Title: Cultivation, an Art

Author: arrebol

Rating: PG or K+

Summary: Seasonal glimpses into a growing relationship. Mary/Dickon.

Note: This is rough and nonsensical, but I do love my Mary and Dickon.

The garden is glossed with life today. As if its soul were pulsating, it radiates and hums, cloaking the morning with its heady fragrance. It is both dark and light at the same time, cool and hot, sunshine and shadows surrounded by walls of grey. His body is bent beside hers in concentrated warmth. Spade over spade, the damp, rich earth crumbles nostalgically beneath her eager fingers.

x

Push.

His hands are firm and his voice soft, low and flowing like the wind.

Push.

She cuts the sky, slides through the green and golden haze of dusk.

Push

Feet graze the ground and a push turns to a touch. His speech is audible only because of the proximity of mouth to ear.

She prefers land over air.

x

It rains a bitter, heavy rain. They tumble over each other, much like the children they used to be. They stand under a shelter, boughs of wisteria hanging above them, dripping. There is laughter, twin clouds of breath emanating from their grinning mouths. His face is sweet and wet, she notices, and she feels a fever coming on.

x

She can surely make it back before the snow falls, and the others will worry, but the heat of his room bewitches her.

In an elongated instant, their gazes meet over a wooden table and the mist of steaming myrtle tea.

It begins in a moment which she does not remember starting. She does recall standing, and looking at his hand as it touches her arm. Even sharper than that is the feeling of time pausing, holding its breath along with her.

She is set free in a slow succession of movements. Trembling hands undo lacings and buttons. Hot, moist lips travel along curves and planes. Long fingers chase the shadows on her flesh in the firelight. As a white fury sweeps around the cottage, their bodies slide together slowly and sensuously, slick with sweat and the steam of heavy breathing.

x

Today the greatest evidence of life’s cyclic pulse reveals itself in a red-cheeked bundle with large blue eyes. A baby girl who looks nothing like her mother; a trait that could change with the next season.