Stavanger Bay You know my love can hold you down

The moment she saw that familiar, heart-stopping shimmer of warmth in his eyes was to Reverie a small eternity. It was all at once the cold breath in her lungs and the sand beneath her and the open sky and tomorrow's sunrise and all of it, everything, and she felt lost. Everything.
She leaned into his embrace and kissed him, finding a sense of completion in Lestan's arms that filled her with dread. Everything. Even so, she was overcome with her own warmth. Distantly, idly, she marveled at the strangeness of it — to feel so much love, and so desperately hopeless for it. There was nothing for her but this, a reality in which the dreams of her youth were not only dead before their time but their remnants defiled and put on display in grotesque warning to herself. Do not dream again, the rotten smell reminded her constantly; you will only set it all alight for him.
Reverie shifted then, plagued by her own thoughts, wanting now to show Lestan the true purpose of this night. It was the memory of beauty, of a soaring feeling which had seemed to lift her from her own misery if only for a little while, which had first sparked her plans for this night. She reached for a carefully-wrapped bundle, two strips of the plant described to her by the witch folded in a large leaf, and unwrapped it slowly. Reverie could not tell Lestan that it was safe, that she knew this from experience, but hoped that he knew she would never put him in danger.
She offered one piece to her husband, and kept the other for herself. Her eyes asked if he trusted her.