Love
A soft giggle wafted through the air towards him and he grinned triumphantly, yanking back the heavy brocade curtains to reveal his wife, dark eyes sparkling with merriment as she held her hands over her mouth in a futile attempt to hold back her laughter. He reached forward, grateful that she was still in her night shift instead of one of the layered gowns she wore during the day, and brushed his fingers across her ribs, capturing her waist with his other hand when she tried to squirm away. Her laughter pealed throughout the room as she struggled to get away from him and his still tickling fingers, and he drank in the sight of her face, alight with joy and mischief.
"Edmund!" She finally cried, slumping against him in surrender. "Stop, we have to get ready for King Lune's visit."
He wrapped his arms more securely around her, refusing to let go, and smirked down at her, shaking his head. "You should have thought of that before you woke me with a pillow to the face and a vanishing wife."
She grinned up at him unrepentantly and slid her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe so that she could brush her lips against his, once, twice, three times, until he finally gave in and kissed her back. He lifted her feet off the floor and took several steps backwards, then tumbled them both back onto the bed, her surprised gasp and happy giggles making his heart swell with love as he captured her lips again.
Twelve years since he first met her, a slip of a girl who just wanted to make him smile. Six years since he first dared to kiss her, the bravest and best decision he ever made. Two years since he watched her walk down the aisle in floaty white gown handcrafted by the dryads, although he didn't learn that until weeks after the wedding, as he hadn't been able to take his eyes off her face, beautiful and glowing and his.
Their kiss changed from sweet to passionate and she pulled him on top of her, warm chocolate eyes sparkling with a different kind of intent that took his breath away as she buried her hands in his hair, kissing him slowly, deeply, their hearts picking up the same steady rhythm as he trailed his hands down her sides, reveling in the silky feel of her skin and the warmth of her slender curves.
Something wrenched at him and his eyes flew open, a gasping sob bubbling over his lips as he saw his darkened bedroom ceiling and realized that it had just been a dream, that he was once again trapped in the 'real' world, stuck in his useless, eleven-year-old body, and that once again, she was gone.
On the other side of the world, in a different time, a sixteen-year-old girl woke up and wept, one hand clutching her pillow, the other reaching for her missing other half before falling hopelessly to the mattress as reality -cruel, callous reality -set in. He had never been there at all.
