archenland / year 1022

prompt: "cozy blankets"

word count: 2,019

xXx

Aravis knew she was dreaming.

She knew the ghostly grip of cold, pale stone; of sightless effigies standing high over the caverns of the dead. She knew the shapes of bare trees wavering in the corners of her vision, an icy wind blowing reckless and cruel outside the hall of unforgiving stone.

Yet still the chill of the tomb invaded her skin, freezing down to the pit in her stomach.

Still she shrieked as her father's strong hands pulled her away from the mound, still her child-voice ricocheted unheeded off ancient walls, still everything inside her lurched for the boy lying at the bottom of that fresh cut grave, draped in richly dyed fabrics, littered with trinkets of gold.

Her brother.

Her world.

Still that heavy, guttural scrape of stone over stone rumbled under her feet, through her bones, inside her skull, the giant slab grinding into place on the ropes of six slaves to seal his sarcophagus.

To seal him in forever.

"No, stop, please!" The cry ripped like a scream from her throat, rough and raw through the flood of tears. "Don't leave him here, father, you can't! You can't leave him!"

But no one listened.

Strong hands guided her firmly, forcefully out toward the icy grey of the outside world, and with one last burst of wild desperation she ripped her arms free and lunged backward, barreling blindly through the sea of hands that reached out to stop her and plunging down into the grave that should never have held his young body.

Her hand struck the beaded embroidery of Alamar's ceremonial tunic just as the hollow roar reached a crescendo and the suffocating stone slab settled into place overhead with a crunch that cast her into pitch blackness like the grip of death itself.

Aravis bolted awake with a gasp.

A pocket of air caught sharply in her throat, heart pounding with a painful fury against her ribcage as the chill of the night struck her skin, clammy with sweat under heavy blankets.

She coughed with a shudder and drew a long, shaky breath, glancing down to find Cor still asleep beside her, shafts of pale moonlight falling silvery across peaceful features and curling golden locks splayed out over the pillow.

The Princess of Archenland breathed out again, waiting for her violent heartbeat to calm before throwing back the covers and slipping out onto the icy stone floor, not so very unlike that of a tomb, the frigid air of late October in the mountains engulfing her as she wandered to the glittering window.

Sweat turned to ice on her skin, and she gripped her own arms as if she could tear off the offending flesh, as if she could crawl out of her body and into any other life, into a life before they'd put her brother in the ground, before the haunting grief had clawed its way into her chest and made its home there.

Before it had been real.

Before she had allowed her father to pull her out through the pillars of that pale stone hall, out onto the desolate hillside and down to the house she had once called a home.

For a moment she was no longer gazing out over Anvard's moonbathed towers and the dim misty orange of the forest beyond, but over pale, bare fields, up to the distant slope where the monolithic stones of the family burial mound stood, up to the box of cold stone where her best friend lay alone, side by side only with the dry bones of ancestors he'd never met. A resting place she would now never share.

The bed rustled softly behind her and she took a breath as the world once again settled into its proper place, cold and bleak as the soft telltale creak of the ornate wooden frame told of her husband's movement only a moment before Cor's arms wrapped around her shoulders, warm in a sea of ice as his cheek settled gently against her temple.

"Where do you think you're going?" he murmured sleepily into her ear.

Her throat closed up before she could even hope to answer, silence thickening the air as he held her, planted the ghost of a kiss on her temple, leaned into her like he knew.

Of course he knew.

As if he hadn't found her out in the Great Hall every night for a month after they'd first come to live at Anvard.

As if she hadn't fallen apart in his arms the night before their wedding, and several nights afterward.

And now…

She brushed her fingers over her stomach, the faintest unusual roundness beneath her thin nightgown hinting at the tiny life inside.

"Come back to bed," he breathed when several minutes had slipped away without a word, sleepy sweetness still lacing his voice. "It's freezing out here."

And in a state like a daze, she allowed him to heave her up into his arms as if she were a child again, carry her back to their tousled nest of blankets and crawl in beside her before drawing the heavy quilt up around them both.

A shuddering sigh escaped her as the warmth of the cocoon chased away the last vestiges of the well worn crypt, leaving behind only the mingled horror and guilt that always lasted so much longer than the dream itself, the longing that never completely went away, no matter how old she grew. And at last she buried her face into Cor's chest, wrapping her arms around him as the tears burned in the back of her throat but refused to leak from her eyes.

"Talk to me," he murmured, resting his cheek on her head and running his fingers gently through her thick, heavy curls. "It's okay."

"I know," she choked at last. "I know it is, but I just— I can't—" Her breath hitched and she shut her mouth again, pursed lips trembling as she gripped him even tighter, as if she couldn't possibly make him real enough.

She knew it was only a dream.

But waking up never brought her brother back.

Cor kissed the side of her head and pulled the blankets more securely up around her shoulders, her brown fingers digging into his pale chest through a flimsy night shirt.

"It's Alamar, isn't it?" he asked softly.

She nodded against him, drawing a deep breath before speaking in a shaky whisper, admitting at last in words what she'd been burying alone in her head for months. "He'll never meet our baby."

Even this she barely got out before the lump in her throat choked her, vision blurring as a hot tear slipped down her cold cheek.

Then hardly even a breath. "I want to tell him he's an uncle." Another tear ran down her cheek into Cor's night shirt, mouth twisting with the painful effort of forming simple words. "He would be so happy."

Her shoulders shook, and her husband's hand ran slowly up and down her back as he sighed softly into her hair.

"I know," he breathed through her silent sobs, Aravis' tight throat squeaking with tiny shaking breaths, hot tears slipping heavy down her face until they soaked her throat, and Cor reached up to brush them away.

He cupped her damp face in his warm, dry hand. "He won't meet our baby in this lifetime, but they can still meet him."

She choked on a shuddering breath and swallowed, at last pulling back just enough to look up into his face, soft, pale eyes only just glinting in the silvery pre-dawn light, gazing earnestly, lovingly down at her.

Again, her lip trembled. "How?"

He smiled with bittersweet sympathy. "The same way I've met him."

Aravis almost choked on another hitching breath, biting her lip as she searched his eyes imploringly for the answers she couldn't ask for with words.

"Father says to die is to be forgotten," he murmured. "And if that's true, you've never really let him die. How could you? Maybe I can't see him, but I can see where he's been."

Her brow knit, a tiny gasp rushing air into her raw throat, and Cor planted a kiss on her upturned forehead, his hand moving to brush the tangle of hair back from her eyes, baring her face to the honest midnight chill.

"Didn't I meet you in your brother's armor? Is the woman I love not made up of pieces only he could have put there? Didn't he teach you to ride? Didn't he teach you your favorite songs? To love the morning and to think of him when the birds flock together?"

She nodded as a fresh surge of hot tears turned the grey moonlight into a misty haze.

"He's touched every piece of the world you've touched, Vis. You wouldn't be the same person without him. And I wouldn't be the same person without you. Don't you see?"

"But…" She sniffed, breathing out tremulously. "He'll still be forgotten, one day, when no one speaks about him anymore. Everyone dies eventually. Even memories."

Cor shook his head. "I don't think forgetting is about names. I think it's about souls. Fifty years from now, everyone who ever met our children will have seen a hint of him. And their children. And their children. And maybe they won't know his name, but he'll still be there. And so will you. And so will I. And a story you told in passing will become something greater than you can even think of."

Aravis studied her husband's eyes, illuminated only by the pale gleam of moonlight through the single frosted window, and reached up to push a curtain of golden hair behind his ear as a swell of emotion beyond gratitude or admiration bloomed in her core, looking even more fully into the face she didn't think she could love any more than she did at this second.

"How did you get so wise?" she choked, the teasing lilt half lost to the tears still strangling her airway.

"Perhaps I learned it from you." He smiled. "Where did you learn it from?"

And she couldn't quite suppress the smile that tugged at her lips, though it almost hurt more than the tears for how violently the love surged into her chest. For Cor, for Alamar, for the tiny baby to whom she would one day sing the songs he taught her under an endless blue sky.

Love always did seem to be the culprit behind the worst of pain, but where would she be without either?

Cor smiled when she smiled, planting tiny kisses on her cheeks and her nose and her lips and never minding the glaze of salt water, holding her closer and tucking his legs up to cradle her under the covers, tight and warm and snug. And she couldn't help but smile wider, a tiny laugh escaping her throat at the shower of affection.

She laid her head on his chest again, snuggling close and nosing up under his neck to settle her cheek against his collarbone, his warmth and safety seeping in around her like its own kind of blanket.

"I'm sorry for waking you," she sighed as the silence settled comfortably around them, beginning to feel a little silly as she always did after crying. "You're so busy these days, I know you didn't get to sleep until late."

"Doesn't matter." He brushed a hand through her hair. "We can stay here as long as we please. The rest of the world can wait."

And Aravis couldn't help but grin at the cozy drowsiness in his voice.

"I love you," she murmured, though the words seemed far too small to hold the unfathomable weight of her heart.

"Mm. I love you, too."

The early morning mist still hung over the distant orange world outside, lonely and cold as the country slept.

But although it might also creep into the stone of a far away tomb, perhaps it touched nothing there that was not kept warm here, hiding from the world under the blankets, a tiny world unto itself.