The stars seem brighter tonight.

Daine's eyes lazily traced the outline of The Cat, visible through the bubbled glass of the small
window above one of Numair's many bookcases. It was windy all day today. The seasons are
changing, and the People are preparing for the Big Cold. She yawned. Here I go again,
philosophizing. This mage and his habits will be the death of me.

Said mage, perhaps sensing a need to defend his character, slid his right arm down her side until
his thumb rested in the tiny hollow of her navel, fingers gently cupping her belly. "I can hear you
thinking." His low voice delightfully tingled the back of her neck. "What is it?"

Closing her eyes, Daine enjoyed the simple pleasure of feeling the heat of his palm on her bare
skin. Her senses seemed to grow sharper whenever she was with him. At first it had been an
aftereffect of their lovemaking - after such an intense experience, her entire being felt exquisitely
sensitized - but given the frequency with which they shared bed, warmth and touch, this
heightened awareness had become commonplace. Now she merely needed to be in the same
general proximity as him in order to feel so alive - to feel so in tune with the world around her.

"I am wondering what it would be like to hibernate."

She could feel him smile against her shoulderblade. "I know you don't like how cold our rooms
get during the winter, sweet, but as I've told you before it only takes a simple spell-"

Daine shifted and turned to face him, drawing her face closer to his on the pillow. "I know that,
Numair. What I meant was, I am wondering how nice it would be to curl up with my mate in a
nice warm den for a few months." Slowly she eased a leg in between Numair's long limbs and
placed a hand below his clavicle, fingers rubbing thoughtfully. "You've got a fair bit of fur on
you, so that's a start. It always surprises me how much you have, after you've been away on a
long trip."

Numair paused before answering. In the soft shadow cast by starlight and a few small candles,
her pale skin seemed to glow. Beautiful.

"At least it keeps me from shivering on nights like these. Unlike some people."

"My point exactly. You'd be lovely to hibernate with - you'd keep me warm, if nothing else."

He felt her flinch involuntarily at the shock of his warm hand at the base of her spine. The mage
held her eyes as he began tracing the knobs of her vertebrae one by one. "At last, after years of
magical training and tireless political service, I have found my true calling. As the Wildmage's
personal furry pillow. Would you at least let the pillow be black so that it may retain some of its
dignity?"

She smiled. "I love you. You're the only one crazy enough to put up with me and my strange
thoughts."
Reaching the midpoint of her spine, Numair slid his hand to rest on the soft swell of her hip.
"Oddly enough, there are quite a few people who would say the same about you."

Daine sighed in contentment. For a long moment nothing was said between them as they enjoyed
the quiet wonder of simply being together and sharing the same space, after so long a parting.

Finally Daine untangled her limbs from Numair's and sat up against the dark oak headboard,
reaching over to her bedside table for the glass of plum wine she had left there, half-drunk,
several hours before. Slowly sipping the dark, aromatic liquid, she broke the silence. "Tell me
about your trip."

Numair sighed and flipped onto his back to stare at the dark-paneled ceiling, pillowing his head
with the back of one forearm. "It was an awfully long trip, magelet. Where would you like me to
start?"

"Anywhere you like. Well, how did your meetings go at the University? You've only been
speaking of going there for about as long as I've known you." Once he had found out that the
mages at the Royal Tyran University had caught wind of his official trip to the Court, they had
requested he deliver a short lecture on any topic of his choosing. Immediately Numair had
decided to speak about wild magic - which would conveniently require he bring Daine along to
"help." Jon's insistence that he travel alone had put a damper on Numair's lecture plans, so that
when he left he had still not decided which subject to speak about.

"My lecture on the rearing and behavior of juvenile dragons was a resounding success." Actually,
success would be a gross understatement. The eagerness and passion he had seen in professors
who were well advanced in age rivaled that of the teenage pages he instructed back in Tortall.

Daine smiled into the rim of her glass. "Why wouldn't it have been? You were in a room full of
academics - people who, like you, often eke out an existence on the cusp of reality."

Numair turned his head and looked at her queerly, eyebrows furrowed. "You get too
philosophical when you've had that wine."

She pouted prettily, lowering her eyes coquettishly. "I seem to remember that you rather enjoyed
tasting it on my lips not two hours ago."

"Ah, but anything tasted on those lips would be nothing but the sweetest ambrosia-"

Daine swatted away his fingers as they attempted to cup one of her breasts. "Save it for later,
master mage. We were talking about dragons."

He sighed theatrically, but withdrew his hand and resumed his former posture. "After the lecture,
I was invited by the dean for a personal tour of the library. I have read several of his treatises on
various magical subjects and, of course, had a number of questions to ask him. It was very kind
of him to humor the book-brained idiot from Tortall and I thought he was just being polite, but
then he shared something truly incredible with me." Stopping to take a breath, the next words
rushed out in a torrent of pure excitement. "Did you know that many of the original Old Thak
scrolls have somehow made their way out of Carthak and into Tyra? Apparently this happened
sometime during the past two centuries. I had no idea, I thought they'd been lost forever in the
various fires that have periodically gutted the university library in Carthak, but before I know it
he had unlocked a dusty cabinet and there they were. To hold those ancient parchments in my
own hands and to see for myself the first time any of those Words of Power were used as part of
a spell was..." Full of awe and wonder, his voice trailed off in the darkness.

The Wildmage patiently took another sip of wine. She had learned that when Numair's mind
became preoccupied with academics, there was room for little else. "Was what?"

Closing his eyes, he chuckled as he relished the memory. "You'll laugh."

She smiled. "Perhaps. But I have a feeling that that's a risk you're willing to take."

Numair got up on one elbow and faced her, extending a large palm to rest gently atop her thigh,
his thumb stroking her hipbone. "It was the same kind of feeling that I get when I look around
this room and see your things mixed in with mine." His eyes raised to meet hers. "Happiness.
Awe. Contentment."

Daine returned her glass to the bedside table and dug a hand into Numair's thick hair, stroking
gently as she massaged his scalp. His face leaned forward and he nuzzled into the soft flesh of
her hip. "I missed you so much," he said quietly. "Those meetings at Court were all so boring.
Tyra in general is so boring. Corus is decidedly more cosmopolitan, and court life here is far
more engaging. I missed having you to laugh with. And there were so many things I dearly
wished to laugh at."

"I missed you, too. I must confess that nothing terribly exciting has happened at Court, or in
Corus for that matter, since you left. And it's gotten so dreadfully cold the past few days. The
People have been doing their best to keep me warm, but..."

Numair reached up to plant a hand squarely on Daine's shoulder and pushed her down to lie
beside him. "But what?" Enveloping her in his embrace, he pulled her tightly against him. Daine
smiled against his lips. "But they're not you."

He kissed her then, slowly and carefully. Plum wine still clung to her lips and he patiently tasted
each and every drop. Rising in the narrow space between them, his fingers splayed across her
breast like the arms of a starfish. Her nipple hardened beneath his palm, and Numair squeezed
the precious weight as he deepened the kiss.

His intention was clear. But something he had said earlier weighed on Daine's mind, and she had
to have an answer before the moment completely passed.

Breaking the kiss, she opened her eyes to find Numair gazing at her inquisitively. "Is that why
you left, then?"
He blinked, obviously confused. "What?"

Fighting the urge to lose herself in his embrace, she repeated the question. "Is that why you left
Tyra? Because it was so 'boring?'"

Numair abruptly withdrew from her and sat bolt upright, leaning forward and resting his head in
his hands. "Do we really have to talk about this now?" He sounded bewildered and also the
slightest bit annoyed at her having ruined a perfectly wonderful moment.

Daine sat up beside him and crossed her arms in defiance. "Yes. We do. In all our years together,
before and after the war, I've not once asked you about it. I know that your life before Tortall was
difficult and complicated, and I've never wanted to cause you pain in remembering it. There is a
big piece of your life that I don't know about you, Numair, and yet I've shared with you
everything about myself - everything about where I'm from and why I left and how I feel about
that, because I wanted to give myself to you completely. I've respected your silence for six years,
Numair, but I can tell that this trip has affected you very differently than any of our other trips."
She swallowed, steeling herself. "Please, love. Please tell me. I want there to be no more secrets
between us."

Through a crack in his fingers Numair stole a glance at Daine. From this vantage point he could
only see her hands, crossed defiantly over her breasts, but his eye caught the silver band resting
on her finger. Rubbing his face vigorously, he knew he could deny her nothing. He owed it to her
- to the woman who would soon be his wife. His wife.

Silently he pulled one of Daine's hands away from her chest so that their fingers met and
entwined on her knee. "You have truly been so giving to me, magelet, and like the fool I am I
have taken much more than I can possibly return." She squeezed his hand. "I will remedy this
imbalance as best I can, then. You are entitled to as much of my miserable story as you wish."

"Surely it can't all be miserable, Numair." Slowly her thumb began tracing abstract circles on his
palm.

He shrugged. "There were many reasons why I left Tyra, magelet. The most obvious being that I
had been accepted to study at the university in Carthak."

"And the less obvious ones?"

From his vantage point in a plush bedroom in the palace in Corus, in bed with a wondrous young
woman from Galla, with the accoutrements of his service to Tortall strewn haphazardly
throughout the apartment, Numair couldn't feel further away from Arram Draper, aged 14, the
son of a simple Tyran cloth merchant as he kissed his mother goodbye and lugged his books
down the wharf onto the boat that would take him towards Carthak and his future.

Why had he left? Over the years he had thought no further than the simple fact that he needed to
attend university. But why Carthak, when the university in Tyra was more than adequate to meet
his needs?
"I felt stifled there." Memories flooded back after years of dormancy: schoolmates who taunted
his unusual dimensions and propensity for books, and schoolmasters who simply did not know
what to make of a boy filled to the brim with a potent and dangerous Gift. "I didn't want to
become a merchant like my father and inherit his business. There was nothing wrong with him or
his trade, mind you, but I always felt that there was something more to it. That there was a life
outside of Tyra and textiles. That perhaps I could learn to control my magic, rather than let it
control me."

Daine raised their entwined fingers to her lips and kissed the back of his hand. "It was
opportunity, then - or lack of it." She understood this sentiment perfectly well - after all, it was
the opportunity to begin a new life which had led her to Tortall in the first place.

He nodded. "Carthak seemed so exotic. Tyra was familiar, of course, but a big part of that
familiarity lay in monotony. I needed excitement and a life independent of my parents and their
entire world."

"And being back there brought all these old emotions to the surface again?"

He paused, thinking. "Yes and no. I've changed a lot since then, Daine."

She snorted. "Obviously, Numair."

He continued. "It made me glad to be where I am today. And it made me glad that I had made all
those crazy decisions in the first place - that those years of juggling and magic tricks at street
fairs were worth it. And, of course, it made me realize just how unlikely it is that we have found
each other. But I wisely decided not to dwell on that bit, and instead rejoice in my good fortune."

Suddenly he pulled her into an embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her. Daine shifted to
sit in his lap, her ankles locked behind his back. Their foreheads met and Numair butted his nose
against hers. The giddiness he felt whenever she was in his arms, coupled with the love he felt
for her wishing to provide him comfort and the lovely, soft pressure of her breasts squashed
against his chest, made him desire her more at that moment than he had in a long time.

But he pushed those thoughts away - there was an important piece of news to deliver.

"Daine?"

"Mmm?" Her head rested on his shoulder, face turned into his neck. He felt her eyelashes flutter
against his skin and send a thrill down his spine.

"I saw my mother when I was there."

He felt the skin of her cheek peel away from the skin of his shoulder. She turned his face to meet
hers. "Did you? How is she?"
"Very well. Very well indeed." Another understatement. She had been ecstatic to see her son after
seven long years of letter-writing - and so reluctant to let him go that he had seriously considered
shape-shifting in order to escape her endless, bone-crunching hugs.

Daine kissed the tip of his nose. It was chilly, so she rested her hands on either side of his face
and pulled him in for a long, proper kiss to warm him up.

But Numair pulled away almost as soon as it had started. "Daine?"

"Yes, Numair?"

"She wants to come visit."