Many Journeys by Elleth

Sweeter Blessings

As summer nears harvest, Morwen and Aerin dance in the meadows. NSFW, for AmyFortuna for Fandom Giftbox 2017.

As late summer approaches, carrying with it harvest-tide and the final stretch of warm days, Morwen pulls old finery from her dresser, long-hidden garments. She has always been austere, she knows, even as a young woman when she could have afforded not to be, and the clothes show it - they are dark and high-closed, more befitting a widow than a new bride, but there are secret threads of gold and red that will flash like butterfly wings when she'll move in sunlight.

And she will. Oh, she will, in defiance of Brodda and his churls, and how she will dance.

*

Like migrating birds, Admiral butterflies fly south before the winter. There have been fewer of them since the Sudden Flame, when Ard-galen burned where they lived, but a few stubborn ones hold out, and dance before Morwen's window, flashing black and white and scarlet in the sunlight. Their arrival has always been the signal for the harvest to begin, and the fields would fill with people to fill the granaries and winter stores.

Now, the Incomers decry when harvest is held, and Morwen leaves Niënor to mind the house and goes to dance alone along the sand-paths, flashing her wings.

*

Not alone for long.

The Lady Aerin knows the customs as Morwen does, and she approaches with her grain-gold hair back-lit into a halo by the sun, at once terrified and laughing, and seizes Morwen's hands to still her.

"Elf-witchery," Morwen says in answer to the question behind Aerin's eyes. "Would that I could; I'd bless these fields for the wolf-folk to gorge themselves and leave enough yet to last the winter. Yavanna make it so," she adds in solemn prayer and inclines her head westward for a spell, then spins Aerin in a sudden circle. "But now we dance!"

*
And how they dance. Together it is better than alone, until Morwen and Aerin fall, out of breath and laughing, on a meadow, there to lie and simply breathe the warm air and the sun beating down. In all her rich colours and golden hair, Aerin is the brighter butterfly of the two of them, but their vests come off in the warmth, and once they are certain to be sheltered, their remaining clothes follow.

It is meet, too, for there are other, sweeter blessings that Morwen hoped to bestow, for Aerin, who is her life and strength all year.

*

Aerin tastes like sweat and dust and grain, a sweetness that will nourish Morwen as well as any harvest, and she laps her up with greed almost unbefitting a lady.

But Aerin rises under Morwen's mouth until she might as well be flying. Her hands reach and tangle in Morwen's hair until her every breath becomes a blessing and each lick of Morwen's tongue to her center bestows another. They come undone with one another; Aerin's ecstasy is enough to wing Morwen, near-untouched, with her, and they lie at rest with one another after, searching the afternoon sky for butterflies.