That year they came to the great tree together, and found it healed, branches spread wide in a blossom-laden canopy above the spring that fed its roots, and the bank of soft moss and low-lying thyme, flecked with tiny purple flowers, that grew beside it.
"It's a bower," Snow White said, and smiled. "For us."
She took his hand then, and pulled him after her into that sun-dappled green vault, and closer within reach for a kiss. That became, as ever, a fiercer and warmer exploration than either might plan, and left both of them breathing hard enough for laughter.
It was no work of moments either, to spread her cloak as a sheet upon that bank, and shed enough of boots and traveling leathers, to treat the rest less as encumbrance, than as each being gift-wrapped for the other to undo. But when had lovers with faith enough to be patient ever minded taking such time? Time, now, relieved of those first needs so long denied, in which to learn, and tease, and play, and trust that if either missed their mark, there would be time enough in which to find some other pleasure, and so redeem the effort.
Eric had noticed, distantly, the fairy music fading as they lost themselves in each other, but with all his senses absorbed in the warmth and silky readiness of a woman now deliciously neither girl nor maid, and all beyond breeze and birdsong drowned in their own more urgent sounds of claiming each other, and being claimed in lovemaking, it had meant little.
Little, until he felt that breathless stirring which sent a fine scatter of petals into the air around them, echoing too closely on both her gasping satisfaction, and then his own deeper groan as he spent himself into her.
A fine scatter of petals, and sudden filling of the air with streaky showers of gold dust, at which he looked up, dazed, in wonder.
"Oh my," said Snow White. She tilted back her head, turning to look above them, then grinned and pushed up on her side, hand gathering up the loose front of her shift. "Oh, dear. I hadn't expected this..." She caught his side as he instinctively drew back, and he brushed at his eyes, and understood.
"Oh no," he said, and blinked in hopes his eyes might be playing tricks on him, and knew that they were not.
For there amidst the flower-laden branches above them, there now crouched and lounged and sat with long-toed legs dangling, what could only be hundreds of pearl-white fairies, with eyes of emerald and sapphire and amethyst bright above smiles of toothy merriment, and—seeing his look—a chorus of muffled mirth.
"Oh, bloody hell," he said. "Y'know, I might handle the starin' and grinnin', but it's the dancin' around, wavin' and doin' thumbs-ups, that's going to bother me."
This minor Midsummer Day tribute started with the last line, the possibility of which made me laugh out loud.
Of course, in my tiny evil mind, there are at least 3 or 4 fairies in the crowd, holding up scorecards. "9.6", "10.0", "9.8", "11.0"-and somebody's batting the one with the "11.0" upside one pointed ear...
