that they’re not racing. Still wearing that reed sash too, though Hurley longs to tear it from her.
“Yes,” Hurley replies. She scans the street ahead of them, carefully not-looking at Sloane. “Do you have info?”
Sloane snorts. “Huh. What do I get in exchange?”
Hurley bites her tongue, setting her face stiff and wooden. “If you have information regarding the criminal activities of the gang known as the Blink Dogs, then it is your duty as a concerned citizen—”
“Hurls, I’m a goddamn force of nature. I can take care of them myself.”
“You are still not above the law, Sloane. None of us are.” She clenches her fist, old arguments stabbing her throat like thorns. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“You know where I live.”
“Yeah, but…” Sloane slings her hands in her pockets, elbows jutting as she kicks a loose stone rattling into the night. “Feels rude to just pick the lock when you don’t want me.”
“You still have the key.”
“Not anymore, I don’t.” And like that she extends her hand, fist closed, and Hurley raises hers— an instinctive acceptance, even now. Even after all they’ve been through. Or maybe because of all they’ve been through, that her body still reacts this way, that she wants to take Sloane’s presence as a gift.
The key drops into her palm, skin-warm.
Sloane takes a deep breath. In. Out. Her words rustle like dead leaves. “I still have the money tree. It’s looking real nice. The tips are getting all red and rosy.”
A chilly silence; the baby succulent had been cut from Hurley’s own tree. It felt fitting at the time, but now...
Hurley keeps walking.
“Hurls, what do I gotta do to show you I’m still me?” Sloane asks, and her voice breaks like a tree, like splintering wood, and it’s not just destruction but impact, a fallen giant rattling the forest around it.
“Why did you take out that other wagon on the track?” Hurley twists the question back, tongue clipped. “We made a deal, Sloane. We were running clean. And then you...”
“Power is meant to be used. I just wanted… I just needed to see what I could do with it. We’re stuck in these ruts, telling ourselves we’re making small changes, one day at a time, when really we could be shaking things up, and—”
A distant scream, and Hurley pulls out her baton, racing towards it even as the Stone of Farspeech around her neck crackles to life.
She’s always run into danger, because that’s what guards do.
But it’s her first time running from Sloane.
. . .
Silverpoint toxin courses through her veins, root and branch of it, gnarled blackness and Hurley’s vision swims, but she’s in Sloane’s arms now, and forever, and always, and maybe that’s enough, maybe that’s enough because haven’t they suffered enough for this?
This is a last goodbye, if they had time for more— Hurley thinks of her mother, her stepfather, her fellow guards and all the tomorrows they have yet to see. Her mouth waters, filled with sweet cherry scent as her limbs twine with Sloane’s, and they’ve always been two separate people with one beating heart, one passion, so maybe it only makes sense that this is how they end— as one, united and ever-lasting.
Yeah, this is okay, she think-feels-says, and her heart beats echo, all sap and clarity as Sloane replies, Yes.
. . .
They stay like that for a year and a day, the seasons wheeling all about them. Hurley’s mother brings incense to the foot of the tree, and their fellow wagon racers leave the masks as an impromptu shrine.
But on that last day, the tree splits with a crack of wood, like thunder from a cloudless sky and the blossoms dropping in a blizzard of pink, flurrying to the grass.
Hurley groans, unbends. Arches her fingers to the sun, wriggles her toes— her toes! No more roots, but toes, individual and wriggly— in the dirt and feels the snap-crackle of each vertebrae popping back.
Sloane yawns, an immense jaw-cracking release as she twists her shoulders, stepping out of the trunk that has served as their cocoon for the past year. “Whoa, Hurls. That was… that was some epic fairytale-level bullshit right there, wasn’t it?”
“You were the one that turned us into a tree,” Hurley says mildly.
There are people gasping, there are guards and vendors and there will be a thousand and one questions, but for now…
Hurley holds out her hand, and Sloane takes it. Squeezes.
They’ll write their own ending.