Snuggle. "Love you."

"Love you." Snuggle. 

They can just keep on like this for a while, can't they, cuddles and kisses and magic and intermittent wankery and waking up in each others' arms in the mornings.

Yes. They can. It's lovely.

He takes a few breaks to go torture a swan so his foundation spell won't fall apart, and otherwise spends pretty much all his time in Elodea's bed.

Awesome.

It feels like far less time than it should before two weeks have passed since her visit to House Valire.

"--Oh huh," Elodea says when she realizes.

"Mm?"

"...It's been two weeks," she observes.

"So it has," he agrees. "Guess I should get out of bed and go bother a swan."

Sigh. "Yeah."

Nuzzle. "Love you."

Kiss. "I love you."

"Mmmm."

"—oh, hey, while I'm there, do you mind if I tell them your name? You never did."

"--Oh. No, go ahead."

"All right." He kisses her forehead. "I'll go see who I'm taking."

And he vanishes.

Sigh. Oh well, back to her cryptography.

He's already pretty sure who it's going to be.

He goes looking for Luar.

She's floating near the shore, waiting for sunset. When she sees him, she gives him a look clearly identifiable as that of a swan contemplating whether or not to break your arm.

"Nice to see you too," he says dryly, sitting down in the grass and leaning back on his hands.

She drifts toward the shore.

When the sun sets, she appears crouched in a few inches of water, looking ready to bolt.

"I'm not here to hurt you," he says. "I know it wasn't for my sake, but I really appreciate you telling me about Elodea's curse."

...nod.

"I have a favour to ask. It involves you being raped and tortured. You can tell me to fuck off at this point if you like."

She looks up at him in wary puzzlement. Whatever she sees, it seems to reassure her; she relaxes a little.

"No, go on."

"I met a guy who needs to do something horrifyingly violent every couple of weeks or he goes crazy and murders a bunch of people or burns his own house down or something along those lines. So every so often he goes out with his friends and finds a girl nobody will miss and they take her back to his house and gang-rape her, sometimes to death. I want to start lending him swans for that. Thought of you."

"...why."

"Why you, why am I helping...?"