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Winged Flame & Flowering Heart

Summary:

As the resident witch of a nameless town on the fringe between civilisation and the lawless dragonlands, Neil has made himself a nice little home. He is safely anonymous, and two mountain ranges away from the family who made his life hell. He has work, friends, even an occasional lover in one of the dragon-herders when he’s in need of company. But his comfortable routine and home are all threatened with rumours of a danger to the dragon herds, something hurting and killing them without explanation. As a witch raised on his father’s cruel breeding farm, he could be the only one to find the cause of it, and to treat it. But doing so may start a deadly chain-reaction to destroy all he has built, and all those he holds dear.

Chapter Text

Wow, it's finally here - my piece for the 2018 big bang, and basically the only thing I've been working on for the past six months. A huge thank you to defractum for modding the event with such patience and excellence, and a magnificent round of applause to the artist syrren I was matched with, whose pieces of art are honestly phenomenal and I feel very privileged to have matched with them for this. Check out syrren's art here!

There was some inspiration taken from the HTTYD films and the Lady Trent Memoirs by Marie Brennan, as a slight disclaimer, but there is no crossover here or anything actually referencing them. I just really like dragons :D As another side note, I had no idea what to title this fic until literally last week, so it will always be 'dragon cowboys fic' in my head. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 

There will be warnings listed at the start of each chapter as a heads-up. Warnings for ch1: semi-explicit sex, homophobic hate-speech, a labour and childbirth scene, mentions of scars and general canon backstory. 


 

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When Neil woke to the sound of the innkeeper’s cockerel crowing from the other side of the river, his first instinct was to look to the door. This wasn’t such an unusual impulse perhaps, especially for someone who spent more than a decade constantly fleeing the scene of his own existence. But today the urge was not born of paranoia or itchy feet – but of the gentle nudging of finely-tuned prescience.

The charms he hung above his doorway stirred gently in the slight drafts from his windows; he had set them himself, in this house he had built over the course of a summer, and he hadn’t known to account for the wood to shrink and warp in the wintertime, so now he had to suffer the occasional drafts and small bits of snow, if the blizzard was very determined. The charms were made of a common combination of things – his own hair, some herb stems, a few feathers from various birds, some intricately knotted bits of string and cloth, some twigs and buds from auspicious trees, a flower or two. But he had mixed in particular other ingredients in the swinging mobile, such as the rarity of a handful of dragon scales, each one worth more than anything else in his shop, each daubed with a finger-prick of blood from different people. Some had been given willingly, some unknowingly. Either way, the charms worked just fine.

He carefully watched the movements of the slowly-rotating charm fixed to his lintel, and smiled to himself when he saw the hazel-shimmer scale spinning independently of the others.

He got himself out of bed with a bounce in his step, and set about cleaning his little room more thoroughly than was his habit each morning. He knew he had some hours before his visitor would arrive, but he had a great many things to do until then, so he might as well start in this room.

First step was always to stoke the fire in the shop, so its cheery heat could work through the small cottage. He bathed in a bucketful of water he had drawn from the well the previous night, with a soft bar of soap he had cooked himself. He made a note to make more soon, as this was his last bar of the batch. He finger-combed his shoulder-length hair to work out the worst tangles and set his comb near the hearth to remind himself to use it later. He threw on a fresh set of clothes, inhaling the sweet scent left from being stored in a cedar chest which had small bags of dried sage and rosemary tucked between its folds. He forced open the shutters of his windows, and swept the old rushes out the door, then replaced them with new ones from his storage cellar, springy and fresh-smelling, to cover the scrubbed wooden floors throughout the cottage.

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The sun was just starting to rise by the time that was done, and he could hear his own chickens starting to cluck and the goats to stir outside. He paused for a quick bite of the last of his staling bread and a sweet apple from the woods on the other side of the town, then moved about his morning jobs. He fed the chickens and goats, collected eggs from the roost and settled them carefully in a basket padded with grass. He milked the nanny goat and checked the progress of the cheese he’d been making in his cellar, and tucked four rounds into the egg basket with a quick smile of satisfaction. He moved through his one-storey cottage, tidying his private back rooms and checking inventory of the supplies in his brick-lined, chilled cellar. He left a small offering of dried meat behind his house, for the local foxes in exchange for their ignoring of his chickens. He combed his drying hair into something a bit neater than usual and tied it out of his eyes. He dusted and swept the front room of his house, which doubled as his shop, and neatened a few teetering piles of herbs.

The routine was as familiar as his own breath, after nearly five years of it. He creaked and settled in it, like his house in cold weather, comfortable and worn. His hands knew what to do, and he moved about with a rhythm inexorable as sunrise and set. After so many years, the routine no longer frightened him the way it had done at first – to be predictable, to be complacent, to be settled.

He was hundreds of leagues and two mountain ranges away from the people who had chased him, and safer in this tiny frontier town on the border of the dragonlands than he had ever been. The lowland ‘civilised’ folk in their grand cities might call the frontier a lawless and godless place, where any urchin would skin you as soon as look at you, but to Neil it had become his home. He had made a place for himself here, comfortable in obscurity, an invisible requisite of the place, and he relished it.

He gathered up his basket, slung a rough-spun sack over his back, and held a carrying pole with two empty buckets in his free hand. And, in the slowly brightening morning, made his way to the top of the hill and over it to the small settlement tucked away there. The low cottages and shopfronts were waking too; the day began before the sun for most here. He saw some young women gathered about the communal well, gossiping and yawning behind their hands as they waited their turn in line. He exchanged a polite nod with them, ignoring a few of their titters and blushes at seeing him. He made his way to the inn first and let himself in without knocking.

The inn was a grand old building, Neil always thought. It was possibly the oldest one in this nameless town, its wooden beams smoke-painted and glossy from generations of polishing. The stools at the bar were always mismatched and too-new to his eyes, due to the occasional breakages from rowdy nights, or mendings with whatever wood was handy without a thought for its grain or colour. The taproom was the main room of the place, dominated by a low bar which hid its various bottles and mixtures. There was a kitchen stashed in the back, and a small number of cramped guest rooms for those with enough coin.

“Roland,” Neil called out into the empty taproom, setting down his load on the bar. His voice was thready from disuse and he coughed and hummed to restore it. He could hear the innkeeper moving about somewhere in his stores, but didn’t want to intrude or throw off the count if he was taking stock.

“Just a moment,” Roland called from some hidden little room, and Neil leaned against the polished bar to wait. He rubbed his fingers over the smooth, shiny wood, tracing whorls and the occasional nick or dent that hadn’t been ground down yet. Roland always took great pride in this place, taking time each night and early morning to clean ale and food spills and to work sweet, pricey beeswax into the well-loved wood to make it shine and shimmer like a fine mirror. Neil peered at his reflection in the glossy wood and absently tucked some hair behind his ears, tidying himself like he tidied his house each morning.

“Neil,” Roland greeted him warmly once he was done, dusting off his hands with a wide smile. “Isn’t this a surprise.”

Neil smiled back, his eyes darting out of habit over the strong barrel of Roland’s chest and the breadth of his arms and shoulders; very handy for ending brawls or kicking out drunks if needed. But it had been a long time since Neil had been afraid of the strength in the innkeeper’s frame.

“I have eggs and cheese for you.”

“Always business,” Roland sighed, though he smiled.

He joined Neil at the bar to inspect his basket, humming in pleasure at the fragrance of the soft, sweet cheese when Neil nicked the wax covering to show it to him. They worked out a fair trade – a mixture of coins, and a bottle of strong liquor that Neil intended to repurpose for some of his work, rather than for drinking. They shook on it, and Neil tucked the coins into the purse on his belt and the liquor into his carrysack.

“Are we expecting visitors today?” Roland asked, eyeing Neil’s neatened appearance and leaning on his elbows on the bar.

“This afternoon,” Neil nodded. “I believe so.”

“I’ll get a room ready,” Roland nodded, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I suppose you’ll be off on your way?”

It was a casual question, hiding another. Sometimes, once they had finished their business, Neil would let Roland lift him on that well-loved bar and kiss him, hold him close and soothe him with his hands, and do the same in return. It rarely progressed to anything under their clothes, and they both preferred it that way. One thing most people got right about the frontier was that it could be a lonely place, and those who made their living there tended to have a more relaxed attitude about some things city folk would think scandalous, heretical or sinful. And for a man inclined towards other men, like Roland, the frontier could be the only place he could live a life like his – owning his business, respected in his community, valued and known in all honesty. It might be easier for him to find lovers here, but it was still a small community, not much changed each day, and Roland had yet to find someone to settle down with.

As for Neil – he enjoyed being touched by those he trusted, enjoyed the companionship and comfort of sharing body warmth, after living so long on his own. The fact he found this more easily with men than women was of little interest to him, and had ceased to cause him any consternation some years ago. Neither of them were under any illusions as to other partners they might have; it was more of a fact of life out here. They were well pleased with sharing the occasional kiss and comforting touch, and going their separate ways.

“Yes, I have more things to buy today,” Neil said, a gentle decline. With the visitor coming later, he was quietly hopeful to find warmth and touch elsewhere that day. Roland smiled in understanding and fondly tucked another stray curl out of Neil’s eyes.

“Journey well,” he said in good-bye, and raised a hand as Neil left his inn.

Neil went about his business in his usual fashion, on the occasional days he wandered into the heart of the settlement. He visited the baker, the butcher, and the run-down little milliner’s place to pick up more fabric and ribbons and string for his work. He methodically exchanged most of his purse of coins for weight in his carrysack, picking up all sorts of odds and ends he needed, or wanted, or food for his stores. And when that was done, he joined the line at the well and drew up two full buckets. He set the yoke carefully over his shoulders, and walked back over the hill to his little house on the edge of everything.

He spent his morning at his usual work – mostly, sitting in front of his hearth and sorting through the many, many boxes and bottles and jars of herbs and plants and some other more unusual ingredients, and making them up into things worth far more than the sum of their parts. He laid in a new batch of medicines and poultice-bags, to be taken to the physicker on his next trip. He made hangover cures and fertility aids and a salve to help scars fade and hair to regrow. He made charms against fire, pendants to protect from conception, inscribed careful runes of soot and blood on wave-worn stones to ward away thieves.

He refused to make the ‘love potion’ requested by one enterprising young maid at his door, and sadly accepted the return of a charm for good health he had made for a recent mother, even more recently bereft. He made up teas and tinctures, bundled up feathers and wildflowers and sparrow bones to be used for scrying, etched wishes for a strong crop and fair spring on wooden posts to be hammered around a local farmer’s land. He accepted the trade of a box of misshapen horseshoes (but still, good iron and better for omen-casting) from the farrier for the rest of his cheese. He traded a decorative necklace of dragon teeth for a heavy purse of coins and a rare jewel from some noble’s missive, sent on a weary journey to the hinterlands for treasures to adorn his master’s mansion. He sat and listened to the chickens cluck, and watched the clouds twirl overhead.

And all the while, the hazel dragon scale spun and spun on its cord, all independent of any breeze.

He had been busying himself in his small garden, encouraging the weeds as much as the herbs and plants, when a prickle at the back of his neck told him his visitor was near, at last. He uprooted an onion that was getting too wild, smoothed the soil tenderly back around a thistle bush, and got to his feet. He could see a figure in the distance, heading down from the road that travelled up to the dragonlands and eventually petered out somewhere in the wilderness for lack of paving or care for its maintenance. The figure was short but broad-chested, dressed in strange leathers and worked hide. From such a distance Neil couldn’t see the man’s face, but he didn’t need to. The man was on foot, leading two packhorses that plodded docilely behind him.

Neil dropped the unruly onion next to his mortar bowl and quickly washed his hands clean of soil and the occasional bits of petals and leaves that tended to stick to his skin, as if pulled there. Then he stood outside his door, leaning in the frame, to watch his visitor approach.

The man did not hurry or rush, did not acknowledge Neil waiting for him, did not raise a hand or his voice in greeting. He simply kept his steady, rolling pace; the gait of a man used to living in the saddle, but who relishes stretching his legs when he can. As he drew closer, Neil could see the wintry sun sparkling off water droplets in his wheat-sheaf hair; he must have bathed in the river. The thought made Neil smile. He could have detoured to Roland’s inn, dropped off his things, ordered a bath and a meal before coming to Neil’s little cottage. But every time, he came to Neil first.

The horses didn’t seem overburdened, but both bore bulging saddlebags. That seemed fortuitous, but Neil couldn’t concentrate on what new treasures his visitor might have to sell him, when he was close enough now that Neil could see the dark hazel glint of his eyes in the tanned skin of his face, and the golden-brown beard on his cheeks.

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The man stopped the horses in front of Neil’s door, and for a moment they just looked at each other in greeting.

“One day I’m going to sneak up on you,” the man said, his voice rusty as an old metal gate, aching to be unlatched.

Neil grinned at him. “Not a chance. Hand me your packs and let your horses out with the goats, it’s still too close to winter for a lengthy discussion on the front step.”

The visitor obliged, and Neil thoughtfully considered the weight of the packs as he set them inside his house. He didn’t bat an eye at the sword and brace of knives handed in to him, simply leaned them against the wall.

“Come on in,” Neil said softly when the man returned without his horses. “Sit down, sit down. Tell me your stories.”

Once the man stepped inside, his dragon-scale charm rang out a note, clear as a bell, and stilled once more.

“It’s good to see you, Andrew,” Neil smiled as he started setting tea leaves into a kettle hanging over the hearth, and got out some bread and the very last of the soft cheese he had hoarded for himself.

Andrew was quiet, as usual, and sat down in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the hearth. He took off his boots at Neil’s gesture and leaned back in the chair, stretching with a tight grimace. He took off his outer jerkin of burn-scarred hide, revealing a loose undyed cotton shirt tucked into his trousers. He hadn’t bothered with the lacings, Neil noted, probably had just shrugged it on after bathing. The loose neck of it gaped down over his chest as he settled, and Neil’s eyes caught on a patch of reddened skin under his collarbone.

“How recent is that?” Neil frowned, his fingers straying towards his jars and mixtures.

“Two weeks old,” Andrew rasped, and tugged his shirt back into place. “It’s mostly healed.”

“I could get it to heal faster.”

Andrew waved a hand dismissively. Neil sighed but set down the jar of herb-spelled wax he used to treat burns. He sat in his own chair and took a minute to simply look at his visitor, cataloguing changes and familiarities. He looked tired, but that was normal for his visits. His skin was weathered from the sun and harsh winds of the dragonlands, but his gaze was as steady and calm as the mountains, as always. He seemed to have picked up a few new scars and injuries; aside from the burn on his chest, he had an old bandage wrapped around his left fingers in a rough splint. That one, at least, he let Neil look at.

Neil joined his silence as he unwrapped the fingers and assessed the swelling and bruising. It was simple enough, perhaps a fracture and a sprained knuckle or two. Andrew quietly told him he’d gotten his hand tangled in his reins when his horse took fright to a snake a few days previous. Neil told him to pay more attention to what was on the ground than in the sky. Neil fixed up a better splint and worked a poultice into a fresh bandage for him, grinding the herbs directly and charming them with his breath. He tied the bandage with a ribbon from his stores and a strand of his own hair, and knotted it five times.

Andrew nodded his thanks once Neil was done, chewing slowly on the bread Neil had set out for them. Neil poured them tea, settled in his chair, and waited. Sure enough, once he was settled and used to being inside a dwelling again – Neil had seen him looking around the room, blinking as if in surprise at the walls and lack of wind – he began to talk.

Dragon wrangling, by profession, tended to attract solitary, quiet types. It involved a great deal of lonely work out in the wilds of the world, accompanied only by feral beasts and the occasional horse. Many people, like Andrew, had sought the profession after growing tired of the demands other people placed on them in more civilised places. They took to the wilderness gladly – dragon-herders, gold hunters, trappers, cattle drivers, sappers and hermits all. They ventured out to be away from others, and the land swallowed them up without a word. But very few people could honestly last out there for a long time without talking to another person. There came a point for everyone, no matter how withdrawn, where they would need to see other people again, to talk and listen and touch, and that was when they came down to the frontier to refresh themselves at the towns like this one.

Andrew was one of the quietest of the several dragon-herders Neil did business with, but even he was not immune to the need for company every now and then. When he had first come to Neil’s unsteady shack, drawn by rumours of a new witch in the area willing to trade rarities and foodstuffs, he had bargained only in grunts and frowns for at least two hours. But his mouth had eventually unglued itself, and the words had come flooding out in a mighty rush.

Neil privately thought of it as ‘tree-talk’ – the kind of babble that spilled out of you whether another soul was there or not, and could not be stopped once started. It didn’t really matter if the company was a tree or a rabbit or a person, there came a point where you simply had to let your thoughts into the air and shatter the titanic silence. Words that demanded to be born into the air. Neil was more than familiar with it, from his years running. He had cried out his sorrows and his grief to many an unsympathetic tree in his time. So he had not been alarmed when Andrew had first begun talking and talking and talking about the rock formations he had seen, and the acrobatics of the dragons he followed. He had just sat and listened with grave attention, soaking up and treasuring the words from an enforced barren silence of his own, until the flood slowed to a trickle, and then dried up completely. Andrew had been surprised at himself, Neil had known, and seemed unlikely to return once he left, perhaps embarrassed at his own behaviour to a stranger in a rickety lean-to without even a proper chimney.

But some months later, when Andrew had travelled down again to resupply and rest, it had happened again. And then the next time. And eventually they had both come to expect it, and Neil always looked forward to the newest flood of stories and thoughts that Andrew carried with him.

So now he poured tea, cut bread, and listened as Andrew unburdened himself of several months’ worth of thoughts and sights and stories. He listened to stories of the herd dynamics of the dragons in Andrew’s territories, the progress of the fledges in flight, the way one of them had nearly set the whole grass plain on fire before its mother had stamped out the blaze. He listened to stories of clouds, streams and the silences of mountains. He listened to rambling thoughts and wonderings about stars and owls, whether people could ever live in flocks like the dragons did. He listened as Andrew described a hatchling he had found dead, abandoned in a crushed nest but with a flower laid in the centre of the destruction by a grieving dragon-sire. He listened to memories from growing up in a lowlander orphanage, and begging on the streets. He listened to descriptions of the strange plants Andrew had found in his roaming, and carefully set aside the samples Andrew produced from his bags. He listened, and listened, and listened. And as the words began to slow again, ebbing back, Andrew’s voice grown strong and deep from use and then hoarse from over-use, he changed the contents of the kettle.

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Andrew raised an eyebrow at him enquiringly as he cleaned out the kettle and laid a new tea mixture inside. In reply, Neil washed out both their mugs instead of just Andrew’s, and sat back down. He did not miss the flare of warm interest in Andrew’s eyes at the gesture, and smiled to himself.

He had first started giving Andrew wildflower tea on his third visit, when Andrew had been rambling about wanting company of a very specific kind, and how lonely it could be in the wilds. Neil had calmly informed him that several men in the town could be applied to for companionship, and that it would be best to drink the tea before and after his visit, if he wanted to stay healthy and secure. Neil was no child, he knew that one of the main reasons the wildfolk came down to the frontier was for physical comfort and pleasure. He was very aware of the potential for disease to spread through such visits, and had been concerned that those settled in the town might sicken beyond his ability to help them, particularly the men and women who worked out of the brothel at the south end of town. So he had thought and studied and consulted with what physicker’s books he had stolen from various places, and come up with the wildflower tea. It was a clever mixture of herblore and witchcraft, and Neil was very pleased with it. Drinking it would cleanse and purify the body of any illnesses lurking out of sight, and the magic would protect the drinker against anything the herbs could not stave off for several hours, until the tea passed out of their system.

He didn’t go around announcing its existence or selling it by the pound, but had quietly made it known to those who seemed to need it. And to Andrew, so he would be safe and keep coming back with more stories to astonish and brighten his quiet days.

It had been nearly a year of Andrew’s visits before Neil started to join him in drinking it, on occasion.

“What’s in the packs?” Neil asked as he poured the wildflower tea, making sure it was good and strong. “Anything exciting?”

“Dragons are always exciting,” Andrew reminded him as he did each time. “I have shed scales, old teeth, some claws, egg shards. A poison spur and a set of bull’s horns. No meat this time – it was a lean winter, I couldn’t get to any of the carcasses fast enough to beat the scavengers. A roll of hide I cured myself. Some sheep’s wool. I also have some deer antlers and moose bones, and some rare plants and rocks.”

Neil beamed and sipped at his tea; it was tart and sweet on his tongue, and he could feel the familiar touch of his own magic start to pulse through him, cleansing and protecting. His fingertips and cheeks started to feel warm and flushed, and he relaxed into the feeling.

“I can trade for almost all of that, and I know some people in town who would take the rest.”

“Do you have my share from the last haul?”

“Of course,” Neil replied. He wasn’t offended by Andrew asking, or the implication that Neil might have cheated him by keeping all the profits for himself. He knew Andrew simply wished to make sure, tying up loose ends from his last visit before they made the next trade. “Do you want it now?”

Andrew considered him, draining his cup. “It can wait,” he conceded, and set the cup down with a quiet clink on the wood of the table between them.

Neil lowered his eyes and finished his own cup, making sure they had both drunk all of it. He pushed the kettle back onto the hearth to keep the tea warm for afterwards. He glanced out the window and saw with some satisfaction that it was getting towards evening, the sun flirting with the horizon to the west. Barring any emergencies, no one should disturb them until the next morning.

Without any further ceremony, Neil got up and walked to his bedroom, reaching up to touch the charm hanging from the lintel as he passed. He heard Andrew’s quiet, sure steps behind him, and the door latch closing. Neil tugged at the tie holding his hair out of his face and ran a hand through it to work out the kinks, then stilled when he felt Andrew’s hand there too. He turned back to his visitor and smiled as Andrew pushed both hands through his hair, careful of tangles, seeming to admire it in the light of the setting sun.

Neil lifted a hand to the loose lacings of Andrew’s shirt, and slipped his palm over the warm skin it exposed. He was careful around the edges of the healing burn. He knew Andrew would be hesitant to initiate, even after several years of doing this, so Neil leaned down to press his mouth to the curve of Andrew’s neck, just over his pulse.

Andrew sucked in a sharp breath, and Neil felt his pulse instantly jump and set to racing. He mouthed at the skin, sucking and pressing his tongue there, until Andrew’s hands left his hair to hold his hips instead. They stumbled into the wall and Andrew pressed him there, staring into his eyes for just a second before kissing him with an urgent fire.

Neil sighed into his mouth and kissed back just as eagerly, hungry for touch and pleasure after many months without Andrew’s company. Andrew’s hands pressed at him, holding him between the wall and his body and exploring the contours of Neil’s body, despite having touched him many times before. Neil shuddered and arched into his touch, holding onto Andrew’s shirt and wishing for it to be gone. Hands grabbed at his backside and pulled at his thigh, and Neil easily let his leg be lifted and hitched over Andrew’s hip. Andrew pressed closer with a heady roll of his hips, and Neil moaned at the hot jolt of desire that surged through him.

“Here?” Andrew asked against his jaw, sounding vaguely surprised and more than a little wanting.

In answer, Neil held onto Andrew’s wide shoulders for balance and drew himself up with a hop until his legs were locked around Andrew’s waist. Out of reflex, Andrew grabbed at his thighs to hold him up and keep him from falling.

“Here,” Neil said firmly. “Now.”

“Demanding,” Andrew said hoarsely, but obliged with another long roll of his hips, pinning Neil into the wall and pressing up against him.

It was harsh and clumsy and rough, bumping up against the wall, but Neil relished every moment of it, in being held up and surrounded by the heat of Andrew’s body, his bulging arms and thick waist. Neil managed to yank on the lacings of both their trousers enough to take them both in hand as they rocked and ground hard against each other, desperate and needy. It was also very fast, so much that they were both rather stunned even as they gasped for breath.

Neil laughed once he had collected himself a bit. “You didn’t find anyone else since last time?”

“No,” Andrew panted.

Neil grinned and kissed him vaguely; sex always made him feel giddy and stupid afterwards, like he’d held his breath too long underwater before surfacing.

“No matter,” Neil said, and relaxed his legs to drop back to the floor. He plucked at Andrew’s shirt and wobbled back towards the bed, sitting down to rest his shaky legs. “Want to try again?”

“Give me a moment,” Andrew muttered, but joined him there anyway.

The next time, they took their time a bit more carefully, and were left worn out and panting in the aftermath. Neil lay on his stomach, his cheek pressed into his pillow, breathing slowly as cool evening air caressed the bare skin of his legs and back. He was feeling a little dizzy this time, but it was rather pleasant. Part of it was his magic; it always went a little haywire after sex, and he’d already given Andrew an accidental spark as he came. Andrew hadn’t been bothered – he spent his time around fire-breathing dragons, he’d had much worse – but Neil wanted to ground himself before anything else leapt out of his skin. And part of it was the relief and satisfaction, like he had stretched a muscle that had been tight without him knowing it. He knew he did not regard these things the way many other people did, did not need or crave it, but he enjoyed this with Andrew and occasionally with Roland, enjoyed the silly rush and bone-deep pleasure if he trusted the other person to handle him with care. He’d tried with people he didn’t know well, real strangers, and had just been uncomfortable and unhappy. But he and Andrew had been at this arrangement for some years now. It was familiar, comforting, and easy between them.

“Are you alright?” Andrew asked, his hand lightly massaging into Neil’s hip, solicitous as he tended to be these days.

“Yes,” Neil sighed contentedly. “I enjoyed that.”

Andrew hummed quiet agreement, his hand still squeezing and rubbing. He didn’t usually linger in his touches like this, but Neil had no objections. It was very pleasant to lie there, feeling tired and gently aching and wrung out, with a warm hand easing the stretch of his hip.

He opened his eyes to stop himself dozing off and watched Andrew. He was staring off into the middle distance, frowning slightly, even as he massaged Neil’s hip. He was bare as well, though his trousers were tangled a bit around his calves. The dusk light was gentle on his fair hair and the lighter skin of his torso that saw less sun. He was sat beside Neil, his neck marked with strawberry bruises from Neil’s kisses, and Neil traced his eyes over the evidence of dragon-chasing. He was strong, though Neil had always known that. He was built wide and sturdy for all his short height, and the years had made him firm with muscle – and the occasional need to physically brawl with dragon yearlings, Neil supposed. He had not lived a life unmarked; claw scars and old burns dotted him, mostly on his arms and shoulders, mostly minor, when the protection of his dragon-leathers had been insufficient or he had been caught unprepared.

There was one memorable set of three long scars over his chest and shoulder, where a bull dragon had lashed out. Neil had nearly lost his faculties when Andrew had turned up in the dead of night for that injury, slumped and bleeding over the neck of his exhausted horse, delirious with pain and the poison of the bull’s spurs. Neil had taken him in and fixed him up, but none of his arts or knowledge could erase the livid scars or fade them.

Andrew’s body was as familiar as his own by now, and Neil no longer cared about exposing his own scars when they lay like this. Andrew had asked once where they had all come from. Neil had said he didn’t want to answer, and Andrew had left it alone after that which Neil greatly appreciated.

Neil turned on his side and reached up to touch the crease between Andrew’s brows. Andrew blinked, startled out of his thoughts, and looked down to Neil.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I should be gone soon.”

Neil felt a frown on his own face. “But you just arrived, and you’re tired. You need to rest. Roland said he would have a room for you.”

“I didn’t mean right this minute,” Andrew replied, getting a little distracted as his eyes wandered over Neil’s naked form. “But I won’t be staying in town for as long as usual. I have a long way to go still.”

Neil sat up properly, drawing the blanket around his shoulders to ward off the chilly night air, though he would have liked to have Andrew look at him some more. “Where to? New territories?”

Andrew shook his head. “I have to fetch someone from Kingstown and show him the dragons. I need his help.”

Neil didn’t ask, just kept his eyes on Andrew’s face. He took careful note of the slight creases in his forehead and cheeks, the puffiness under his eyes. Neil had passed it off as exhaustion from a demanding and lonely profession, but now he wondered if they were from worry and sleeplessness instead.

“I think something is hurting the dragons,” Andrew said slowly, reluctant. “I don’t know what. But something is wrong, and I can’t get the others to believe me. I need an unbiased opinion.”

By ‘others’ Neil knew he meant the loose community of dragon-herders out there; they all tended to know each other, even if they didn’t socialise much. That Andrew had apparently been seeking them out to speak his mind instead of avoiding them was almost more worrying than the idea the dragons might be vulnerable to something.

“Is this person an expert of some kind?”

Andrew snorted. “Hardly. But he’s discreet, and I trust him to think properly about what he sees. If something is hurting the flocks, I don’t want to cause a panic.”

Neil nodded thoughtfully. Dragons were held to be nigh-indestructible, it was partly why many armies liked to have a dragon unit if they could afford it, and many nobles to own them for prestige and protection. If there was some kind of disease going through the seed herds that produced the yearlings for training, there could be unrest across the continent. Neil knew of many places where the only thing keeping peace between nations was the threat of trained dragons on either side torching everything in sight at the slightest transgression.

He got up and poured them both the last of the wildflower tea, now brewed almost strong enough to chew and turning bitter, but all the more potent for it. They sat together on Neil’s rumpled, body-warmed bed, thinking dire thoughts of dying dragons.

“When do you leave?” Neil asked quietly once their cups were empty.

Andrew hesitated, his frown deepening. He trailed his hand over Neil’s thigh, fingers light and gentle. “The day after tomorrow.”

Neil nodded. “I’ll see what I can do for a quick sell of most of your haul. It won’t be as good a price as if I wait for the spring caravan traders, but you’d have more coin on leaving, to get you to Kingstown and back.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“The rest I’ll use for cures,” Neil mused. “The very best stuff really should be kept for the caravan – there’s a buyer in the lake country who would pay a lot for the egg shards and poison spurs, and she always sends a messenger with the caravans to look for those kinds of things. No one up here would pay a fraction of what those are worth.”

“Do what you think’s best,” Andrew said. “Just keep my share of the profit aside.”

“Of course. Do you think you’ll come back through here once you’ve fetched this man?”

“I don’t know. It might be faster to go direct to the breeding grounds, but we might be short on supplies.”

“Well.” Neil pointed to the charm above his doorway. “I’ll know either way.”

Andrew snorted again, his eyes tracking the aimless wafting of the feathers and scales suspended there.

“I could make you some charms and protections before you go,” Neil offered. “To speed your way and keep you safe.”

“No.”

Neil tilted his head; after a brief period of scepticism, Andrew had grown to trust and rely on Neil’s skills, he knew so. Normally he went back to the dragonlands with at least a handful of fresh charms for good health tucked into his packs. He had even given Neil that dragon scale specifically to put in that charm, so Neil would know when he was nearby or in trouble. And so that if Neil ever needed help, he could snap the scale and Andrew would know. He had said he would come running, if that happened.

Andrew grimaced. “The man I’m looking for is very… close-minded. It’ll be hard enough to convince him to join me without seeming like a superstitious pagan.”

“But you are a superstitious pagan,” Neil said, smiling a bit. “And a heretic and sodomiser too.”

“And you’re a soulless, black-hearted sorcerer in league with devils.”

Neil just laughed and leaned into his shoulder. “Alright, no charms. Lowlanders are morons. You’ll forgive me if I make a few just to keep here, though.”

“If you want.”

“Can I have some hair?”

Andrew raised an eyebrow at him for that; he was familiar enough with Neil’s witchery by now to know that hair was one of the cardinal offerings, and would make a very powerful charm. But he didn’t ask what for, just nodded and held still as Neil snipped off a lock and gathered it carefully into a small cloth bag for use later. He swallowed a yawn, not very successfully.

Neil examined his face again and passed his fingertips lightly over Andrew’s brows. “Go to the inn, Andrew,” he said. “Get some sleep. Come back tomorrow night and I’ll give you what you need for your journey."

Andrew usually got annoyed at being given marching orders like that, but he seemed too tired to take issue with it tonight. He got up and started to dress himself, and Neil was briefly distracted by the thought it was as enjoyable to watch him putting on his clothes as to watch them coming off. Maybe he was still being a bit stupid and high off his magic sparking earlier.

“Do you want anything to help you sleep?” Neil asked, knowing that Andrew tended to have nightmares when he slept indoors. Bad memories, Neil had surmised from several of his ramblings, and being so used to sleeping under the stars.

Andrew shook his head. “I’m exhausted enough I doubt I’ll dream.”

“Alright,” Neil said, yawning himself. “Tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow.”

***

Neil spent the next day, once he had got his house in order, running about the town and jogging to the next one or two over, trying to find quick buyers for Andrew’s haul. Normally, he would have kept the best and biggest pieces aside for the large trade caravans that rolled through the frontier with each change of season, or travelled down into one of the bigger towns or even a city closer to the lowlands. It could take months or several seasons to finish selling on all the treasures, sometimes.

But Neil had no time to wait, and was forced to accept lower prices for the immediacy of ready coin, with some favours and bartered items in the bargain too. Where he couldn’t sell, he traded, and where he couldn’t trade he promised charms and wards. His best piece of luck was in selling the roll of cured dragon hide to the weapon-smith in the town five leagues to the west, who took the entire roll with wide eyes and happily exchanged it for a fat pouch of silver and gold coins, and a promissory note for another ten gold that could be cashed in Kingstown. The woman had said she planned to make a suit of flexible armour with it that would be worth five times what she had paid Neil. Neil did not demur; dragon hide was exceptional, completely impenetrable to any weapon not cursed or charmed with powerful magic, invulnerable to fire and acid and would protect the wearer from most blows or falls, unless it was from a great height. On his way back home, his carrysack less bulky but almost as heavy as it had been that morning with coin, he made a detour into the deepest part of the woods to seek out another hedgewitch.

She was even more reclusive than he, and preferred the solitude of the woods and to commune with the animals and wilds directly rather than ‘muddy her hands’, as she had said once, with all the work and hassle of being a more mercantile witch such as Neil was. Compared to her, Neil was positively gregarious and outlandishly sociable.

He whistled a greeting in the song of the lark, so as not to alarm her with his approach, and waited outside the hedge of vicious thorns and barbs that concealed her home. He waited until he heard an answering birdcall, then walked calmly through the wall of thorns that dissolved before him like a mist, leaving not a scratch and swallowing him up whole, to the view of anyone who might be watching.

He had often thought he would pay in his own blood to learn the wards and runes for that particular trick, but he had never been quite desperate enough to offer. He liked this witch, but he didn’t really want anyone to have a pint of his blood to work spells with, regardless of how much he liked them. There was trust, foolishness, and then just sheer stupidity.

The witch was sitting in the middle of the clearing made by her ring of brambles, twigs in her hair and rags clothing her body. She was smeared with mud and tree sap, and greeted him with a whimsical whistle though her gaze was fixed on the sky.

He whistled back and laid down on the grass next to her, looking up at the canopy of leaves.

“I think I shall be a robin today,” she announced. “And you?”

“I will be a fox.”

“You always choose fox,” the witch tutted, and tossed her tangled hair over her shoulder. “You should be a bird like me sometime.”

“I wouldn’t dare steal the skies from you,” Neil smiled. “Besides, foxes and wolves and cats are drawn to me. I don’t think they mix well with songbirds.”

She gave a downhearted, fluting whistle. It reminded him for a moment of a woodpigeon, but then her whistle changed to the rapid trill of a blackbird.

“The clouds move for you,” she observed, eyes wide and sure on the heavens.

“What do you see in them, little robin?”

“Decisions, always decisions with clouds, silly. Home or adventure, my fox. Security or risk. Great good or great harm. Great love and great pain.”

“Nothing too major then.”

She shoved his arm crossly.

“I won’t tease,” Neil promised with raised hands. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll think carefully on it.”

“See that you do. Or you’ll get rained on for sure.”

“That will happen anyway.”

“Then it’s a sign you aren’t reading your clouds correctly, you dolt.”

“I’m more concerned with herbs,” Neil shrugged.

“More fool you then. A plant takes so long to grow, all it knows is what was new when it was a mere shoot in the cold soil. The clouds are far more reliable for your news. They react and change immediately. Herbs. Honestly.”

Neil smiled fondly at her. He sometimes had to remind himself he was the elder of them both, she had such a way of bossing him about. He could have quite happily laid there to debate with her for days, but he needed to be back home before nightfall.

“I have prizes from the dragonlands for trade.”

“Ah yes,” she crooned. “Your brave fire-soul has returned again. The clouds move for him too.”

“Really?” Neil asked, distracted from opening his sack. “What do they say?”

“It’s very rude of you to ask,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “They’re his clouds, not yours. Bring him here and I will read for him, if he wants.”

“I suppose that’s fair. And I’ve told you before, he’s not ‘my’ anything. We enjoy each other’s company, that’s all.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, with a vast weight of sarcasm on her voice.

Neil rolled his eyes and pulled out the collection of shed scales Andrew had collected over the season. They were a weighty stack, even with the five he had left at home for his own use. Each one shimmered a different colour when held to the light, shooting off rainbows like a pearl under waves, though they each seemed a solid colour at first glance. Each one was vaguely square and about the size of Neil’s palm, and weighed less than an apple in his hand. The outer side, slightly curved, was roughened and striated like tree bark while the inner side was smooth and slippery to touch. They were always such a joy to handle, and Neil handed over the stack almost with regret.

The other witch held them without taking her gaze off the clouds above, her fingers moving quickly and knowingly over each one.

“Ooh,” she hummed, then let out a series of low croons and chirps, rocking slightly in place. “Well, this is a queenly gift, my fox. The things I can make with these! I could push the whole forest into bloom in winter, or summon a tornado, or banish the sun and reverse the moon!”

“I’d appreciate it if you did none of those things,” Neil commented. “But I do need them kept safe.”

“They’ll be nice and secret and safe here with me, don’t worry. They can be our little stash, for the pinch and stretch times.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said with a rather patronising air, “What I said earlier. You have choices in your road, and no matter which way you go you will need power before it is all done. When you need them, they will be here for you. I promise you that, my fox, on my blood.”

“Thank you,” Neil said, troubled.

“You said these were for trade? What do you want in return for their safekeeping?”

“I want to pillage your stores.”

She laughed at that, high and piping like a flock of sparrows. “At least he’s honest!” She laughed to her clouds. “Pillage away.”

He got up and went into the ramshackle little hut that sat leaning against the inner edge of her bramble fortress. There was nothing in there except whatever trinkets he had traded her for previously, and a treasure trove of her own carefully-collected and preserved plants. She knew all the best places to find rare and efficacious plants in these woods, and made it her business to collect them whenever she went on her evening wanders through the underbrush. He’d asked her once why she did it if she had no intention of making anything with them. She had replied that she liked to hold the knowledge safe and secure in case of ruination. She was odd, even by witch standards, but Neil was relentlessly fond of her. She had been a good ally and friend to him in his years on the frontier, and he would be grieved to see anything happen to her.

He stuffed his carrysack full to bursting with dried leaves, roots, petals and plants, and the occasional jar of basic salves she had made herself, infused with wild berries for potency. He left a loaf of fine soft bread for her as thanks, and went back out to her. She had set the scales carefully to one side, though her hand rested almost reverently on the top one. Neil was not concerned she would be seduced by the explosive power imbued in each scale; it was why he had brought them to her, rather than selling them unscrupulously. She would hide them and make sure no one would use their power. Aside from Neil, apparently, in some future disaster.

He tried not to think about that; she was always full of portents and dire predictions. And, much like her clouds, the futures she saw could change on a hair. Most often, her words did not come to fruition, and Neil had not lived as long as he had by worrying himself into his grave.

“I’ll be off again,” he said and hoisted his sack higher on his shoulder. “Thank you, little robin.”

“Journey well, my fox. Come back again soon.”

She whistled a farewell song for him, and he echoed it back as he slipped through her brambles, insubstantial until the instant he passed beyond them, when they turned back into alarmingly real and painful spikes again.

He made his way back home, his stomach rumbling as his feet found their way without needing any instruction. The sky was darkling twilight as he walked, the sun not quite set and the stars not quite risen, turning it all to the colour of crushed blackberries and candle flame.

He noticed a pale column of smoke rising from his little house, once he got close enough, and quickened his pace. Luckily, it wasn’t bandits or a knocked-over lamp. It was Andrew, stoking the fire and cooking. He had quite obviously used the bathing facilities at the inn to wash and shave his beard off, and he looked tidy and well-scrubbed. Not that Neil particularly minded the occasional bit of dirt or scruff, but he had to admit he liked how Andrew looked even more when he had several months’ worth of travel dust and grime scrubbed away.

“How did you get in?” Neil asked instead of a greeting, dropping his carrysack on his work table.

“You set your wards to welcome me,” Andrew reminded him, all calm, as he portioned out scoops of stew and vegetables. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back this evening, so I started dinner without you.”

Neil frowned to himself, but it was his own fault for being so generous with his wards. He muttered under his breath and sank down into his chair with a sigh; his legs and back were aching from all his wandering about.

“Did you sleep?” He asked after a moment’s pause.

“For most of the day,” Andrew nodded. Neil looked him over as he settled with a mug of weak ale from Neil’s stores; he did look more rested, the bags under his eyes not quite so burdened. Andrew didn’t ask how Neil’s errands had gone – he had eyes and ears, and would have known to interpret the bulge and jangle of Neil’s sack. They ate dinner together in companionable quiet, Andrew’s stories tucked away into his head again. Neil closed his eyes for a few minutes once he was done, basking in the warmth of the fire to his side, and the contentment of a full stomach after a long day.

He heard Andrew moving around again, refilling the kettle. His nose informed him that more wildflower tea was on the go, and he opened one eye. Andrew was rinsing out their cups, and offered Neil’s to him when he saw Neil looking. Neil thought it over, considered what he wanted, and shook his head.

Andrew did not react other than to put the cup away, and pour himself one to have on his own; Neil supposed he might have visited with Roland or one of the other men in town during the day, or maybe he simply wanted to be as safe as possible and cleanse himself before he left the area. He sipped it without urgency, his gaze faraway but less troubled than it had been the previous night. Neil thought of the forest witch calling Andrew a brave fire-soul, and that the clouds had messages for him. He wondered what they were saying, what the future had in store, whether Andrew would be affected by whatever grave choices she saw for Neil.

He hoped her talk of calamity was simply more of her usual chatter, and had nothing to do with the dragons or this journey to Kingstown. He hoped that Andrew would return, safe and sound, as he always did. With more stories and firm kisses and admiring hands.

He got up and started making a charm, his hands and mind busy. He bound the lock of hair Andrew had donated last night with one of his own, braiding them tightly together and weaving them around a potent collection of herbs, feathers and one of the precious dragon scales, for extra power.

He bundled the lot into a fine cloth bag, and tied it tightly to a leather thong. He held it out to Andrew, mouth set.

“I said I didn’t need any charms,” Andrew said.

“I know. But take it anyway. For my peace of mind.”

Andrew frowned at him.

Neil sighed. “I have concerns, about this trip and the reason for it. I would feel much easier seeing you go knowing you were carrying some sort of protection. Something I know will keep you safe.”

“That’s what the sword is for.”

Neil passed a hand over his eyes briefly. “I visited another witch today. She told me of some signs she is seeing, and they worry me. I would feel much better if you took it, Andrew.”

Andrew looked at him for a long minute, then silently accepted the charm and hung it like a pendant around his neck, tucked under his shirt out of sight.

“Thank you,” Neil sighed, and started getting the various monies and traded items out of his sack to split the profits. Andrew joined him quietly, and they split the pile without needing to consult; they knew the worth of each other’s part in these trades, and did not wish to cheat or begrudge each other. As part of the trade-off this time, Andrew took the majority of the coins and Neil accepted the items and rarities; he would trade them further, or use them in cures and spells and charms, and further split the profits in each transaction. Andrew was in need of hard, tangible funds rather than possibilities – it was a long and unfriendly journey to Kingstown, and once in the city he would be unable to live off the land as he was used to doing. He would need to pay for lodgings, food, less distinctive clothes while he looked for his contact. And then they would both need to travel all the way back to the dragonlands. So much could go wrong… but Neil reminded himself that Andrew would have his freshly-made ward and charm, and he was clever and resourceful enough to live off the barren wilderness, so the over-ripe lowlands should be no problem. When that was done, Neil retrieved the little tin where he kept the coins gleaned from other trades which he owed Andrew since his last visit.

When all was said and done, Andrew had a hefty pouch of resources, and Neil had greatly improved his stocks.

“You’ll be off at dawn, I suppose,” Neil said eventually.

Andrew nodded. “Before that, likely.”

“Will you stay a little while tonight?”

Andrew looked pointedly to the kettle, and the single cup on the table.

“Not for that. I’d like to kiss you, if you don’t mind.”

Andrew apparently did not mind, and led Neil back to his bed. He sat, pulled Neil close into his arms and kissed him with a careful attention and overwhelming focus that had all worries slipping out of his mind, and his thoughts stumbling to a blissful stop in the wake of sweet sensation. His hands were warm and strong, his mouth sweet and hot, and Neil let himself melt even as he lingered and hungered for it to never end.

Neil had only meant to delay him a few minutes, but it was fully dark and the moon was high in the sky when Andrew pulled back from their embrace, saying he should get some sleep before his journey the next morning. Neil nodded, sleepy and dazed. He ran a hand down the rumpled front of Andrew’s shirt where he had been clutching it, and pressed his palm to the charm resting at the centre of Andrew’s chest.

“Be safe,” Neil mumbled. “Journey well.”

“I will. You too.”

Andrew kissed him again once, a quick caress of lips, and let himself out of the house. Neil curled into his blankets and slipped into dreams.

***

Weeks passed, as was their wont. Neil did not want for occupation, thankfully. There was always much work to be done out on the frontier; wherever there were people, there would be a need for charms and herbs and poultices and advice. And when the townsfolk were settled and quiet and without urgent need, he had his goats and chickens and garden to tend, and his stores to inventory and check and transform into boxes and jars of higher worth. The charm on his lintel remained unanimated and relaxed, even the hazel scale, and Neil told himself not to dwell on the possibilities of what could be happening to his friend.

He spared a thought on the spring equinox, knowing that it was the cue for the dragons to begin migrating to their summer territories, and Andrew would want to be there to mind his flock. Neil spared a charm and a prayer that he and his companion had made it up there safely, and were observing and hopefully concluding that the flocks were all perfectly healthy and safe. And then Neil got back to his meditation under the moon’s gentle gaze, and banished all thought to open himself to whatever wisdom or visions the world had for him on such a night.

The next day he was roused long after sunrise by the chiming of his lintel-charm, where two blue-tinted dragon scales were spinning on their shared cord. Neil dragged himself from his bed, bone-weary from his vigil the day before, from sunrise to moonset. He pulled on a loose outer robe to cover the symbols he had painted on himself for the vigil and had not bothered to wash off yet, and opened his front door with squinting eyes.

“Neil,” a cheery voice greeted him in the bright morning sun, and he craned his neck up to smile at his visitors. “You look rough, are you sick?”

“It was spring equinox yesterday,” Neil reminded them in a croaky voice. “I’ve only just had a little sleep.”

“Oh, damn,” his other visitor said with a concerned frown on her face. “We’re sorry Neil, it’s easy to lose track of exact days out in the dragonlands.”

“I know,” Neil smiled and tied his robe a bit tighter around himself. “Come in, both of you. It’s good to see you both again.”

With his greeting and welcome, they were able to pass through the barrier of his wards and step into his home. The tall man, Matt, stooped to embrace him once they were inside and his wife Dan fondly cupped his cheek and kissed his forehead. He leaned into them both happily. It had been too long since their last visit, and he realised how much he had missed them.

“What brings you here?” He asked once there was food ready and tea brewing to break his two days of fasting. He had dragged one of his blankets into the front room and wrapped himself up in it, while Dan and Matt shared the other seat. “I thought you would be busy with the migration now.”

“Wymack agreed to watch our flock for a little while,” Dan replied.

Neil raised his eyebrows curiously; he had never met the oldest dragon wrangler out in the wilds, the most experienced and toughest of them all, but had heard plenty of stories. He was somewhat of an authority in this part of the world on anything to do with dragons, and had a reputation for being as well-armoured and unyielding as a dragon himself.

“We needed a break,” Matt admitted and curled his arms around his wife’s waist where she sat on his lap. “It’s been a hard season, with more trouble than usual. We’ve lost more hatchlings than I’ve ever seen before, and the yearlings are struggling.”

Neil bought himself time to think by chewing on a fresh tiny apple, biting it right down to the core and carefully setting the seeds aside; he wanted to plant a few and curate the trees, if he could. And if not, he had quite a few wards and medicines which would benefit from the caustic poison they could release under the right conditions.

“Is it some kind of sickness?” He asked eventually.

“We don’t know,” Dan said. She looked exhausted as she rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Some people are trying to say so. But we’ve had hard years before. Sometimes these things just happen, it’s the natural cycle of things. The dragons could be over-breeding and exhausting their food and territory, so the number of successful yearlings drop as they compete. It happens in herd species all the time. Once things are back in equilibrium, everything will be fine.”

Neil surmised that Andrew had been to share his concerns with them at some point, but didn’t mention it. Neither Dan nor Matt particularly liked Andrew, and were always confused and distressed when he reminded them he and Andrew were actually quite friendly and shared a bed occasionally. He had no wish to start that whole argument again, especially when they had both just arrived and he was so short on sleep.

“How long will you be staying down on the frontier?”

“A couple weeks,” Matt announced, and Neil beamed in pleasure. “There’s quite a few people we’ve missed.”

“Am I on that list?” Neil teased, half-serious.

“Of course,” Dan laughed gently, and reached over to stroke his cheek again.

Neil leaned into her hand with a contented sigh, remembering those lonely first months when he had come to the area, and known nobody. He had lurked on the outside of the town, too afraid to wander in and make his skills known in case somehow, out here, a bounty hunter was looking for him. He would have probably remained that way if two recently-married dragon herders hadn’t been looking for a witch to bless their union and sell on the claws and teeth and scales they gathered from their flocks. They had brought Neil his first custom there, and had told the other dragon herders about him once they left and praised his skills to the townsfolk. Soon he began getting customers, and building his life. They had been his first friends in this wild place, and he would never forget their kindness. 

For the next few weeks, Neil was happily occupied with his work and his friends and his home. Matt and Dan spent the time catching up on sleep, making use of the bed in Roland’s inn, and visiting friends and acquaintances dotted along the frontier border. They spent a lot of time with Neil, much to his pleasure, either to talk about their nomadic life in the wild, or to watch and listen as he went about his work, fascinated by it. Matt sat quietly with him as he made up a complicated ward to help a young woman who suspected she was being stalked and watched by a spurned ex-lover, designed to alert her to unfriendly eyes and provide a physical sting to the man in question if he got too close, which would increase to a painful burning if he persisted. Matt had watched, asked questions, held things, and told Neil he was scary sometimes with what he could do with a few plants and runes and touches of his hands. Then he had caught Neil up in a tight hug and messed up his hair.

Dan liked to go out and about with him in the woods when he needed to collect more plants or in monitoring his gardens. She said she enjoyed learning the different kind of wilderness that Neil called home; the piney forests and flower-filled meadows were very different from the harsh, rocky steppes and gorse plains of the dragonlands. They talked as they roamed and filled baskets with fruit, blossoms, buds and roots, and Neil let his own stories and thoughts pour out to her. He never said anything about his past before he came to the frontier except in very vague generalities – his mother had taught him most of his herblore before she died, he had seldom stayed in one place for very long, so on and so on – but let his thoughts spill free otherwise in loosely-related skeins. She held them for him, ordered them, and handed them back gently. He always felt peculiarly cleansed when they returned from their walks, even if his throat was scratchy from so much chatter, and the occasional flush of weeping that came over him sometimes when his thoughts strayed too close to his childhood.

And the three of them often spent the evenings in Neil’s house by the fire, content in each other’s company and not needing to fill it. Other times they sat in the taproom of Roland’s bar, and Neil watched bemusedly as they bantered and drank with the other patrons, cheerfully adding to the noise and camaraderie of the place. One of his favourite moments was when Dan challenged the entire inn to arm wrestling, and beat every one of them easily. Their reputation as rough, tough dragon wranglers was more than upheld.

The only sour note was that after a while, the lintel charm started to behave a little oddly.

The hazel scale began to shudder and twist in a strange way, as if it were being pulled in different directions at once. Normally, when Andrew was nearby, it would spin or maybe sway. When Andrew had been injured, that time with the bull raking him with its claws, the scale had shuddered and swung like a pendulum until Andrew had set stumbling step in Neil’s house.

Neil had never seen it jerk about or twitch before, and he couldn’t help the sense of foreboding that rose in him, thinking of the forest witch’s cryptic foretellings and his own misgivings. He began looking for signs, casting bones and shells together, tossing carved birch rods, had even performed a sacrifice of a songbird to read its entrails. None of it worked, none of it gave him any indication of what could be happening to his friend, or what his charm might be reacting against.

Dan and Matt noticed his increasing abstraction and obsession with the charm, but had little to offer by way of solace or distraction.

“You don’t understand,” Neil said for the seventeenth time. “It never does this.”

“Neil, sunshine, maybe the magic has just gone a little old?” Dan suggested, wearily patient. “Does it need – I don’t know – refreshing? Redoing? Remaking?”

Neil clenched his jaw. “Your charms have hung there longer than his, and have never needed refreshing.”

“Well, he’s here more often than us,” Matt pointed out, and Dan scowled at the reminder. “Maybe it’s worn out from his visits.”

There was nothing especially suggestive in Matt’s tone, but Neil felt the back of his neck heating in mingled embarrassment and annoyance anyway.

When Neil said nothing, Matt gently folded arms around him. “I’m sure everything is fine, Neil. Come out to the garden, and show me your strawberries. They were looking more pink than green yesterday, maybe they’re ripe now?”

Neil allowed himself to be nominally distracted for the rest of the day, but when he was trying to sleep that night he kept twitching awake at the soft jangles the charm made as its components rattled and clinked against each other.

***

Dan and Matt stayed in town until the summer flowers began to unfurl and show promise of blooming, and then had to be on their way back to their flock. Their farewells with Neil were fondly bittersweet, and he held onto their embraces and cherished the kisses and touches to his forehead and hair and cheeks. He made sure they were amply supplied with charms for good health, safety and protection from conception, as per Dan’s request (“who wants a baby weighing down your stomach when you’re chasing giant flying lizards? Not me, that’s for sure,” she had laughed), and they made him promise to stop worrying about the charm. He waved them off until they disappeared over the top of the next hill, then returned to staring at the erratic lurching of the dragon scale.

Two days later, the charm pulled itself off the hook in the lintel to crash to the floor. Neil stared at it in horror, his heart in his throat, and over the cacophony of his scrambled thoughts he heard hoofbeats, and raised voices.

He stumbled out his door and into the road, head whipping this way and that to pinpoint those voices. Just coming into view beyond the curve of the road were two short figures leading horses, arguing loud enough for Neil to hear their voices but not their words. He peered into the setting sun at their backs and ran to them, his heartbeat louder than his steps and his breath coming in panicked gasps.

He stumbled to an abrupt stop just before them, eyes wide and hand to his chest as he fought for breath. He looked between the two men rapidly.

“Oh,” he panted. “Brother. Twin brother. Same blood. Oh, oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Andrew frowned, reaching out to hold Neil’s arm.

“My – my lintel charm. It’s been acting strange,” Neil stammered, still looking between them. “It – it fell off. I thought, I thought you were dead.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Andrew assured him, holding his shoulders and squeezing gently. Neil nodded and covered his face with his hand to try and collect himself. Andrew kept hold of him until he was breathing easier and the awful, churning panic in his guts had settled.

“And who is this?” The other man, obviously Andrew’s twin, asked. Neil looked to him without the haze of anxiety clouding his vision; the two were of a height, and wore the same face and general colouring. But beyond that, they no longer looked identical. Andrew was broad and muscular, strength in every part of him, while his brother was on narrower, leaner lines. His skin was blotchy with healing sunburn, while Andrew was weathered and tanned from many years in the wild. Andrew wore his hair longer, unbothered about keeping it cut unless he was in town for a long time, while his brother’s had only hints of shagginess, perhaps from being out of the city for a few months. Andrew stood with firm confidence radiating from him, earned from years of self-sufficiency, while his brother had a bit more of a stoop to his shoulders. The brother also had a pair of expensive-looking eyeglasses on a cord around his neck, and he was obviously unused to the rough, practical clothes that hung awkwardly on his shoulders, loose where his brother’s were snug.

“This is Neil,” Andrew said, slowly letting go of his shoulders. “My friend. The man we’re here to see.”

Neil carefully noted that Andrew neglected to mention he was a self-professed witch.

“Neil, this is my brother Aaron, from Kingstown. He’s a physicker from the university there.”

Neil nodded politely to him, and got a sneer in return.

“Your friend doesn’t seem very stable,” Aaron said, dismissing him in a glance and turning back to his brother. “And I told you, I have to get back home. I’ve been away too long as it is on your fool’s errand. I haven’t time to drop in on your acquaintances, and I shouldn’t have come in the first place.”

“You’re welcome to leave any time now,” Andrew shot back, and Neil blinked at the harsh tone. He sounded at the very end of his patience, something Neil had almost never seen in him before. “The road is that way, Kingstown is due south. That’s keeping the sun on your left when it rises, in case you forgot. Again. But good luck travelling without any food or supplies – this town is the last one in that direction for ten leagues.”

Aaron scowled at his brother and folded his arms. It would have been a better gesture if his arms were even half as large as Andrew’s, which were about as thick as Neil’s waist. He’d had several opportunities to make the comparison.

“How about we go inside,” Neil suggested into the sticky silence as the brothers glared at each other. He lightly touched Andrew’s back and led the way, taking hold of the halter of one of the horses. Just before they got to the front door, Neil paused and turned to Aaron.

“Try to go in.”

“What?” Aaron snapped.

“Try. I need to know something.”

Aaron looked at him as if he were simple, and made a production of stepping very slowly over the threshold and standing in the front room. Nothing happened – no cry of pain, no shimmering shield, no force pushing him back.

“Same blood,” Neil muttered thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“Would it work for children of someone who is permitted?” Andrew asked, tilting his head curiously. “With half blood?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t considered it as a flaw in the ward before.”

“What the good God are you both on about?” Aaron scowled, looking around the plant-stuffed room with unease. His eyes bulged when he saw the sparrow bones scattered on the table.

“My wards should not have permitted you to enter,” Neil said as he stepped in, Andrew on his heels once he’d led the horses out to graze with the goats. “I had not welcomed you inside. But because Andrew is always welcome, you are too. It’s strange.”

“Wards?” Aaron repeated disbelievingly. He took another look around, his eyes seeming to catch on the feathers, charms, bundled herbs, and inscribed runestones about the place. “You’re a heretic,” he spat accusingly.

“I’m a witch, actually,” Neil informed him and rather enjoyed his start of disgust. “I suppose the polite term would be ‘pagan’, but I don’t think you’re going to be polite regardless.”

Aaron shied away from the worktable with its many occult items, huddling in the centre of the room and looking about himself with a curled lip.

“Relax, you aren’t going to burst into flames,” Neil snorted, then looked to Andrew. “I didn’t realise your brother was religious. Or that you had a brother.”

“He was raised by my uncle.”

“Ah.” Neil let the subject slip to the floor; he’d listened to Andrew’s disconnected ramblings about his uncle, a rabid preacher of the southern faith with a distinct lack of compassion or human understanding. Andrew was less than fond of him, and Neil disliked him by association.

“I can’t believe you’d consort with heretics,” Aaron sneered at his brother.

“It’s different up here,” Andrew said, in the weary tone of someone who has repeated a phrase so often is has lost all meaning.

Aaron rolled his eyes, apparently sick of the phrase too.

“Tea?” Neil offered, blandly rolling over their issues.

“I don’t have time to sit around drinking tea in the house of a lunatic!”

“Oh shut up Aaron,” Andrew sighed and sat down in the guest chair. “You can’t travel any further tonight, unless you want to rough it on the ground again. I should probably tell you there’s an inn here, with beds and bathing facilities, before you make your decision.”

Aaron threw up his hands in frustration and stalked out again, muttering under his breath. Neil saw him going to talk to the horses and goats, and drifted close to Andrew.

“He’s a delight,” Neil said wryly, and perched on the arm of the chair.

“I’ll be glad to get rid of him again,” Andrew sighed, rubbing tiredly under his eyes.

“I take it the trip wasn’t a success.”

“He spent the whole time complaining about the ‘barbarism’ of my life and was too busy hiding from the dragons to observe them,” Andrew grumbled. Then he visibly willed away his annoyance and pressed his hand to Neil’s back, smoothing up and down gently. “I’m going to stay here a couple days before heading back.”

Neil smiled down at him, warm pleasure curling through him. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

“Dan and Matt visited. It was nice. Spring equinox.” Neil shrugged and leaned closer into him. “A few new people in town. I’ll tell you all the new gossip, if you want.”

“By all means.”

Andrew curled a hand around Neil’s knee, his thumb rubbing into Neil’s thigh. Neil was about to lean down and kiss him as Andrew seemed to be wanting, when he heard Aaron coming back towards the house again. He sighed and stood; he didn’t want to deal with a hissy fit over ‘sinful relations’ or sodomy, as the southern faith called it. No wonder Andrew had left the lowlands if his brother and uncle were so unreasonable.

“Take me to this inn,” he told his brother, apparently ignoring Neil’s presence. “I’ll stay there tonight, but I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Can’t come soon enough,” Andrew bit out, and levered himself out of the chair with a grimace; Neil guessed he was stiff and sore from riding. Neil slipped on some more appropriate clothes – he hadn’t been quite dressed when he went running out of the house, and needed some shoes and an outer jacket of some kind. He didn’t suppose that had endeared him to Aaron, in retrospect.

“What are you doing?” Andrew asked.

“I thought I’d buy some of Roland’s new mead,” Neil said, and smiled warmly at him. “He says a splash of it goes very nicely with the wildflower tea. We could try it, if you like.”

Andrew didn’t answer verbally, but once his brother had left the doorway he pressed a hard, searing kiss to Neil’s mouth. Neil would have happily pulled him to bed there and then, but he wanted to get rid of the annoying brother first.

“If you say anything religious or judgemental while you’re here, you’ll get punched in the face,” Andrew informed his brother as they walked. “And not just from me. Keep your opinions to yourself. This isn’t the lowlands, there are no constables out here, and no one will intervene for you.”

Aaron nodded tightly and hitched his share of the saddlebags higher on his shoulder. Neil thought he looked a little nervous as they approached the town, and wondered if Andrew had bothered to tell him that the frontier wasn’t quite as lawless and violent as the rumours said. Neil didn’t enlighten him either; it might be a good remedy for that attitude.

“There are two of you?” Roland greeted them with, raising his eyebrows at the twins as he leaned over his bar. There weren’t many people there yet, just a few loafers half-sensate in the corners.

“No,” Andrew said shortly. “We shared a mother, that’s all.”

Roland’s eyebrows rose further and Aaron looked briefly chagrined. Neil kept his mouth shut.

“Aaron needs a room for the night,” Andrew carried on. “I’ll settle the cost tomorrow. He’ll want water for bathing, but no help.”

Roland smiled at the hidden meaning of that – don’t proposition my brother. Aaron didn’t seem to catch on.

“Alright,” Roland smiled. “Neil, good to see you. What can I do for you?”

“A cask of mead, for me. I’m cashing in that favour about the fire protection, remember.”

“Two surprises in one day,” Roland commented and pulled a small barrel up from the other side of the bar, patting it fondly. “Though Andrew, I only have the one room free at the moment. I can’t get you a separate room.”

“He can stay with me for the night,” Neil offered after a questioning glance at his friend.

“And where will you sleep?” Aaron asked him suspiciously. “If Andrew’s in your bed?”

There was an awkward moment of silence throughout the inn; everyone was aware of Neil and Andrew’s arrangements whenever he was in town. Although they didn’t sleep in the same bed, it was an open secret that they spent most of the night in it.

“I’ll go sit naked in a bear cave and commune with spirits for warmth,” Neil replied, perfectly deadpan. “Or hang upside down in a tree until sunrise, whichever looks better for the weather.”

Aaron seemed ready to believe him until Andrew snorted in amusement.

“Well, Aaron, let me show you to your room,” Roland breezed past the moment, easing out from behind the bar. “Follow me.”

Andrew picked up the cask, though Neil said he could carry it just fine, and they walked back to Neil’s house.

“How did you put up with him for months?” Neil asked as he started filling the kettle.

“I frequently ground my teeth. I’ve had a headache ever since I found him.”

“I have a remedy for that.”

“Yes?”

Neil smiled and reached out to lightly touch the sharp corners of his jaw, then pressed a slow kiss to his temple where a vein had been pulsing. Andrew’s breath left him in a great gust, and his hands found Neil’s waist.

“Better?” Neil smiled.

“Try the other side.”

Neil did so, brushing his lips over the skin gently. “Better?”

“Yes,” Andrew murmured, working his fingers into the dips of Neil’s waist.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Neil said quietly, listening to the kettle beginning to whistle. “And I missed you.”

“I’m practically indestructible,” Andrew said, tilting his head to tease a kiss along the edge of Neil’s mouth. “Even dragons can’t kill me, remember.”

Neil pulled back a little. “Don’t tempt things like that.”

Andrew squeezed his hips, firm and slow. “I didn’t mean it seriously.”

Neil stroked over a faint bruise on his cheek, some unimportant injury nearly healed. “I would be very upset if anything happened to you,” he said, very quietly. “The charm – it’s been driving me distracted, thinking you were hurt or in danger.”

Andrew solemnly held his gaze for the space of several long heartbeats. It seemed like he might ask a question, but instead he said, “I’m not planning on dying anytime soon. And I’m quite attached to you, too.”

Neil pressed his shuddery sigh into Andrew’s mouth, ignoring the heavy thud of his heartbeat like a drum in his chest, the tremble in his fingers. It was just a remnant of his anxiety over his friend’s safety, nothing more. Andrew held him close and kissed him until they were dizzy for breath and the kettle was screeching.

“Tea first,” Neil whispered against his mouth. “Tea first.”

Andrew pulled on his lip gently, then let him go. They gulped down their scalding cups of wildflower tea, cooled a little by a mouthful of honey-sweet mead, and Neil tugged him by the hands into the bedroom. They stepped carefully over the fallen charm as the magic and herbs burned through their bodies, leaving them clean and ready. Andrew tugged off Neil’s shirt and tossed it to the ground, hands eager and wanting as he stroked and palmed all over Neil’s bared skin. Neil could hear himself making quiet breathy gasps with each touch and kiss and couldn’t care, plunging his fingers into Andrew’s hair to have something to hold onto. He was just so glad Andrew was safe, and had returned to him.

He ran his hands down Andrew’s chest and paused, feeling the bump underneath. He pulled out the bag of charms that he had given Andrew on his last visit, a curious tightness in his throat.

“You kept it,” he mumbled. The bag was scuffed and stained with sweat and dirt, but the contents were unbroken and undisturbed, fresh and vibrant. He thought of Andrew keeping it on all the time he was away, despite not wanting to seem like a pagan down in the ‘civilised’ south, maybe even touching it or holding it in his hand. Maybe thinking of Neil as he did so.

“Of course,” Andrew replied in a low voice, and looped the leather thong over his head. “You gave it to me. To keep me safe.”

To bring him back.

Neil set it down on a small side table and kissed him urgently, heart going double-time in his chest. They stumbled towards the bed, Neil pausing to snag a small jar of balm. He tossed it onto the bed and stepped out of his trousers, kicking them off his ankles. He sat naked on his bed and pulled Andrew closer by the hips, pushing up his shirt to kiss at his stomach. Andrew made a vague noise of surprise as Neil kissed and mouthed at the thick muscle banding Andrew’s torso, dipping his tongue into the rivulets between them as Andrew panted for breath and stroked through his hair. Neil tugged at the lacings of his trousers and took him in hand, lowering his head to taste and swallow around his length for just a moment.

Andrew swore breathlessly, his fingers shaking a bit as he stroked Neil’s hair. Neil bobbed his head again, enjoying the feeling of having Andrew in his mouth, then pulled off. He glanced up; a deep flush had spread up Andrew’s chest and into his face as he stared down at Neil with wide eyes.

Neil grinned, pleased with himself, and laid back on the bed. Andrew climbed down with him once he was bare, and Neil pushed the jar into his hand. Andrew paused, glancing to Neil for confirmation.

“Yes,” Neil whispered, shifting to part his legs around Andrew’s. “If you want that too.”

“Yes,” Andrew whispered back, and opened the jar.

He scooped out a large blob of the slick balm, and Neil leaned into his side, kissing at his neck as Andrew began gently pushing and stroking with those fingers. They kissed with a heady need, Neil’s breath hitching with each steady movement of Andrew’s fingers inside him. They hadn’t done this more than a few times in their years exploring each other, and they were careful. Neil clung around Andrew’s broad shoulders and shuddered with each slow stroke, his kisses turning distracted and imprecise, but Andrew was just as unfocussed. When Neil’s hips began to rock and ride into the motion of Andrew’s hand, accustomed to the feeling and wanting more, Andrew pulled it away.

Neil dragged one last heated kiss from Andrew’s mouth and turned on his side, bracing up a knee on the mattress. He heard Andrew shifting onto his side as well to curve around Neil’s back, his torso hot and heavy. A touch more balm, and then Neil cried out in pleasure as they slowly moved together. He clutched at the blankets and shivered at the feeling when Andrew came to rest inside him, their bodies flush and curved together. He reached back and pulled Andrew’s arm around his waist, and Andrew obliged by squeezing him closer, holding him tight and secure and safe in his arms.

“Alright?” Andrew panted into the back of his neck, his body strained from the effort of staying still to let Neil adjust.

Neil nodded rapidly into the pillow, his hands twitching and pleasure shooting all through him at having Andrew so close, so close. He rocked his hips just a little and groaned lowly at the heavy, full feeling. Taking that as his cue, Andrew started to move his hips in slow, firm rolls, holding Neil in place and pushing deep into him with each rock.

Neil happily surrendered control, and let himself be held and overwhelmed, feeling safe and secure tucked into Andrew’s chest. Andrew left wet, smeary gasps and kisses over his back and shoulder, his hand pressed tight into Neil’s stomach and grounding him, securing him. Neil clutched at the swell of his arm and forgot to touch himself, too focussed on the quickening, deepening push and pull of their bodies and the intense waves of pleasure and desire coursing through him each time.

He could feel it building, like a squirming ball somewhere deep in his gut, growing and growing inside him, almost like the way his magic felt when he was exerting himself. It tingled and rushed over his skin and he could hear his own groans and cries as if from a great distance, breathy and desperate. Their bodies rocked and strained, and Andrew’s hand pushed down to Neil’s groin, tugging around Neil’s length, and the ball in his pelvis burst.

His body arched, shuddered, his breath stopping as pleasure overcame him completely. He could feel Andrew’s hand moving, magic coursing through his veins, and liquid heat spilling deep inside him as Andrew panted and moaned Neil’s name into his back, his body locked in a tight knot around Neil’s.

Magic slipped through his grasp as Neil’s heart pounded in his chest, seeming doubled and greater than normal, unbalanced, unwieldy and escaping his control. Something across the room shattered as the magic flooded out of him, but the rush of it coupled with his pleasure left him little facility to worry, to think, to do anything but breathe and tremble.

Andrew’s frame slowly relaxed, limb by shaking limb. Neil cried out in protest as he started to pull away, the loss of him too much to bear after such intense closeness. Andrew paused, then stroked soothingly over Neil’s stomach. His fingers were sticky with Neil’s release, but it was calming nonetheless. He kissed very gently over Neil’s shoulder, skirting the edge of an old, scarred-over brand of the letter W.

“Easy now, easy now,” Andrew whispered into his neck. Neil vaguely wondered if he said that to his dragons when they got spooked, and whether he should be annoyed, but it was too comforting, and he felt himself slowing down and breathing deeper regardless. Slowly, slowly, Andrew pulled his hips back, until their bodies were separate again and slickness trickled between Neil’s thighs. Andrew stayed pressed close, curved tightly around Neil’s back and holding him safe. He shuddered at the feeling, and the pleasant burn of his hips and back from the exertion, the tightness in his thighs. Andrew kept kissing his neck and shoulder, stroking his stomach, until Neil was able to stop shaking and take slow breaths.

“I’m okay,” Neil mumbled into the pillow eventually.

Andrew hummed acknowledgement but didn’t stop his soothing touches, apparently not convinced that Neil was all the way back in his head. Neil didn’t mind – and he didn’t want Andrew to stop either. It felt too good, having him so close, so gentle, after the rush of pleasure and magic. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, and Andrew kissed him gently, soft on his tender mouth.

Andrew was just being careful, he told himself blearily. Just being considerate of his bedmate. Just making sure. And Neil would be selfish not to make sure in return.

“Are you alright?” Neil breathed into his cheek. “Was that good?”

Andrew nodded, and gently pulled on Neil’s sore hips to turn him so they could lie face to face. Neil’s body felt like melted butter, and he slumped where he was set, grinning tiredly.

“That was very good,” Andrew muttered. “And I missed you too.”

Neil’s grin softened, and he rested his forehead on Andrew’s chest. They lay there quietly for a long time, drifting in aimless thoughts and small touches, until Neil began to shiver from the cool air and the stickiness on his thighs became unpleasant.

“Tea,” Andrew muttered, and Neil nodded in agreement.

They got themselves upright, both stretching out. Neil looked around his bedroom and his mouth dropped open in surprise; it looked like a strong wind had blown through, pushing everything back from the bed and against the walls. A small vase of flowers had shattered, and they lay sadly in the shards of the pottery, the rushes on the floor soaking up the spilled water.

“At least it wasn’t a shock this time,” Andrew commented.

Neil coughed in embarrassment. “It was just a slip. I got – distracted.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” Andrew said, and Neil smiled at him.

“You should.”

Andrew cupped his cheek in his clean hand, his thumb pressing gently over Neil’s smile. Neil kissed it sweetly, and they got up to sort themselves. Andrew brewed fresh tea and got some food, and Neil stripped off the messy blanket and fetched water and washcloths from his cellar. They cleaned themselves, and sat together on the warm bed to drink their tea; double strength, just in case.

Neil sipped and leaned into Andrew’s shoulder, trying not to think that this was all getting more emotional than they had intended, starting out. It wasn’t that he minded that – it was even better than their first nervous, tense explorations of each other marked by fierce boundaries and long negotiation. It felt amazing. But the whole point had been just for convenience, just for satisfaction when both needed it. It wasn’t supposed to be so… tender. He wasn’t supposed to be so attached.

His mother would be ashamed.

Well. His mother would be ashamed of a lot of the things he was and had done since losing her.

Andrew touched his forehead, where a frown was sitting. “What are you thinking?” He asked.

“Nothing important,” Neil replied, and finished his cup. Whatever his mother might think, it was irrelevant. Doing things her way had gotten her killed. And Neil was still alive, still safe, hidden out of sight more effectively than she had ever managed. Just because she had been his mother didn’t make her right. He put it all out of his mind, and focussed on the warmth of Andrew’s body beside his own.

They spent the night together, talking for a while of all that had happened since their last meeting, kissing some more, and gently touching and holding each other. When at last they couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer, they laid down under the blankets with some distance between them, and slept.

Neil woke with the rising of the sun, and opened his eyes to catch Andrew watching him with an almost wistful, yearning expression on his face. Before Neil was awake enough to question him, the expression eased away into bland attentiveness, and Neil thought he must have imagined it.

“Good morning,” he yawned, slowly stretching out the stiffness in his back and legs. “Did you sleep alright?”

Andrew mumbled something that sounded vaguely affirmative, so Neil smiled and rested a hand on his chest. He liked to feel Andrew’s heartbeat and breathing sometimes, under the strength of his firm chest. It was oddly reassuring. Andrew reached down and gently pulled on Neil’s thigh, pulling him in close and working his fingers into the muscle. Neil hummed in surprised enjoyment, feeling his lower back and hips protest a little, but not in a painful way. The stretch eased the vague soreness, and he began to think he would enjoy aching some more, if Andrew wanted that too. He was considering fetching the jar of balm and saying as much, when the rattle of the front door opening startled them both.

Neil shot upright so fast his vision swam, and Andrew was pretty quick in tumbling out of bed too.

“Andrew?” Aaron was calling, sounding cross. “Where are you in this heathenous place?”

“Wait,” Andrew called back sharply, but that didn’t stop his brother from opening the bedroom door and seeing them both, very naked, and very obviously fresh from the single, narrow bed in the room. Aaron went bright red and his eyes bulged, and Neil grabbed for a robe to cover himself. He turned away and hurriedly dragged it on, hands pressing the material tight over his many, many scars. Hot shame poured over him like boiling pitch; he no longer had issues with Andrew seeing him and knowing him, but this stranger of a brother was another matter entirely.

He hugged his arms around himself, trembling.

“Aaron, wait the fuck outside,” Andrew was saying, whip-sharp. Footsteps, and the front door slammed again.

“I need to somehow change the wards,” Neil mumbled. “To keep that horse’s ass out.”

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said quietly, and skimmed a gentle hand down Neil’s back. Neil shuddered and leaned into him, and Andrew wrapped both arms around his waist. 

“It’s not that I’m ashamed of you, or me, or what we do,” Neil forced out. “It’s not that at all. It’s the scars.”

“I know. I understand.”

“It took me so long to be okay with just you seeing, and…”

“I know, Neil. I know.” Andrew kissed his cheek so softly it was like a songbird had fluttered its wings there, and Neil nearly crumbled. “I’m not thrilled about him seeing mine either. Easy now.”

Remembering how Andrew had soothed his neediness the previous night was both embarrassing and comforting, and both put warmth back into his chest. Andrew held him until he was still and calm again, and Neil had to wonder if he was the only one getting too invested.

“Take your time,” Andrew said as he unfolded his arms and started getting dressed. “I’ll deal with Aaron.”

Just before he left, Andrew picked up the fallen lintel charm and hung it on its hook, then closed the bedroom door behind himself. As Neil centred himself and slowly pulled on fresh clothes, he heard them arguing again outside the house. He heard something about you had no right and sodomy and heresy and carnal sin and what I do is none of your damn business and eternal damnation and I will not let you insult my friend and righteous fire and Luther’s poisoned your mind and soul and maybe it was the witch who was the real corruptor…

Neil closed his eyes and straightened his shoulders, then walked out. The brothers were in each other’s space, fists in shirts and jaws thrust forward as they yelled.

“Enough,” Neil said firmly. “Enough. You’ll scare my goat out of a month’s milk. Aaron, I really do not care what you think of me, and I’ll be glad to see the back of you. Your opinions mean nothing out here, and you are hopelessly hateful. Andrew, you forgot this.”

And while maintaining eye contact with Aaron, Neil held out the safety charm on its leather cord. From Aaron’s expression, he had seen Andrew wearing it before but hadn’t realised where it had come from. Andrew looped it once more over his head and tucked it under his shirt, then rather pointedly kissed Neil’s palm.

“Now what did you want so urgently?” Neil asked Aaron, who looked nearly apoplectic with shock and disgust.

Aaron’s expression warred with itself, then settled on cold disdain. He drew himself up to his full height (still short, still somehow shorter than Neil) and said in his most insulting tone, “The innkeeper wants paying now for the room. I’ll get my things, buy some supplies, and leave this God-forsaken pit of sin.”

“Then let’s go.”

“You aren’t needed, witch—”

“We will all go,” Neil said icily, and set himself between the twins. He did not care what this man thought of him, but he did not want Andrew to become upset by it. Neil knew how long and hard Andrew had struggled with himself, being comfortable in his skin and his desires after the orphanage and living on the streets, easy prey for any predator; it had been something necessary to know, once they started undressing each other regularly. He did not want some hateful words from this unfortunate excuse for a brother to disturb him, or send him back to that bleak place of loathing and emptiness.

As the three of them walked in tense silence towards the town, Neil touched Andrew’s wrist gently, and received a quick squeeze back in affirmation.

They were about halfway back to the town when a young girl with a blue cap over her hair came sprinting up to them.

“Marnie,” Neil greeted her in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

“Katelyn needs you,” the girl gasped. “It’s Ellen – the baby’s breech.”

Neil felt himself go pale in a sickening rush. “Andrew—”

“I’ll get the bag, you go,” Andrew cut him off tersely. “Take Aaron.”

Neil ran after Marnie with Aaron stumbling and asking questions behind him while Andrew ran back to the house. Marnie led them to a low, run-down cottage behind the brothel and Neil could already hear cries of pain from inside. He burst in and went to his knees beside the bed, pushing past anxious family members hovering outside. Katelyn had the poor girl’s legs over her shoulders as she tried to gently turn the babe with her hands, her hair escaping from her blue cap which had been knocked sideways from Ellen’s feet.

Neil hovered his hand over the girl’s distended stomach, taking in the situation rapidly. The babe was in the wrong position, trying to come through feet-first. Ellen was weeping, her whole body shaking from pain and the stress of the labour. He gently squeezed her shoulder and stroked her sweat-damp hair.

“You’ll be okay Ellen, try not to panic,” he told her as soothingly as he could. “Breathe slowly, try not to push. Katelyn, what do you need?”

“Time,” she grated out from between the girl’s bloody thighs. “I’m trying to turn it, but I’m concerned about hurting Ellen. She’s been in labour a long time, she could be too tired. I don’t want her to hurt herself.”

He met her eyes; they were both wondering whether the babe would be breathing if and when they finally delivered it. And if Ellen were bleeding too badly to survive.

“There’s no point,” Aaron said quietly, pale-faced and looking sick. “You should give her poppy milk and wait.”

“That’s spectacularly less than helpful,” Katelyn snapped at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a physicker from Kingstown,” Aaron said.

“Oh, great,” Katelyn rolled her eyes. “Stay out of my way, incompetent.”

Andrew slammed through the door and handed Neil his emergency bag of herbs and charms and implements. Neil opened it immediately and ordered one of the family members to fetch water, and started grinding up a handful of herbs and leaves.

“What is the witch doing—”

“Stay out of it,” Andrew ordered his brother, one arm sufficient to hold him back. Neil put them both out of his mind as he concentrated solely on what this girl needed, and how to make it. He poured the leafy sludge down her throat and stroked her hair again.

“That should pause her contractions and stop the bleeding for the moment,” he told Katelyn under the cover of the girl’s pained moans. “Any progress?”

“Some,” Katelyn said. “I’m going to need your help to turn it.”

Neil quickly made up a yellowish paste and coated his hands in it; the magic and living plants in it singing on his skin. “Ellen, I’m going to touch your belly. I’m sorry, but it’s going to feel quite unpleasant.”

She started to cry again, and Neil grimly pressed his hands onto her belly. Katelyn directed him, and in a moment he could feel the shape of the babe within her. He started massaging his hands, working the paste into her skin and murmuring spells and charms under his breath, using his magic to push them down into the womb and the struggling babe. Marnie helped him silently, her young face serious and determined. Katelyn started counting, and they carefully moved the babe the last few degrees into proper position, ignoring Ellen’s hoarse weeping.

“Good girl Ellen, good girl,” Katelyn panted. “Big pushes now, really good and strong. Just a few big pushes and it’ll all be over.”

Bless her, she tried, but her body had nothing left to give. She tried, Neil could see how hard she tried, but there was no strength left. He washed his hands in the bucket of water and made another potion, then dropped it under her tongue. Within two heartbeats, her whole body seemed seized with a burst of energy and she pushed for all she was worth, screaming and cursing and sobbing.

And suddenly, in a rush of blood and mucus, there was a baby, and she joined voice with her mother. Neil beckoned for Marnie and one of the family members to take his place and see to the exhausted girl, and joined Katelyn to inspect the babe. He whispered blessings for good health and made a charm of the cord and the remnants of caul, sealing it into a jar and instructing the father of the new baby to keep the jar safe and undamaged until the babe’s third year, when its contents should be buried under a newly-planted tree. Then he and Katelyn did the messy work of making sure Ellen was as intact as possible once the afterbirth came away, and staunching whatever bled; Neil’s kit was severely depleted by the time they were done.

When, at last, they could relax and say the process was over, Neil sat back on his heels and smiled. Ellen was holding her cleaned, pink little baby to her breast with an expression of stunned joy, stroking her daughter’s tiny wrinkled cheeks, hours of pain set aside for the euphoria of its culmination. They would both need careful monitoring of course, but the worst was over.

He looked to Katelyn, who was grey and limp with exhaustion. She was bloody up to her elbows, and there was no saving the gory mess of her blue apron, but the grin she flashed him was fierce.

“Thank you, Neil,” she said to him.

He just smiled; he would have embraced her, but they were both bloody and he didn’t want to make it worse. He looked around; the twins were standing out of the way in the corner, both looking a little sick. Andrew caught his eyes, and there was a sudden intensity in his stare that stole Neil’s breath.

Aaron was gaping at Katelyn. “You saved them,” he said, blinking owl-like behind his eyeglasses. “You saved both of them. How?”

Katelyn fixed him with a stern look. “Skill. Practice. Luck. And perseverance.”

“At the university, we were taught never to attempt breech births,” Aaron said. “To just let the mother pass as painlessly as possible. That it’s a lost cause.”

Katelyn wrinkled her nose derisively. “Typical of them.”

Aaron frowned. “You’ve been to the university?”

“I made it to fifth-level before I left,” Katelyn said, casually. Neil had no idea what she meant but Aaron looked reluctantly impressed. “And I left on my own terms – it was too restrictive, and just plain wrong, what they teach there. I’ve learned more and saved more lives out here than I ever did in the clean and tidy rooms of the university medic wing.”

Aaron had nothing more to say to that, but instead just stared at Katelyn as she and Neil scrubbed themselves clean, and she did what she could for her clothes.

“Now if you don’t mind,” she announced to the room at large, “I need a bath and a drink.”

And she left. Aaron kept staring after her like a pole-axed cow. Andrew came over and helped Neil to his feet, letting Neil lean into him.

“That was amazing,” Andrew murmured close to his ear.

“Katelyn and Ellen did all the work,” Neil protested, but smiled. “I just came in at the end.”

“Still.” Andrew kept looking at him with that intense stare, and stroked his cheek with the backs of his knuckles.

“What’s that look for?” Neil asked quietly.

Andrew hesitated. “Not here. I’ll tell you later.”

Neil raised an eyebrow at him, but Aaron had recovered some of his wits and was making indignant noises at their behaviour.

“Let’s go to the inn,” Neil said. “We’ll settle your account and then I might go back to bed, honestly.”

“I might join you,” Andrew muttered, but quietly enough so his brother didn’t hear.

When they got to the inn, Roland was busy arguing with his cook, so they waited at the bar in tense silence. Andrew kept watching Neil with that powerful focus, which didn’t help the awkwardness. Neil was considering just kissing him to break the tension into a proper fight instead when Katelyn appeared from the bathing room, freshly washed and looking much better for it in a change of clothes. She nodded familiarly to Neil, politely to Andrew, ignored Aaron, and reached over the bar to pour herself a foaming tankard of beer. She settled with it at one of the tables with a determined face.

Aaron didn’t do anything until she had gulped a third of it, then went over to join her without saying a word to his brother. Neil watched in mild surprise as Aaron started interrogating Katelyn about her skills. She bore it with good grace, though he knew she was tempted to verbally lash him every so often for his statements and assumptions.

He turned back to Andrew and met his stare head-on. “What is it?”

“I forget sometimes,” Andrew said slowly, quietly, “That you’re not just a witch. You’re an apothecary too.”

“Hardly.”

“More than enough. Your herb-lore is second to none to anyone out here or in the cities.”

“What are you getting at?”

Andrew considered him, head tilted. Neil wondered if Andrew realised he tended to mimic his dragons sometimes. “Will you come out to the dragonlands with me?”

Neil’s jaw dropped and a flush came over him. “I—”

“Not permanently,” Andrew assured him, touching his side gently. “I know you don’t want that. But for a season. If something is hurting the flocks, I think you might be best qualified to spot it. Maybe even treat it.”

Neil stared, speechless with his mind spinning in circles.

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, you know I wouldn’t,” Andrew said softly. “Think it over? I won’t bring it up again until you do, I promise.”

Neil just gaped.

“What can I do for you gents?” Roland swaggered up to them, smug in victory, then seemed to read the mood. “Or I can come back later…”

“I came to settle Aaron’s tab,” Andrew said with a glance at his brother. “But now I’m not so sure.”

“Huh,” Roland said, looking at them as well. Katelyn was actually smiling; had Aaron hidden enough of his true personality to somehow be charming? What a world, Neil thought. “He looks like they’ll be a while.”

“Do you need the room urgently, Roland?”

The innkeeper grimaced. “Not really, but I don’t like him. He was riling up my patrons all last night and this morning, sermonising and preaching. I’d rather he didn’t stay. Your brother is a real ass.”

“I’m painfully aware of that.”

They watched Aaron and Katelyn for a minute, then Andrew sighed and called over, “Aaron! Staying or going?”

Aaron jumped and scowled over at them. He exchanged a few more words with Katelyn, who leaned back in her seat with a secretive little smile. “Staying, for a few days.”

“Fantastic,” Andrew muttered. “Roland, try not to punch him anywhere breakable if he gets out of order.”

“I’ll do my best. Do you want a room? I have one free now, one of the merchants left.”

Andrew looked to Neil, who thought back to how pleasant it had been to sleep side by side, and wake up together. He chewed the inside of his cheek and lightly curled his fingers around Andrew’s.

“You can stay with me,” he said quietly, and ignored Roland’s grin. “Come back later tonight. I need – I need the day to myself. To think. I mean, work.”

“Alright,” Andrew replied, calm as a still lake. “I’ll see you later.”

Neil hesitated, pressed a light kiss to his lips, and darted out the door. He was in the woods before he knew it, and plunged onwards into their cool, damp, quiet depths.

***

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, Neil thought as he sat on an old log somewhere deep in the wood. It wasn’t that he couldn’t help.

It was that it would be so dangerous for him.

And what about his life here? He couldn’t just uproot himself again – couldn’t, wouldn’t, could not face doing that again and ripping himself away from the home he’d made.

It would only be for a season, Andrew had said.

But a season could be long enough for his father to find him again.

His fingers crept up to his shoulder, tracing the branded W burned into his skin, the same one seared on the flanks of every one of his father’s herd. He could still smell the char of the burn, his smoking flesh, even all these years later.

These dragonlands were on the other side of two mountain ranges, he reminded himself. He was far away from his father’s territories.

But the trade in dragons, their breeding and training, was not so large a field as one might think. There were only so many wild places unconquered by man, only so many breeds and flocks. It wouldn’t matter to a really determined wrangler if he had to trek over two mountain ranges to find the right bull stud or mare to rejuvenate his herd. Borders were for men, and the dragonlands in any country existed apart from them, wild and free. A bounty hunter wouldn’t bat an eye at the journey either.

He was safe hiding away in this nameless frontier town, protected by his friends and his skills in service to the town. It was a vague place, easy to disappear into, and protective of its more permanent inhabitants.

The dragonlands were even bigger and vaguer – but much easier to track somebody in. Here, friends might set down false trails, or he could lay them himself with disguises. He could vanish into the woods or backtrack through streams or race on the roads to the south. Out in the wild, it was leagues and leagues of flat, barren country with nowhere to hide. From the right vantage point, you could see for weeks’ worth of travel in any direction, and see all the herds and animals and people crawling about like ants. A campfire would light up the sky for leagues around on a clear night.

But maybe nobody was looking for him anymore.

It had been so long, it had been more than fifteen years since his mother ran away with him. It had been more than six years since her death. Maybe his father’s people couldn’t care anymore to track down whispers of a child who was most likely dead in some anonymous ditch or filthy alleyway by now, like his mother.

Maybe his father and all his people were dead, and Neil would never know.

But that was too much to ask for, too much to hope for. His mother had told him to never stop running, never stop hiding. There was no way to ever be certain. No way to ever be truly safe.

He put his head in his hands, his pulse throbbing behind his eyes.

Andrew had no idea what he was asking, what he was asking Neil to risk.

Except, he did know. He knew that the herds were in some kind of danger; Neil trusted him enough to believe it, whatever the cause might be. Andrew knew that if there was a danger, the whole business of dragons could collapse. And with it, war would roll over the continent like an inexorable wave. There was more at stake here than Neil’s childhood ghosts.

And he would be with Andrew the whole time – who knew his ranges down to the pebbles, and was on a first-name basis with every bush and flower. There could be nobody better to have at his side if he needed to hide in the dragonlands. Andrew was more than capable, more than cunning enough, to hold his own in a fight or a race for safety. Surely, with Andrew’s cleverness and toughness and strength, and Neil’s magic and herbs and intuition, they could avoid or head off any trouble that came their way.

And… Neil missed the dragons. For better or worse, he had grown up around them. And he missed getting to walk through a herd of them, feeling their rough scales breathing under his hand, seeing the sunlight glow through their wings, the fiery flumes of their breath. He missed their songs. He missed the freedom of flying on the yearlings’ backs. Hearing the stories from Andrew and his friends could never quite compare, could never quite fill the ache of knowing such majesty of nature was alive out there, and he was hiding himself away from it.

Neil rubbed through his hair.

The forest witch had told him he had a great choice ahead of him.

Damn her and her clouds. Neil didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to put Andrew in danger. He didn’t want to lose this calm, quiet, beautiful life he had made. He didn’t want it to change.

But he knew, deep down, he had already made his decision.

***

He arrived back at his home close to dusk, walking slow and careful in the deepening night. Andrew was in his home again, and Neil spared a moment to wonder if they could just stay there forever, together. Screw responsibility and the rest of the world; why couldn’t they just stay in Neil’s odd little house that he had built, eat dinner, tend goats, and fall asleep naked and calm together? Why couldn’t they just have that?

He closed the door behind himself and sat down in his usual chair. Andrew greeted him with a gentle stroke to his hair, but didn’t push him to talk. They ate in silence, and when all the bowls were clean, Neil sat himself in Andrew’s lap and rested his head on a strong, broad shoulder.

Andrew’s arms curled around him tight, protective, safe. And warm, so warm and soothing.

“I will go with you to the dragonlands,” Neil whispered.