The Chronicle of the Last Bloom

We stayed like that a long while, tangled together in the deep grass beneath the old, nameless tree, the low gold light of the Fragment holding steady around us the way it always does when I don't ask it to change — patient, unhurried, entirely without any need to move toward an ending.

"For the record," she said, eventually, her voice gone drowsy and warm again, the sharp edges of the evening's confession softening back into her more familiar teasing register, "I still fully intend to complain about the Roster. Being loved does not make me any less put-upon by how frequently I have to share you."

"Noted."

"I mean it. I expect at least one more evening this century where I get to accuse you, at length, of neglecting me in favor of watering some other flower in your garden." She tucked herself more fully against my chest, the pale gauze pooling gold and gleaming around us both. "I've simply decided, tonight, that I don't mind the waiting quite as much as I used to. There's a difference between complaining because something actually hurts and complaining because it's become, against every reasonable expectation I ever had of my own life, a rather wonderful problem to have."

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"I'll take the complaining either way," I told her. "I like hearing you find things to be put-upon about. It means you're still here to be put-upon."

"Careful," she murmured, eyes already drifting closed again, sleep pulling gently at her a second time. "That's dangerously close to something sentimental. I'll have to revoke your privileges."

"You won't."

"No," she agreed, so quietly I almost missed it, already half back into sleep, her hand still resting warm and unguarded over the slow, steady beat of my heart. "I won't."

The light held steady around us, gold and patient and entirely unhurried, exactly the way I've always wanted it to be for the people who find their way here — and I stayed exactly where I was, watching over her the way I once wished, for so long, that someone might watch over me, until the Witch of Infinite Time, who had spent centuries mapping a question she never once managed to answer alone, slept on, at peace, in arms that had no intention of going anywhere at all.

End of Chapter Four

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