Page 71 of Thief of Roses
“No, please,” he insisted, “as a favor to me.Please say that you’ll take them.”
“As you wish, Baró.”
She dropped the subject as they neared the area he cleared and the pit he dug.She rummaged in her pockets for her flint strike-a-light and brought it out to begin their evening.
She scanned the sky.“Darkness will settle soon enough and I want the sky alight when it does.”
While she gathered their garments and fabricated their ceremonial accessories for the evening, Baró set up the pit with their wood and kindling.He brought char cloths and a pitcher of the oil they rendered from the fat of his kills with additional scraps of fabric should they require more assistance with the sparks.The pit, though not as deep as he intended to make it, held a respectable amount of firewood and the kindling sticks poked out like fingers toward the sky.
When the fire started in earnest, Rivani sat beside the pit, stoking it with a poker.Baró joined her and rubbed her back through her cloak.
“I want to declare myself so that all may know of how I care for you.”She glanced up at him and kissed his jaw.“Will you tell the spirits tonight of how you care for me?”
“I told you,” he reminded her, “I will give you all the words and promises you may desire of me, hoping that my actions have proven that you own my full heart.”
“And you have mine.”She beamed and nestled into the crook of his arm.“We may know ourselves, no matter the words we use — or do not use — but the rest of the universe must know that our souls are bound even if no other person does.I want every spirit and ancestor and magic entity to know.”
When the fire matured and the sun dipped below the horizon, streaking the sky with the magnificent brilliance of its trailing fiery cloak, Rivani stood, indicating Baró should do the same.
“I feel a bit silly,” she admitted as she faced the fire.“I am not a Mother and have never held the rituals myself, although I participate almost every year.”
“You will be wonderful.”
She smiled at his assurance and held her arms out to initiate the rite.She called to the Magic, to the spirits of the earth and sky, to the ancestors, to The Kind and Fair, to the gods.She asked them to be witness to their rite on the night of Narrapaug Seip, to release all that had come before and begin anew.She gave thanks to the Fir’Darl for attending and presiding over the rite this year and sang a few lines before she fetched her herb jars.She tipped a little of the contents of one into her hand and Baró’s with each hope for the future before they gave their palmfuls to the fire and performed the action again.Rivani went through the traditional items of gratitude and hope — the bounty of the last year and the harvest of the coming one, the ability to find safety and shelter and new hospitable places to discover, the health of the Rivani and the ability to thrive, the friends of long acquaintance and the new ones yet to make, the food that sustained them and the full bellies of the future, the lessons learned and the opportunities to practice what had been learned.
“Fir’Darl,” she said to Baró when her standard list had been fulfilled, “I have many personal things I should like to say, but if you have anything you would like to add, we would all like to hear it.”
“There is much for which I am grateful,” Baró responded, “and many things for which I hope.”He was supposed to speak to the fire as the conveyance of his words for the spirits she called, but he watched her.His gratitude was not for the gods or the spirits — it was for her alone.“This year has been the happiest of my long life.In it, I have known compassion, forgiveness, and affection.I have been shown errors in my ways, not through punishment but by the strength of virtue-in-practice.In this Rivan woman, I have found my heart’s companion, my partner in survival, and my dearest friend.She has been my eyes in blindness, my solace in despair, and my hope in darkness.She will be leaving me soon, but I am grateful to have had the gift of her time and company.Though the grief of her departure will destroy me, I wish her to have safe travels.I want only her happiness and safety.May she find care and company with people who deserve her, and may she never know a day of want.”
Rivani glanced over at him, her brows furrowed.“You haven’t asked for anything for yourself.”
“You are the greatest blessing I will ever know.How could I desire anything else?”
Rivani’s eyes grew red and she wiped at them before redirecting her gaze to the fire.
“And I am grateful that I was led here, to rest and recover, to find peace and safety, to meet the one who would become my dearest friend and my mate.I ask — beg — that we can, somehow, spend our lives together, away from here.I have not given up hope on that.”
Baró smiled weakly, knowing the impossibility of her request.
“Before you all,” she continued, “I wish to declare my affection and devotion to this being.As a baby, I was told that I was not meant for mankind.I was doomed to be alone, not a fate I dreaded, but now that I face a future without my Baró, I realize that ‘alone’ can be lonely when it means being deprived of the person you care most about.I put to you — I was not meant for mankind.Perhaps instead I am meant for a god, for the Fir’Darl, for there is none other in the world whose spirit matches my own.I am his and will forever be.”
Rivani may not have blushed at his verbalized sentiments, but he blushed with hers.
“Before you all,” he repeated, following Rivani’s demonstrated format, “I affirm and declare that I am hers and shall ever be.”He reached out for Rivani’s hand and squeezed it.“For all others, I have been a threat, a problem, a monster, and yet in me, she has the ability to see something else, something more.I know that I am unworthy of her affections despite my attempts to be a better creature, but for her, I shall always strive to be worthy.She has caused me to question my beliefs and challenge my traditions, and though I shall never have the opportunity to demonstrate improvement, she has nonetheless inspired the growth and enlightenment of my person.”
Rivani rummaged inside her cloak and pulled a length of trim that she had liberated from her bedroom furniture.She draped the trim over their joined hands and then wrapped it around.
“I am yours, Baró.You own my heart and my affections, and whether I am here or elsewhere, if we shall be parted, I shall tell all that you are my mate.”
“I am yours, Rivani.Sahtiya.”He bent his head down and brought their joined hands to his mouth to kiss the top of hers.“You own my heart and my affections.Whether I am here or elsewhere, when we shall be parted, I shall regard you forever as my mate.”
“Kiss me?”She asked, turning her face up to him.“Seal our promises to each other.”
His face was no longer one that kissed easily or could be easily kissed but he made the motion to indicate his willingness and let her find a way for her to fit her mouth against his.The sensation made him want to lift her in his arms and carry her off to their nest of lovemaking.
“I would seal our promises with other physical expressions too.”
“We shall.After.”She unwrapped their hands and released his to tuck the trim away.“I have one more thing to settle first.I promised you a story.”She addressed the fire again.“Baró once recounted an incident of his past, an incident that horrified and disgusted me, one that turned me against him.This incident did not match up with the being I came to know.When Baró told me who he had been, my suspicions were confirmed.Though the truth changes nothing — although it should — I want to correct the story now and have it witnessed by him and the spirits together.”
