I lift my lids through the haze of morning, feeling wonderfully drowsy and comfortable. The grey winter morning stops for no one, but perhaps it lingers for us today, as the dusk seeps through the tightly closed slits of the shutters and rolls in from under the heavy oak door. I can taste the coming snow if I lift my face towards the rough stone wall. The fire has died down, and I feel its absence on the tip of my nose and the edge of one cheek; everything else is safely tucked away.
A soft mumble tickles my neck, and I don't need to glance down to see the King's Head Healer to know his face is burrowed in my shoulder, as it is every morn. My back sinks into the thick mattress, my head turned just so for my lips to rest just above his prickly head. I am cupping the base of his skull with one hand, while its pair lies on a bare, thickly muscled shoulder blade on his broad expanse of back. Likewise, Dagonet's left hand is splayed across my back, which, unlike his, is covered by a thin nightgown. The other is buried in my hair, his long arm wrapping around me tightly.
I shift closer, completely at ease with his firm weight draped over my body. Something about his volume, the sheer amount of coiled power in his body inspires the greatest of confidence. He is shielding me from the bite of the room with his solid form, yet it is I that comforts him with my tiny hands and body, soothes the deepened grooves left by metal and smoothes the crumpled brow. My lips kiss his lids closed when his eyes ache with strain and sorrow. My arms hold him down when the long passed ghosts try to pull him back from the deep. I am his anchor, he is my rock.
The cold refuses to let me stay suspended between the night and day, and as inevitable as age, I fully wake, slipping back into awareness with ease, all before he even stirs again. I know he has duties this morning, but I cannot resist leaving him in his current position for a while, absentmindedly tracing the long scar down his face. Despite Dagonet's rare surfacings of self-consciousness about his battered body, I love and hate each scar, knowing they caused him pain, yet have somehow become a part of his self, a visual map of him.
I move on, finding purely by instinct the puckered crater beneath his ribs – testament to a failed bolt - then the trail of a crafty dagger across the base of his spine, followed by the jagged line traveling up to point at his opposite shoulder. The motion drags Dagonet out of the depths of sleep and he resettles himself, his face delving deeper into the groove of my neck. He mumbles incoherently again, lips and stubble tickling the sensitive skin, but then, startled into realizing what time it is, bolts up, locking his brawny arms at the elbow and looking worriedly towards the window, where slits of foggy sunshine are starting to filter through.
Suddenly robbed of my warmth, I pull him back down, and assure him it is still quite early. "Good morning Love," he murmurs in my ear, pulling the blankets back up and settling back into the dip he had vacated in the bed. I whisper a reply and smile as he draws me closer. Pretty soon, a page will be pounding on the door with another urgent matter and we will have to part for the day to see to our respective work, but right now, stealing this beautiful moment is more important to both of us.
