Saf was never clear about the method of transmission. Before he left the city, he and Teddy had agreed to keep independent logs of when Saf tried to send him a dream and where he was, and Teddy would write down a brief summary of all his dreams each night. Then they could compare them someday and see how it worked. Only that was a lot of waiting for inconclusive results, so then Saf had asked to experiment with Fire. She was helpful, but after a few days he began to suspect that getting her mind to do anything it didn't want to would be an impossible goal. Try as he might, he could not bend her dreams. He tried with a few other people, but it seemed unreliable: some people were profoundly easy to send dreams to, and others barely open to the suggestion and needed specifics laid out verbally before hand. For a young man just come into the idea of his Grace, it could not have been more frustrating.
That didn't mean he didn't try.
He tried first when they were barely four days out of the city, and he had already begun to try with Lady Fire. Curled up in a tent shared with three other men, he told himself a story of being with Sparks and jumping rooftop to rooftop until she wasn't afraid anymore and kissed him.
The second, a few weeks later: in the printing shop, she told him she was the Queen while Madlen looked after Teddy. He wasn't angry, just confused, and she kissed him then. He wouldn't refuse a kiss, not even from the Queen. Especially not when the Queen turned out to be a rather pretty young woman who seemed bent on helping him. And helping him out of his pants.
He had no way of knowing if it worked, of course. Sparks was no better prepared to tell him if the dreams he sent were working, even at a distance, even without him speaking to her, than Teddy was. Possibly less ready because Teddy at least knew what he was trying to do. She might have just thought they were dreams, though it was possibly him thinking too highly of himself there. Why would she dream of him voluntarily? Were dreams voluntary anyway? He wasn't entirely clear on how dreams happened normally. He missed the solidness of boats, which was, he was sure, ironic.
The Dells were beautiful, when they escaped from the caves. It was the very start of spring, and Saf hadn't realised he missed seeing green things until they overwhelmed him with the intensity of their colour. That night he breathed crisp air and took the first watch, constructing a beautiful dream in the hopes that she might share it. They would come to the Dells together so he could watch her joy at seeing this place, and share a tent. And a bed.
During the days, Saf tried to puzzle it out. He had never wanted to keep someone so much with him before that he was still wondering what she was doing at any moment. Sparks had done him a world of good that he was only just beginning to understand and he had left her. At least he could, maybe, offer her the comfort of good dreams.
In the end, he didn't join the navy. King Nash's spymistress, his younger sister Clara, had recruited him instead. Saf supposed this was flattering, and the work was interesting. He liked King's City, and he liked this royal family, so open and sprawling and not caught up in ideas about nobility the way they had been in the Seven Kingdoms. They didn't make him feel, even inadvertently, like he was unworthy to be in their presence. And he genuinely liked Lady Fire, and her daughter, and her daughter's family. He concocted dreams about them for his sister, pictures of Lady Hanna and her wife with their three children, none of whom looked alike and none of whom seemed to care.
Through his work, Saf was one of the first to know that the Queen of Monsea was coming to visit. His first instinct was to run. His second was to meet her by the caves and bring her here. He did neither. The Queen of Monsea would have plenty of escorts, and surely after two years she wouldn't want to see him. He had given up the attempted dreams the year before. Teddy had sent a summary of the first six months away, and only the first few dreams he had tried to send had worked. Distance seemed to be an inhibiting factor. Even if he thought that Sparks would still want his dreams, they hadn't worked of late.
Then again, surely he could be precise within the castle, even if they didn't speak?
In the dream, he found her in one of the courtyards of her palace. It was raining and the courtyard was beginning to flood, but she just smiled at him as she waded across it.
"Saf!" Her voice was made strange by the water, echoing and dampened by the heavy weight of rain. "Saf, I've missed you." She kissed him when she reached him, waiting in the arch of a doorway, until his clothes were as wet as hers and clung to his skin. Laughing, she took his hand and led him up stairs he was fairly certain did not actually exist, to her rooms. "You should get out of those, they're soaked," she said as she pushed the doors open into her sitting room.
He did so, and then stepped close to help her as well. Letting the dress drop, she grinned wickedly at him and pulled him by both hands towards her bedroom.
The bed was overly large, especially to a man who had grown up with a hammock, and tall. Sparks bent to climb onto it, but he stopped with with one hand on her lower back, leaving her bent at the waist and leaning against the softness of the sheets. She laughed again, softer this time, and looked over her shoulder at him. "What, Saf?"
"Spread your legs for me a little, love." She shuddered and did as told. His fingertips were cold as they slid up from her knee, her skin hot. He could touch her for ages. Why had he given this up? He wouldn't make that mistake again. Leaving his hand on her lower back, he knelt. He should have at least done this before.
She was soaked when he touched her, his fingers steady and sure. He found her clit with his thumb, and then with his mouth. "Fuck." He would have laughed, if he had been anywhere else. Sparks, swearing. He added another finger, three pressed tight inside her now. "Fuck, Saf, please. Please." She came with his name on her lips, face pressed into her pillows, his tongue and fingers teasing it out of her as slow as he could manage.
He was somehow still surprised when she found him the morning after she arrived.
He had been given a small room to use as an office off of the main quarters, close to Clara and Garan's families' rooms. Clara had said he was good enough to be her grandson. Or wicked enough. Saf was startled to look up from his desk to find the lady Queen standing in his doorway. She seemed smaller than he remembered, but the unamused scowl was just the same.
"Lady Queen," he said as he bowed, low and deep.
She sighed, and came over to touch his shoulder. "Saf. Please, no. Stand up." He did, and she turned to close the door.
"Saf. Er...how are you? I was surprised to find you were still here. I thought you wanted to be a sailor again."
"Yes, well, Clara was persuasive. And I mostly just wanted to be out of Monsea."
She bit her lip. "Right. Of course. Sorry, I'm not sure what possessed me to come down here. I'll go. Sorry to bother you." He watched her turn and touch the door, and then turn back to him. "Saf, did you send me dreams?"
He couldn't read her face to know if she was angry or not, and her voice was carefully neutral. "When?"
"That is sort of a confirmation in itself, you know. Up until a year ago. Last night. I just-I need to know. Were they your dreams, or mine?" She looked flustered, mentioning the dreams. The blush made him remember kissing her at the equinox, and the sight of gold glitter against her cheeks.
A less foolish man would possibly have explained himself, or apologised, or done anything but kiss her, but Saf found to his surprise that he didn't mind being a fool. After a moment, she clung to him, kissing him back. She was warm and alive in his arms, and it felt like his heart had only just resumed beating for the first time in two years, the way it thundered in his ears.
"Come back home with me, Saf," she said when she had her breath back. "They were your dreams. Come back with me."
Saf looked at her steadily, thoughts of Queen Mila, who was as far from noble as he was, and the affection he had found for the Dells, and his work, and every dream he had wanted to send to her all rushing equally unsteadily through his thoughts. Finally, he bent and kissed her again. "Yes, Sparks. I'll come home."