Hushed Willows Spirals

Set 12/31

Plagued by fatigue, Reverie had scarcely done more than sleep since her return. It was good to be home, good to be with her husband again, and she spent her few waking hours doting on him. Slowly, she began to understand the change coming over her. She began to recognize it. How could she not?

It frightened her. She said nothing of it to Boone; he would know soon. All of Hearthwood would know. Reverie hid herself in sleep, and she dreamed of that day by the lake; she dreamed of that final howl before Lestan left her, dreamed it again and again until finally it was Boone's voice and she felt as if her lungs had been ripped from her chest. She dreamed of blood.

What she could not admit to anyone, scarcely even to herself, was that she would not have chosen motherhood again. Not at the cost named. But then she had met Boone, and then she had come to love him — and she wanted this, she did, but only for his sake. She knew that she could never tell him; she knew that he would never forgive her. It would hurt him terribly to know how she had hated the very concept of the life they were now creating together, how she'd fought it. How she'd chosen it once for desperation, for Lestan, for the dim hope that he might stay and love her and be happy if she could only give him normalcy. She wished that she could explain. But maybe the truth was a horror in itself.

She'd been planning her own death. In the weeks before Boone found her, when all feeling had faded into hopelessness, only her love for Blossom kept her alive. Only that, and not for long. Then she met a man by the sea, a man with a lonely air and a gentle touch and a thousand hopes for the future sparkling behind his eyes. Even then she hadn't dared to let herself dream again — but Boone was persistent. Reverie still didn't understand what he had seen in her.

But she thought she finally understood what he might have felt then. Surely he'd felt it first, or else why would he have stayed with her through everything? That fierce mix of admiration and affection, the relentless desire bordering on need to see every dream made reality and every wish granted. Boone deserved that; he deserved everything he wanted, all of it. And Reverie hadn't known that a love like this could exist outside of the love she held for Blossom. She'd never thought that about Lestan; she'd been too busy with bitterness at her own unfulfilled needs, too wrapped up in all the hurt to even think that she might become his dream of the future.

How could she ever explain? Boone's happiness was her happiness, his dreams were her dreams. Into the mountains, for him; Hearthwood, for him; children, for him. All of it, and she finally felt hope. Her life would never be perfect. But she didn't think of dying so much; she didn't cry each night as she tried to find sleep; she didn't spend long hours stealing desperate glances at him and wondering how she could help, how she could make him happy, how she could fix what she had broken simply by being her. She'd held him while he cried. He had let her. She didn't think she would ever forget that.

She would give him children. Even if it killed her in the end.