He blinks.

And claws himself out of his scaly green skin, leaving a darker one underneath, greenish-black and glistening.

Hmm.

The rote lines, the lack of objection...no point in worrying about it right now. She takes off a shift.

And again, "Maiden, shed your shift for me."

"Serpent, shed your skin first."

He claws out of the green-black skin to reveal a midnight blue one underneath, dusted with starry white speckles.

And on and on through nine shed shifts and nine shed skins, each more beautiful than the last, blood-red and dawn-gold and raven-black and violet and emerald; until at last he sits before her, rather smaller than he was to start, in a skin as snowy white as her final shift.

"Wife," he hisses, "shed your shift for me."

"Husband," she says softly but firmly, "shed your skin first."

There is not another skin underneath this one.

Well that's going to make what has to happen next less pleasant. Not that it would have been pleasant in any case, but--

Unpleasantness does not prevent her from following through. She is not especially experienced in the use of birch rods but then she doesn't really need to be.

There are a lot of them. Her husband thrashes around a lot, but somehow never hits her with his tail or damages any furniture or upends either of the tubs.

Hooraaaayy. Sort of. Happiness is not really on the menu here.

Her arms ache by the time the last rod gives out, but she pays it no mind, nor to the burn of the lye on her arms as she drags him over to the tub of lye, covering him in it as much as possible and wiping him down with it as gently as she can, under the circumstances.

Her husband, understandably, is not thrilled.

It is entirely understandable.

When she is satisfied that he qualifies as washed she drags him over to the tub of milk and tries to get as much of the lye off as she can while she bathes him.

He hisses unhappily but at least does not struggle much.

"I'm sorry," she tells him.

She finishes bathing him in the milk. She drags him over to the pile of shifts she left on the bed and wraps him in them and hugs him, firmly enough that she's sure it counts but gently enough to not aggravate his, uh, everything, any more than she has to.

She wouldn't have expected to be able to get to sleep very easily but that was all actually really exhausting.

And then -

She is dreaming. She is dreaming about a version of this room where the bed is twice as big and the floor goes on forever in every direction and there are no lizardskins or broken birch rods or splashes of milk, just the bed and the stone floor, and Altaia, and her husband, staring at her with his bright green eyes and then pouncing on her and kissing her.

Oooh. What a nice dream. What a lovely imagined human form. Her imagination is clearly doing a very good job tonight. She kisses back, winding her arms around his neck.

He pins her to the bed and his face shifts halfway back to a dragon's and he bites her shoulder and then turns human again and kisses the fang-marks.

Oh, nice. This is going to be one of the really good sex dreams, isn't it. She yelps in delighted startlement when he bites her shoulder and makes a pleased mm-ing noise when he kisses it.

He sure does seem inclined to behave like a really good sex dream. Enthusiastically and violently. Several times.

Being really exhausted has benefits, wow, normally she cannot hurt anywhere near this much in a dream without waking up. She behaves with similar enthusiasm.

And eventually he stops, and curls up and holds her in his arms, and cuddles her contentedly. "Mine. My wife. Mine."

"You are adorable," she informs him, running her fingers through his hair. "This is a nice dream."

He hums agreeably and nuzzles her cheek.

"Waking up's going to be less fun," she sighs, snuggling up.

"Mm?"