The humid wind tickled Daniel’s face, the soft fragrance of lilacs and spring rain drawing him out of the honeyed cloud he floated in. His fingers slid over fine sheets, and ruffling feathers pulled his eyes open to gold.
Extravagant sheets framing the large bed rustled amidst a gentle breeze. He smiled, back against the soft wall, as he returned to her sanctuary. In the corner, the bookcase kept shuffling its books into itself, and the closet sat filled with materials he’d sent.
None of that could hold his attention long.
At the foot of the bed stood a wall of feathers. Six wings, folded forward and overlapping, white going warm where the light caught them, and his shy wife somewhere behind it.
Good morning to you, angel.
“I can hear you thinking,” the wall said.
“Really? What was I thinking?” He propped himself up on an elbow. “Because I was just admiring the new architecture. Looks soft. Like I could jump into it and float away.”
The feathers shifted. Thread laced together ran along her two upper wings. It was fine work, crooked, and one side sat a hand’s width lower than the other. The patterns on the left were not the patterns on the right. And he loved it all.
Two feathers parted. A single seafoam-blue eye looked out at him, and then away.
“Stop looking… It isn’t good.”
“Isn’t the critic supposed to be the judge?”
“She is.”
He chuckled.
“How long did that take you?”
“Not important.”
He zipped his lips, waiting for her to crack.
“…All night,” the eye admitted. “And then a little more. I think my left wing is shorter than my right.”
“It’s not.” He winked, making her feathers ruffle further. “But why don’t you let me trace it to be sure? I can be very thorough. I won’t leave a single feather untouched.”
The eye vanished, and the voice grew muffled.
“You’re so mean! I’m thinking about it now.”
“My corruption spreads!” He gave a maniacal snicker that had her wings shaking with quiet laughter. “Can you guess what romantic thing I’ll say next?”
“I don’t know… That you’ll flick my nose?”
“That’s something I’d do! No.” He sat straighter. “I never expected perfection out of the thing I bought you, babe. It came off a rack, and it didn’t even fit because I can’t give measurements to save my life… Right?”
Her eye reappeared, suspicion lighting their star shape.
“Maybe I’ll let you measure me. We both need better numbers.”
“Oh, those are more than numbers, darling. And did you know that an imperfect dress can be made perfect on a perfect woman? That’s just how numbers work. Shall I get the tape to wrap you up in?”
The feathers snapped shut.
“Why am I the only one who ever turns into a tomato? It’s not fair! Why am I so easy? And that is not how numbers work! This is how a fiend butters up a lopsided angel wing to cook.”
“Aww. You know I’d never cook you. I would totally butter up your wings, though.”
“Daniel! You cannot keep getting away with this.” Her voice came muffled through the down, small and fast. “How can you catch me every single time I fall? It isn’t natural. Nobody is that quick.”
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“You make my job easy.”
“I’m not anything special, Daniel.” She paused, and the wings drew tighter. “You have seen everything I am by now. There is no second floor. This is it. This is the whole tour.”
“And somehow I still want more.” He rested his elbow against his knee and propped up his head as his wife squirmed. “It’s a real problem. You should look into it.”
“I get so insecure. It comes up out of nowhere, and I can never find where it starts.”
“My heart is full, and my door is open anyway,” he whispered. “You can always be insecure with me. Isn’t that the problem?”
“You devil!”
Poisoned words crept into the silence that followed.
“She may entirely believe she is an angel and your dutiful wife. What better con is there?”
Not now, Carl.
Her wings opened.
She stood under the golden light with her hands at her sides, no idea what to do with them. The blue dress had been cut into a pattern and built out with materials he’d given her. It fell in the exact way he’d wanted; sincere, with effort, and a total mess. The lace went up over her shoulders and out along the wings and did not match anywhere at all.
Daniel got up off the bed and took her trembling hand.
Her cheeks burned. He turned her once, slowly.
“Beautiful.”
“Daniel.”
“The waist. The sleeves. The hem. Beautiful.” He lifted her arm to look at the seam beneath it, and she made a small strangled noise that sounded like a confused bird. “Whoever did this had no business doing it this well. Look at that crooked cut, the lace. Beautiful.”
“You’d say a potato sack looked good on me.”
He stopped in front of her and flicked the tip of her nose.
“And I wouldn’t be wrong.”
Her wings colored pink, and she looked down at the carpet. One wing gave a jittery little snap she could not control, and he decided he would like very much to see that again every day for the rest of his life.
Daniel lifted her delicate hand and looked down into her teary eyes.
“Shall we have that dance?”
“We don’t have music.”
“We can make our own.”
He slowly pulled her in.
“I try to picture me without you… But I can’t.”
She came stiff, then melted against him. He put his mouth near her ear and hummed something low that came without thought. Four notes, and then four more. She caught it on the second pass and joined underneath it.
Her hand found his shoulder. His found the small of her back, sliding between her wings and tickling her feathers. The six wings curled forward and closed around them, and the gold of the light bleeding overhead came through her feathers.
They stepped and turned in the near-empty space.
Neither of them was any good at it. He stepped on the hem twice, and she giggled.
“It seems you are not the best at everything, husband.”
“It appears not!” He pressed closer to her ear. “It seems we will need to practice more often.”
The humming outlasted the dancing by a while. She kept her cheek where it was and her hands where they were. He slid his fingers down her spine, tracing the shape.
Then she straightened, remembering something, and lit up with it.
“I have something for you— Eh?”
She stepped back. Her heel caught the hem, and Daniel caught her.
Clara hung there over his arm with her hair spilling into the light and started to laugh. She couldn’t stop, and had to press the back of her wrist against her mouth.
“That’s the fourth time.”
“Fourth what?”
“Nothing. Never mind. It’s a very stupid number that fits your wife.”
She righted herself, smoothed the front of the dress twice, and held out a card.
[⌖ Bind #2: Poison Ivy &]
[Grows rapidly from the point of casting. Holds one target at a time. The target must be near solid ground. Retargets every 30 seconds. Usable for 1-hour. Restores on long rest.]
“The shape of what is available comes to me, and the Bind Card was the first that came. I know it isn’t the most helpful.” Her chin came up and stayed up. “But it’s another option in the deck! Itchy vines. You’re a menace.”
I thought she was out of material.
Daniel glanced at the desk, where her silver dress was butchered.
“Sweetheart, I think you may have an addiction we need to address.”
“Yes!” She huffed, arms crossed and looking up at him with a rather adorable fire. “It’s called ‘girl better keep her man alive’ addiction. And we don’t have long until morning. So I’m—”
Daniel felt a hook latch to his chest and yank him out of the dream. There was no white and no falling and no taste of rain. There was cold steel laid flat across his throat.
The campfire Edmund had built threw shapes into the branches, and the churned sound of mud and a camp with too many boots in it snapped into focus. Faces stood around him in a ring.
Five beastfolk with their ears flat to their skulls. Four elves. More humans than he could count without turning his head. All of them had weapons.
Above them, in the dead trees, the yellow eyes of Carl’s birds had not moved.
“I tried to warn you, friend. You should have killed them.”
Marg was front and center, beside a man in a gambeson, a sneer on their lips.
Wendel tossed a coil of rope down onto Daniel’s chest.
“Bind yourself, angel.”