The Chronicle of the Last Bloom

There was no table, not really — not the kind Ilyrisse must have once presided over, in whatever palace her old life had built for her, long polished wood and standing servants and a hundred small rules about where a fork belonged. What we had instead was a wide, flat length of pale stone near the hearth, half-sunk into the grass, that I'd never quite decided the purpose of until tonight, when Vesalia took one look at it and declared it exactly what we needed.

"Cloth," she said, already moving toward the small chest at the base of the old tree, the same one Vaelira had raided for her gauze several nights before. "Something plain. We don't need anything elaborate."

She returned with a length of pale, undyed linen, worn soft from age, and spread it over the stone with brisk, efficient movements, smoothing the corners flat with the same practical care she must once have brought to maps spread across war tables, though there was nothing of war in the gesture now, only a kind of settled, domestic competence that looked, on her, unexpectedly comfortable.

Ilyrisse followed with a low bundle of the grass itself, gathered and tied, laid down the center of the makeshift table as a kind of runner, and Flora, watching her do it, knelt without being asked and began threading small, pale wildflowers — grown, I suspected, from the same quiet ability that had produced her vegetables, though she'd said nothing about bringing them — through the gathered grass, until a thin, unbroken line of soft color ran the length of the cloth.

"Where did those come from?" Vesalia asked, watching her work.

"I made them earlier," Flora admitted, a little shy about it. "While you were all cooking. I didn't know if I'd get to use them. I just — wanted something pretty, in case."

"They're perfect," Ilyrisse said, simply, and Flora's whole face lit at the plain, unhedged approval of it.

I brought the bowls — mismatched, most of them shaped from whatever memory-fragments had drifted into the Fragment's small stores over the years, no two of them quite matching, though somehow the unevenness of it suited the evening better than a matched set ever could have. Vaelira, finally roused from the wall by the promise of imminent food, drifted over to help distribute them, setting each one down with far more care than her earlier laziness had suggested she possessed.

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"Five places," she said, counting them aloud as she set the last bowl down. "That's new too, isn't it. I don't think I've ever sat at a table with this many of us at once."

"Neither have I," I admitted. "I wasn't sure how it would feel, honestly, until tonight."

"And?" Ilyrisse asked, glancing up from where she was setting the last of the bread, sliced now, into a shallow basket at the table's center. "How does it feel?"

I looked around at the four of them — Vesalia's sleeves still rolled from cooking, Ilyrisse's pale hair catching gold in the low light, Vaelira draped now along the grass beside the stone table rather than sitting properly, Flora's small, careful arrangement of wildflowers threading through it all — and felt something in my chest settle, warm and full, in a way I hadn't quite predicted.

"Right," I said, simply. "It feels right."

I moved around the table before we sat, unable to help myself — a hand at the back of Ilyrisse's neck as I passed, just brief enough to feel the small shiver it drew from her, the particular pleasure she takes in being touched by surprise rather than warning; my fingers finding Vesalia's where she'd paused with the last dish still in her hands, steadying rather than stopping her, and watching the faint color that rose along her cheekbones at being caught mid-task and touched anyway; Flora, when I reached her, simply leaning her whole head into my palm for a moment, eyes closing briefly, as though the single point of contact were enough to anchor an entire evening of new and overwhelming things; and Vaelira, already sprawled and smug in the grass, catching my hand as I passed and pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to my knuckles, entirely for the benefit of an audience she knew was watching.

"Show-off," Vesalia said, not without warmth.

"Always," Vaelira agreed, unrepentant.

"You do that with all of us," Flora observed, quietly, watching the whole small circuit of it with open fascination rather than any jealousy. "Different, every time. I never noticed that before, when it was only me."

"He does," Ilyrisse said, before I could answer, something knowing and fond in her voice. "I've watched him do it for years. It's never the same gesture twice. I think he simply pays attention to what each of us actually needs, rather than performing the same affection at everyone and hoping it lands."

"That's a generous read of it," I said.

"It's an accurate one," she said. "I don't offer generosity where it isn't earned."

Vesalia set the last of the meat onto a wide central dish, still faintly steaming, and straightened, surveying the whole table with the same critical eye she must once have turned on a battlefield, checking for anything out of place. Finding nothing wanting, she nodded once, satisfied, and gestured toward the low cushions gathered around the stone.

"Sit," she said. "All of you. Before it cools."

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