Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce did it. I borrowed and expanded.

A/N: This is a strange chapter but it marks a turning point that is important in their relationship. It doesn't follow my usual patterns, but I hope you'll like it.

Chapter 7 – Defining Love

In Numair's dream, he held Daine in a lover's embrace, bare legs intertwined, fingers tracing and memorizing every inch of one another. Numair rained kisses over the silken skin of her neck. He had dreamed this before many, many times. Though the settings changed, the intimacy was familiar. But this time he was aware he was asleep and that was strange. The next big change came when she spoke. Her sounds were usually what you would expect under these circumstances. This time her soft voice asked a question so low he almost did not hear it the first time and most definitely did not understand it.

"Say that again, my love? I didn't catch it." He practically purred the words.

"Is this all you really want?" she asked louder.

He froze, hurt. "I don't understand."

"Night after night I'm here with you like this. Is this all you really want?"

"No, darling, of course not. I want to make love with you, yes, but it's not all I want."

"Then what do you want?" her blue-gray eyes held his gaze as she searched for answers. He could see a desperate need to know reflected in her countenance.

"I want you to love me the way that I love you."

"Is love always sex?" she asked. It was strange. There was no sarcasm, but a simple question like she would ask in a lesson.

"No," he answered, pulling back a little to look at her better. "One can exist without the other. Most often it is sex that exists without love, but…"

"So why do you torture yourself like this then? You keep dreaming about me like this and then you wake up aching for it to be real. If you could stop focusing on this, wouldn't you be less uncomfortable?"

The dream shifted in the liquid way that dreams do and now they were both fully clothed, sitting in grass on a sunny day. They were about a foot apart both with their knees folded up against their chests and arms wrapped around. Hebarely noticed and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. "I supposed it's a natural response," he said, "human biology."

"So biologically speaking, attraction creates arousal and when you can't have it in real life it moves into your dreams?" she asked.

He tilted his head and looked at her. "You're not speaking like Daine."

She shrugged. "It's your dream and your question. In this dream I'm merely the vessel to help you solve the puzzle."

"Beautiful vessel," he flirted while trying to wrap his mind around this. "I don't usually know when I'm dreaming. I'm not in control of what I dream either."

"You are and you aren't. Nothing in your dreams exists outside of your knowledge or imagination. If this is important to you, you probably should pay attention and quit worrying how it came to be." She smiled as she said it.

"Okay," he said slowly. "Are we defining love then?"

"Yes. Do you know what love is?"

"I think so. I can't really define it. It's far too complex. It is caring for another, sharing your true self, a deep affection, desire… I cannot cover everything even though I'm usually good at lists."

Daine's musical laugh brought a smile to his mouth. She looked at him very seriously, "Would you die for me?"

"Have I not already proven that?"

"Will you live for me?"

"I don't understand."

"Can you watch me marry another and still live so that I won't cry?"

He swallowed hard. It sounded like a painful existence devoid of hope, but one he could endure to save her pain. He had not thought of it before -- or had he? "Yes, Magelet."

"Would you do what is best for me, even if that is to give me up?"

"Always."

"Even if that means allowing me to be with Perin?"

"Is he what is best for you?" Numair asked with a lump in his throat.

Again the scene shifted smoothly around them. Now they were walking barefoot on the beach. Their breaches legs were rolled up and they were holding hands. He barely registered the change because the conversation again continued as if nothing had altered. "I don't think you know the answer to that question," she said. "Since I am your dream I cannot know it unless you do."

Numair nodded. "I don't want him to be. It hurts me to think of you with another."

"But why should it, if that made me happy? Shouldn't you be happy for me?"

"I am human, Daine. I am a little selfish and I know that. I don't want to be but I am. I would try very hard to be happy for you. But I would likely still want you here with me in my dreams where no one can see."

She smiled. "I can be here for you. But sometimes it doesn't fulfill anything and it makes you sad. You want the real thing."

He nodded. "I would prefer to hold the real you."

"If I were real and I couldn't – if I wasn't capable of sex, would you still love me?"

"Oh yes. I have never really touched you that way and yet I feel this. I would find other avenues of intimacy with you. I would be sad that I could never father a child of my own but I would love you nevertheless." He paused, surprised. "Did I know I wanted children?"

She only smiled at him shrewdly, then continued the discussion. "Intimacy is not synonymous with love making?"

He smiled. "Magelet would probably never say that. And no, it is not. If it were, then Alanna would have nothing more intimate with George than she did with Jon."

"So what is it then?"

"Time between two people when something special or private is shared, I suppose."

"What does that encompass?"

"If you're my dream Daine, can't you talk like her? I'm feeling strange."

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't make the rules and you're avoiding the question."

"Okay, now that was Daine. Uhhhh, anything. To an artist, sharing the art could be intimate. Our snowball fight was a bit intimate. Often our stargazing is intimate. When you are fully you, it is intimate."

"Numair, why did you dream this?" She looked up at him imploringly as the dream shifted around them again. Now they were on top of Baylor's Needle on a velvety night with a sky so full of stars there seemed to be no way to recognize constellations.

"Because I'm feeling broken," he answered sadly. "It's hopeless and I know it and still I want something to cling to. I'm probably searching for that now." He felt tears well in his eyes and he wondered if he had ever cried in a dream before. If he didn't like to cry in the real world, this should be torment.

"I haven't died, Numair. I'm still part of your life. If you find me and show me that you see the real me more clearly than any other could, maybe…"

"Maybe someday you'll love me back," he finished. The heaviness in his chest had settled in again and breathing was next to impossible. He felt like the pain of it might swallow him whole. "I shouldn't cling to hope like this," he managed to say though his voice was strangled."

"If you can move on, then by all means do it," she answered. It was like being slapped though, because he already knew the answer to that. "I want and need to be loved – truly loved. Have you shown me that?"

"I'm always holding back part of me. I must."

"And then I don't see that I'm not alone."

"What do you mean? We're all alone. It's the human condition. In most ways I'm much more alone than you are. You have Perin and me and about fifty other hopefuls just waiting for a chance to be near you. Even Duke Baird's son is sweet on you."

"There are women that want you too, Numair. You're not interested because they don't really know you and you are right to assume that you might scare half of them to death. You say loneliness is the human condition, Numair, but you seem to forget that I'm not exactly human."

"No," he said with a little wonder. "You are both two-legger and people right?" And then it hit him. "Dear one, do you think I don't see that about you? You are both never alone and always alone. You are one of a kind both in my heart and in reality. Didn't you know that?"

"I knew that," the dream Daine answered, "but does she?"

He stood there looking down at her, wonder sweeping him. "It is my avenue of intimacy, isn't it?"

"Yes. If Perin sees it, we would be surprised. Daine needs you to welcome all of her. Do that and live for the moments. If George can wait years for Alanna, you can wait one day for Daine. When that day is over, wait just one more, and one more, until she's ready. In the meantime take joy where you can and ease your aching heart, Numair."

The dream shifted again. They were back in the lover's embrace but clothed this time. It was dark out, but looked to be just before dawn. He could hear the pre-dawn songs of birds and smell pine, water, and the musky sent of animals close by. Daine felt so solid in his arms. There were deer all around them, sleeping after their night grazing. And suddenly he realized he was no longer asleep.

At some point they had fallen asleep while looking at stars. In the night they had turned against each other, arms and legs intertwined, clinging so close that his body would normally be pleading for her. But something had changed. He could just hold her and feel her against him now and breathe her scent. He wanted her, yes, but it was no longer a mind-numbing urgency that consumed him. Now he could choose as surely as she once chosen to try to stop her heart. It was as if something beyond mortal reality had taken hold and still the love was there, somehow even stronger than before.

Numair thought about the dream and the epiphany it had brought him. He could love her like this. He did love her like this. He would welcome the physical pleasures of touch if someday they were offered, but for now it was enough to be in her presence, in love and aware of who she really was inside. She was both animal and human and somehow the best of both, with a much more gentle nature than either possessed. The magic drew creatures to her, but it was her nature that made them stay, just as her beauty drew him to stare, but her open heart made him fall in love.

He wanted so much to see the world as she saw it, if only for a brief spell. Often they had talked in depth about her animal friends. He knew the science of them, in some cases he knew things they had thought, but with the exception of hawks, he did not know what it felt like to be these magnificent creatures. Daine did. She both suffered for them and appreciated them in a way he had never known. And it had left her alone in the world.

Numair realized that she had tried to reach him in his deepest recesses. She did not share his love for the arcane, but she tried to understand it. This empathy was as natural to her personality as her wild magic was. By stepping closer to him when his search for the esoteric left him lost, she had shown him love in a most intimate way. He had never consciously done that in return. I have been terribly selfish, Magelet, he thought. He wondered now if he could reach to pet one of her friends without frightening it away. It seemed best to wake her.

"Daine," he called softly. "Wake up Magelet."

She opened her eyes sleepily and smiled at him. Then she looked very confused.

"Shhhh, I don't want to scare them off," he said. "Apparently we fell asleep last night. I think we cuddled up in the cold." He watched her cheeks flare red. "Don't worry about it," he said still in his gentlest voice, "Or I'll get embarrassed all over again too."

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Daine felt herself smile. There was Numair, holding her so tightly against him that she felt like she might still be dreaming. "Why are you talking so softly?"

"I didn't want to scare off our bed mates." There were three deer surrounding them, sleeping peacefully. A mother and two fawns who were almost yearlings.

"Ohh," her eyes opened a little wider. She felt delighted. He was sharing something with her that most people never saw. "Don't worry they're all still sleeping."

"They're so beautiful. I've always thought that the gods created deer to give form to grace. What do they feel like to you – to your magic?"

She studied him. There was an intensity about him that seemed to focus fully on her. She could not remember ever feeling so special. More often she just felt alien. "You've never asked me that before except – well immortals and their color."

"I'm sorry. I should have." There was gentleness in his voice that she found almost spellbinding.

"It's hard to explain – they are a soft green in my mind." How could she explain this – the feeling that could be carried in color. "I don't know how to describe this exactly."

He studied her. "May I look through your eyes?" he asked.

"Will you be able to read my mind?" she asked worriedly.

He chuckled. "No, Magelet. Your secrets will remain your secrets. I will only look through your magic the way I did when I was first teaching you, though a little deeper," he paused, "but only if you say it's alright. This is your body." He began to carefully untangle himself from her and she wanted to beg him not to but she thought that might be foolish.

The deer awoke and lifted their heads ready to bolt if a danger was present. She asked them to stay and be comfortable and she felt Numair freeze as if he thought he might scare them off. She smiled to herself that fate had allowed her to keep him close without her revealing her feelings. "Go ahead," she answered finally. His hands moved to her head and black fire danced with multicolored lights in her mind. She reached for her copper threads and searched the clearing, not just for deer, but for all there was to see. His mind connected to hers and they searched as one, fascinated.

No thoughts were shared between them specifically. Neither spoke a word. Together they looked at everything. Through him she saw things that had become background as if they were awe inspiring. She couldn't read his thoughts. Instead she saw through emotions -- those of wonder, appreciation, adoration and -- she couldn't label the final one. Maybe she felt her own love for him reflected back at her and then she felt frightened that he would know. She was aware that his magic receded and suddenly she was alone again.

"Are you alright?" he asked. "Did I scare you?"

"A little," she admitted. "But I liked it. You see things I've stopped noticing." She felt both elated and a little sad. It was an almost spiritual connection and it had been broken. Daine sat up slowly so the deer wouldn't run. She saw Numair copy her and realized that he had walked as fully into her world as he could, and done so willingly.

"Can I pet them?" he asked.

"Sure. They would like that," she answered after quickly consulting them.

He reached out a large hand and stroked the fawn nearest him. "They're so soft and yet coarse," he said with obvious delight in his voice.

She watched him for a time, heart pounding so loud she was sure he'd hear. He petted the fawns and cooed at them while the sun climbed above the horizon.. She had never loved Numair more than she did at that moment. If only he felt the same.

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Okay, so it was a weird chapter. But I hope you like it anyway.