(no subject)

[pwyll_twiceborn]

One last farewell to make.

He's been putting it off. He has a feeling it will be difficult, though he is not quite sure how; still, it must be done.

"Hello, Shiel," he says, as the priestess comes to greet him at the door to the Temple. She smiled to see him - a new thing, that. A sign of harmony, in a way, if one wanted to take it like that.

"I know you have given blood," Shiel says, almost apologetically.

"I'll do so again," he suggests, in the spirit of harmony, and she shakes her head, flushing, and sends an acolyte to find the High Priestess.

Comments

[first_of_dana]

The acolyte returns, after a moment, and with her is Jaelle.

"Pwyll," she says. "I wondered if you would come. Will you take a glass of wine?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

He had thought he might be kept waiting. Then again, if she thought that's what he'd expect, she almost certainly would do the opposite.

He nods, and follows her back along the hallway to the room he remembers.

[first_of_dana]

She dismisses the acolyte and closes the door, goes to a sideboard and pours wine for them both, her motions brisk and impersonal.

She gives him one of the glasses and sinks down into a pile of cushions on the floor.

"This evening, then?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"If you will," he says, hastily; trying for all the politeness they've so often missed. "Is there a difficulty? Because if there -"

[first_of_dana]

"No, no," she says, quickly. "I was only asking. We will do it at moonrise."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

There's a silence -

- broken, eventually, by quiet laughter.

"We really are terrible, aren't we? We never could manage a civil exchange."

[first_of_dana]

She considers, not smiling, though his tone has invited it.

"That night by the Anor.

"Until I said the wrong thing."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"You didn't. I was just - sensitive. About power and control."

Not, really, as if that's news.

"You found a nerve."

[first_of_dana]

"We're trained to do that."

She smiles, mocking herself a bit.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"I did my share of goading," Paul admits. "One of the reasons I came was to tell you that a lot of it was reflex. My own defenses. I wanted to say goodbye, and to tell you that I have -"

Has what?

What, after all, had he come to say?


"- a great deal of respect for you," he finishes, carefully. Feeling somehow lacking all the same.

[first_of_dana]

She says nothing. She's not sure what to say. I have a great deal of respect for you as well?

It's true, as far as it goes, and yet . . .

So she says nothing.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Sooner or later one of them will say something wounding. Sooner or later one of them will spoil it; they always do.

"I should go," he says, and rises, swiftly. "I'll see you this evening, I guess."

He turns towards the door.

[first_of_dana]

"Paul. Wait."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

. . . not Pwyll.

Paul.

A sudden suspicion - or perhaps a hope - stirs within him.

He turns again.

[first_of_dana]

She has not moved, her arms crossed tight across her chest, suddenly cold in the midst of summer.

"Are you really going to leave me?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

In that instant, everything changes.

Words that he had never thought he would say again:

"Oh, love," he says.

The room is full of light, so much light, but not blinding; he takes one step, and then another, still hardly able to believe what he's doing.

[first_of_dana]

It is strange, and new and unknown, all and yet somehow none of those things, to be within the circle of his arms, to turn her mouth to his.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

He bends down to kiss her; it feels like a dream, he thinks, and then realizes -

No. That's exactly what it's not like. It's real; it's now; clear.

He's clear. Everything in the past is finally at long last past. The Summer Tree had given him perspective, but he is not the Lord of the Summer Tree now, and he has moved past the gift. He is Paul, only Paul, and he is here and he is now.

With Jaelle.

[first_of_dana]

"Paul," she says, quietly, into his ear and against his mouth. Her fingers are tangled in his hair, and there are tears on her cheeks, and she can find nothing to say except, "Paul. Oh, Paul."

And so they come together, children of the God and the Goddess, yes, but also nothing more than man and woman, than Paul and Jaelle.

And in the end, they rest on the cushions she sat on, not so long ago, in a different lifetime, trying to manage a civil exchange.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

He runs his fingers over her hair, over and over again, and brushes away her tears.

And still tries to believe it himself - that this has happened, that it really has; that he is lying here with her.

That everything has changed so much so fast.

[first_of_dana]

She moves, eventually, to lie with her head in his lap, and the smile he gets from her is very different than any smile he's seen from her before.

"You really would have left."

She's not asking a question.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

He nods, though he can scarcely believe it, now.

"I would have," he confesses. "I was too afraid."

[first_of_dana]

She reaches up to touch his cheek.


"Afraid of this? After all you have done?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"Of this, perhaps," he says, "more than anything."

Experimentally, he thinks the name Rachel, and feels - some sadness. Regret.

Nothing more.

"But - when?" he asks, still attempting to grasp it, why she should be here with him. "When did you . . ."

[first_of_dana]

"I fell in love with you on the beach by Taerlindel. When you stood in the waves, speaking to Liranen. But I fought it, of course, for many reasons. You will know them. I didn't come home to me until you were walking back from Finn to face Galadan."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

For many reasons.

He closes his eyes and opens them again, looking at her; he had nearly forgotten.

"Can you do this? How may it be allowed? You are what you are."

[first_of_dana]

She smiles again, more to herself than to him.

"I will die to have you, if I must, but I do not think it need happen that way."

She rises neatly to her feet, goes to the door, and says something to an acolyte.

[inthetapestry]

They don't wait for long before the door opens again.

And - who else? - Leila comes in.

Clad in white.

She looks from one of them to the other, and laughs aloud. "Oh good! I thought this might happen."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul, unbelievably, feels himself flush.

Always Leila! But he can't manage to be even irritated now; he catches Jaelle's eye, and, amazingly, bursts into real laughter.



And notes absently that it's the first since Kevin died.

[first_of_dana]

"Can you see why she'll be High Priestess now?" Jaelle asks, smiling.

Then, more soberly, she continues, "From the moment she lifted the axe and survived, Leila was marked by the Goddess to the white of the High Priestess. Dana moves in ways no mortal can understand, not even the others among the gods. I am High Priestess in name only now. After I sent you through the crossing, I was to relinquish my place to Leila."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul nods.

It makes sense. There's a pattern to it; and, thinking of Kevin, he thinks, perhaps, the pattern goes back to Dun Maura. To a winter broken by - however melodramatic it may sound - love.


"Kim is going home," he says, "or I would never say this, but I think I know a cottage by a lake, halfway between the Temple and the Tree, where I would like to live. If it pleases you."

[first_of_dana]

"It pleases me," she says, quietly. "More than I can say. Ysanne's cottage will bring my life full circle and lay a grief to rest."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

And that - it seems - is that.

"I guess I'm staying then," he says, and finds himself smiling again, though his eyes are strangely wet.

He reaches for her hand. (Leila's grinning at them unashamedly, and he still can't mind; which may be the strangest thing of all.)

"I guess I'm staying, after all."