letters & lavender
varka x fem!reader | 6.5k+ words
synopsis: separated by his expedition and bound by letters, you and Varka endure years of longing, resilience, and quiet devotion through a bitter winter and the birth of your child. when he finally returns, you must learn to recognize each other again. not as you were, but as who you’ve become through love and waiting.
note: written before nod-krai release. version 5.6 livestream spoilers (varka character design). I done did it again and wrote way too much (forgive me)
content: established relationship (you’re married), established family, fluff, hurt/comfort, lots of lore again wooo
It was always in the quiet moments that his absence felt loudest—when the fire crackled too gently, when the tea cooled too slowly, when the room held more space than it ought. You went about your days with the composure expected of you: answering letters, tending to your roses, attending calls and leaving behind polished words like breadcrumbs. And yet, beneath each practiced reply, beneath every measured smile, there lingered a dull ache.
It is the most curious cruelty, to live each day as though I have forgotten him, you thought, adjusting the lace cuff of your sleeve with unnecessary precision, when in truth, not an hour passes untouched by his memory.
To others, you appeared unmoved by the mention of his name. You had taught yourself to respond with the faintest lift of an eyebrow, a soft “Oh?” or a swift change of subject, as though the man in question had never occupied anything more than a passing seat in your life.
You spoke of him rarely, and when you did, it was with such careful indifference that one might think you had never loved him at all, but your silences told another story. Silences that stretched like closed doors, behind which an entire life of feeling remained untouched. Untouched and—perhaps foolishly—unchanged.
The fire flickered in its grate, and the scent of dried lavender from the drawer you had opened moments ago filled the room like memory made visible. You paused, your hand resting on the edge of the escritoire, and for a moment—no more than the length of a breath—you allowed yourself to remember.
It had been early summer. The windows were flung open, the ivy spilling over the sills in lazy green ropes, and the sunlight touched everything it could reach—the pale linen of the curtains, the worn floorboards, the curve of his shoulder as he leaned over you from behind, laughing into your ear as you tried to read aloud from the paper.
The house still smelled faintly of paint from the nursery—a soft buttercream shade, chosen after long afternoons spent comparing swatches by the light of the window. A tiny string of paper swans hung above the empty cradle, swaying gently in the breeze, and in the corner stood a rocking chair you’d found at the spring fair, its wood still creaking like it remembered older lullabies.
There was such sweetness in it all, so much hope, so many plans whispered over shared cups of tea and folded sheets. You had laughed easily then, your hands stained with color and your heart full.
“My dear, I cannot continue if you keep breathing like that,” you said, suppressing a grin.
“I am merely existing,” he replied, utterly unrepentant, pressing a kiss to the side of your neck. “If my presence disrupts your narration, perhaps it is the text that is at fault.”
You were young then—newly wed, barely out of the shadows of your adolescence, and entirely convinced the world would shape itself to your happiness. Your humble house just outside the city walls had no garden yet, only a patch of hopeful soil and a wild tangle of honeysuckle clinging to the fence. He had spoken often, then, of planting cherry trees. You had teased that he was too impatient for trees and should settle for marigolds.
You had just turned to scold him, playfully, delightedly, when a sharp knock interrupted you.
A rider. Dust on his shoulders, a sealed letter in hand.
You hadn’t known, not right away. Only that the Grand Master had gone very quiet upon reading it. The laugh still lingered on his lips, but his eyes had darkened, fixed on the page as though it were a language only he could read and wished he didn’t understand.
“What is it?” you asked, your voice sweet and gentle.
He folded the letter slowly, deliberately, as though he feared the paper might disintegrate beneath his touch, or worse, reveal something further if handled too quickly. But his jaw had tightened. A single muscle ticked just beneath his cheekbone.
He did not speak at once. He merely stared out the open window, where the nursery curtains stirred. When he finally turned to face you, the change was subtle but unmistakable. The smile he offered was thin, almost apologetic.
“The Expedition,” he said at last. “They are calling for knights.”
You had stared at him, not quite comprehending. “But… you’ve only just left the Liyuen Mission. You’ve only just come home.”
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes lingered on yours, searching, no… imprinting, like a man trying to memorize the details of a world he feared he might not return to. When he finally spoke, his voice was steady, but it carried the weight of something already lost.
“If I do not go,” he said quietly, “others will go in my place. Men who have families too. Boys who’ve never seen combat. They’ll look to me, and if I remain, what does that make me?”
“But you’ve done your part,” you said, stepping forward, the plea catching in your throat. “They called you a leader. They raised their glasses to you. You’ve led men into fire and brought them home—”
“Not all of them,” he said.
You reached for his hand, pressing it to where the child stirred beneath your ribs. “You’re going to be a father. There’s a life here, one you helped build. Doesn’t that matter more now?”
His hand trembled, just slightly, against the small curve of your belly. He exhaled through his nose, as though the very act of staying were something he longed for more than air itself.
“It matters more than anything,” he said. “Which is why I have to go. That title still belongs to me. A Grand Master leads. Even when every part of him wants to stay behind.”
You didn’t cry—not then. But your heart, once so full of nursery paint and paper swans, cracked quietly and cleanly, like the first chill of winter against glass.
He looked at you, and you could tell that something in him faltered. “It isn’t home,” he said, almost to himself, “if I stay behind and others go.”
“But you’re not others,” you whispered.
“No,” he said softly, pulling you into his arms. “I am your husband.”
And for the moment, that was all he allowed himself to be.
In the present, you let the drawer slide shut. The scent of lavender faded. The fire popped softly behind you.
You recalled how quickly morning came.
It had barely turned to light when he left you—before the sun had properly broken the horizon, before the birds had begun their songs. The Teyvat sky was still, wrapped in the grey-blue serenity that only lives at the edge of dawn when the cathedral bells rang.
He had dressed in silence, boots muffled against the old rug, his uniform stiff with ceremony. You watched from the bed, barely breathing, the blanket drawn up to your chest as though it could keep you from unraveling. He had not woken you, not truly. But you had felt him rise, and your eyes had opened before he turned from the door.
For a moment, he just stood there, framed by the early light, his silhouette too large for the room you had painted together. His hat tucked under one arm, his satchel slung over his shoulder. Every inch the Grand Master—every inch the man who had chosen to go.
Your eyes met across the quiet, and his eyes told you this:
The apology. The promise. The ache.
You hadn’t spoken. Neither had he.
Instead, he crossed the room in three long strides, bent to press a kiss to your forehead, then one more to your stomach. His hand lingered there, unmoving, as if trying to offer something lasting. Something to hold on to.
And then he was gone.
The front door closed with the gentlest click.
And you lay there, in the half-light, already aching with the memory of him.
But just when it seemed the world had grown wholly quiet, the letter arrived.
It came precisely three weeks from the morning of his departure, though you scarcely believed it possible. The Adventurers’ Guild, you had been told, was woefully understaffed, their routes disordered, their couriers sent haphazardly across the provinces. And yet—there it was. Presented to you with great care, its edges unbent, its seal intact. A red wax crest, pressed firmly, as only he would do.
Your hands trembled before you even broke it open.
And there, in his hand—so distinct and deliberate—you read:
“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
He had written it without preamble, without the tedious pleasantries required of rank or form. Just that. A confession not new, but somehow new again.
The letter continued:
“Forgive the dramatic opening—I hadn’t the faintest idea how else to begin, and I feared starting with the weather would insult us both. It is wet here, and cold, and not at all conducive to poetry or romance, and yet—you see what I have resorted to.
I write to you from the edge of a camp that smells perpetually of mud, boots, and the sort of stew no man should be made to eat for seven nights in a row. The men are in good spirits, or as good as they can be while swatting flies the size of walnuts and longing for bread that doesn’t come from a tin.
And I am very much myself, save that a very large part of me resides elsewhere entirely. I have it on good authority that this part of me is presently organizing china sets, or perhaps having tea with Lisa, whom I pray has stopped her habit of correcting the pronunciation of 'chamomile.'”
You smiled, despite yourself.
“There is nothing here I would call beautiful, not by any honest measure. And yet, I find myself glancing over my shoulder constantly, as though you might appear—smudged with paint, laughing at nothing, telling me the roses are finally climbing as they ought.
Each hour away from you lengthens intolerably. I have stood before my men and directed them as I must, but no speech I give, no orders I deliver, are free from the thought of you. It haunts even the corners of my rest, what little I am afforded.
The truth, dearest heart, is that the world has taken on a duller hue without you. Even the mountains we march beside—so grand, so endlessly praised—seem only like distant walls separating me from home.
I have kept the ribbon you tied round the nursery curtain. It is now folded within my breast pocket. A foolish talisman perhaps, but I find myself touching it when the frost sets in.
Write me, if you can. Tell me of the house, of how the roses have fared, of what colours you’ve chosen for the cot. Tell me anything at all. I would read a dozen pages on the dust in the stairwell if it came from your hand.”
You pressed the page to your lips then. You remembered so, for the red mark is still there.
But you wrote back the next day. You tried to wait—tried to be prudent, measured, not overly eager. But by morning, you had already sharpened your pen, chosen the good paper (the thick kind that didn’t bleed), and set your teacup just so beside it.
The letter began plainly. It had to. Emotion, you had learned, was better when it crept in softly.
“I must confess, your choice to begin with a declaration of love was both bold and deeply unfair. I had planned to write something neat and composed, something that would make Lisa and her Akademiya brain, as well as all the Grand Sages of Sumeru, proud. Instead, I wept for ten minutes, laughed for two, and then stared out the window like a tragic heroine in a third-rate novel.”
You paused, your fingers hesitating before continuing.
“The house is quieter than I imagined it could be. I speak aloud more than is strictly necessary—to myself, to the baby, to the ivy that refuses to climb the west wall, despite everything the gardener promises. The rosebushes, on the other hand, are flourishing, perhaps out of sheer spite. They bloom in great, ungovernable bursts, and I think of you every time I see them—how you’d pretend to scowl at their disorder, only to steal a bloom when you thought I wasn’t looking.
I’ve left the nursery window open, most days. The scent of paint has nearly gone now. Moonflower white, in case you’ve forgotten—which I know you have. And no, it is not called Blueberry yellow. Who would name the color in such a strange manner?
But anyway, the cot is finished, though it still wobbles slightly to the left, no matter how many times Draff assures me it does not. I think the child will simply have to grow up with a sailor’s sense of balance.”
You paused there, looking out the window. Outside, the nuns made their way toward the city gates, their cloaks billowing in the breeze.
“I miss you in ways I do not know how to articulate. It is not just the absence of your voice or the warmth of your hand in mine. It is your coat no longer on the hook. Your tea cooling on the side table. The way you used to speak aloud while reading, as though the books deserved to hear you. It is the space beside me in the bed, stubbornly cold, no matter how many blankets I layer over it.
But I carry you. You must know that. In every room. In every breath. I carry you when I press my hand to my belly and whisper stories of you to the little one who grows more restless by the day. You are, in all the ways that matter, still here.”
You ended the letter simply:
“Come home, when you can. That is all I ask. Until then—I remain, as ever, your wife, your fond fool, your Rose.”
You sealed it with trembling fingers, kissed the edge of the paper once before the wax, and gave it to the poor adventurer just as the sun slipped behind the hills, just as you pretended that he was already on his way home.
But then, it began with the frost.
Not the pleasant kind that dusts the fields like sugar, but a creeping, bone-deep cold that settled into the soil and refused to lift. The first snows arrived before the apples had been fully picked, before the last of the barley could be threshed. By mid-November, the roads had frozen to glass, and what little warmth the hearth provided felt too meager to last the season.
The townspeople began to worry in low murmurs. The baker cut his loaves thinner. The midwife took to wrapping her hands in rags. And at the estate—where there had once been enough to give freely—there were quiet conversations in the study, ledgers turned over and over by candlelight, servants glancing anxiously at empty barrels in the larder.
By the end of December, the cellar was nearly bare. The estate’s sheep huddled in the stone barn, and a child from the village had died of fever. In your solitude, you bore the weight of the household like a second spine, never bending, never yielding—until the night your own pain began.
It was early January. A storm was howling through the eaves, and the air in your chamber felt colder than breath. The midwife was summoned in haste, lanterns lit down the hall.
There was no poetry in it.
No gentle curtain of mercy to soften the agony. You wept once—only once—not from pain, but from the way his absence seemed to echo louder than the wind at the window. You had once dreamed he would be here for this, holding your hand, wiping your brow, whispering some clumsy joke to make you laugh through the worst of it.
But it was only you.
And then, suddenly, not only you.
That night, before the fire had gone out and while the baby still slept pressed to your shoulder, you reached for pen and parchment with a shaking hand.
“My dearest,” you wrote.
“She is here.
She arrived in a flurry of wind, blood, and general outrage—squalling as if to personally protest the state of the world she’d been dragged into. A winter baby, born into frost and smoke. You would have been proud—though I suspect you’d have fainted halfway through, and I’d have had to cradle both of you.
She has your eyes. Or perhaps your nose. But no, most definitely your gorgeous blue eyes. And she clenched her fist the moment they placed her in my arms, as if determined already not to let go. A trait she’s inherited, I fear, from me.
I named her after your mother—though if she ends up with her grandfather’s sense of humour and my appetite, we may very well have a little terror on our hands. Archon’s help us when she learns to speak.
I had always thought you would be beside me for this. I imagined your hand in mine, your voice in my ear, whispering something ill-timed but endearing. Instead, I had only candlelight and the sound of my own breath. And yet—I felt you. Somehow. In the fierce way I pushed through it, in the quiet when it was done. You were there.
The city has already brought jam and gossip in equal measure, and Mona—the astrologist, you know…the one who can predict the future—insists she will be a great beauty, “if only she does not inherit your ears.” I chose not to take offence on your behalf. (Much.)
The fire is low now. The wind still moans like a ghost through the orchard trees. But she sleeps on my chest, warm and impossibly small, and the ache I carry for you is, for the moment, softened by the weight of her.
Write soon. Come sooner.
All my heart,
—Your wife”
***
“My Love,
I read your letter under the dim light of the camp lantern, my gloves still stiff with frost. I read it twice—once for understanding, once for belief.
You’ve given her a mighty name. I held the page as though it might warm itself against me, as though I might feel the weight of her in my arms just by pressing the parchment to my chest. I cannot say what I felt, not in any proper fashion. Only that I sat in silence for a long while, and that when I rose, something inside me had shifted.
You ask if I imagined it this way. I had imagined less pain. I had imagined you not alone. But I suppose nothing about this world is what we imagined. Still, in the middle of all that is brutal and uncertain, you have done something that makes the earth feel softer again. You have brought life.
Is she truly mine in the eyes? You must tell me again, plainly, because it steadies me more than I expected.
Tell her—though she will not know it yet—that her father is a good man. Or at least trying to be. Tell her that when the wind cuts through the tents at night and all the men mutter about going home, it is her mother’s voice that gets me through. And hers now too, I suppose. Already.
You write that she howls like a captain and kicks with the force of cavalry. I admit this comforts me more than is reasonable. A fighting spirit, (like our great Vanessa), will serve her well.
I do not know when I will be able to write again. The snow deepens and the Fatui watch us. I have met with a certain Harbinger, but I cannot tell you more. I promise I will write the moment I can. Until then, hold her close. And if you are able, speak aloud the things you would say to me—so that she may know the sound of your hope.
I remain,
Yours, always—
V.”
It had become your ritual, reading his letters aloud as if by voice they might remain fuller, less faded by time. You had committed them all to memory anyway. His slanted hand, his clipped sentences, the rare smudge of ink where you imagined his pen had caught on emotion.
“‘You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,’” you read aloud softly, though the girl, too young to understand, blinked up at you only vaguely. “Do you hear that, my love? Your father speaks in bold declarations.”
When the letters stopped arriving with their usual predictability, you didn’t allow the staff to see your worry. You merely lit a smaller fire. You boiled the water slower. And you began to write in the little leather journal he had gifted you last Windblume—back when he thought himself a better poet than a soldier, and said as much.
‘Today, she smiled for the first time. No—not just smiled. She laughed. A hiccupping, squeaking sound that made Mrs. Aldridge drop the basin she was carrying. You would have sworn it was the sound of summer birds returning. I looked to the windows just to check. I told her you’d be proud. She wriggled. I think that means yes.’
You kept the journal tucked beside the cradle. You rarely signed the entries, as if naming yourself might make them feel less private, less sacred. Sometimes you began them with My darling or My only, and once, ashamed of yourself, you started with Sir, before angrily crossing it out and pressing your forehead to the page.
‘I had been looking for thread—’ you wrote. ‘Just a new skein of white cotton to patch the baby’s undershirt, and yet my hand brushed something softer. I drew it out slowly, and can you believe what I found? It was the lavender-blue gown, worn thin at the seams, once my favourite. Do you remember how you called me your “evening sky?” I held it to my chest, the faintest scent still clinging—not lavender, but you.’
You had been walking home from the harvest dance wearing it, your slippers in hand and the damp grass tickling your ankles. The moon hung low and generous, casting a soft silver light over the fields. The path was quiet, save for the occasional rustle in the hedgerows and the rhythmic cadence of your footsteps side by side.
“I think,” he said, after a long stretch of companionable silence, “that if I were a wiser man, I’d have let someone else walk you home.”
You arched a brow, amused. “Why? Do you fear for your reputation?”
He shot you a sidelong look, playful but edged with sincerity. “No. I fear for yours. Mine is already in tatters.”
You laughed, the sound light and free. “Oh, is that why Lisa called you ‘a caution and a calamity’ in the same breath?”
“She did?” he grinned. “I must be improving. Last month it was ‘a poor example to the younger men.’”
“And yet here you are, a poor example leading me home through moonlit fields.”
“A poor example?” he exclaimed. “You are speaking to the future Grand Master of the Knights, miss.”
“Oh, future Grand Master and current Grand Master are two different fortes, I’m satisfied.”
You glanced over your shoulder at the barn you just passed. “That said, if we are caught alone much longer, someone will write a sonnet about it and I’ll be married by Sunday.”
He reached into the hedge as you passed and tugged a sprig of late-blooming lavender free from its stem, shaking off the dew. With a peculiar sort of care, he wound it through the ribbons of your hair.
“It suits you,” he said softly. “Like something the hills grew for me alone.”
You tilted your head, lips curving in a smile. “Do all your conquests receive stolen herbs, or am I especially favoured?”
“You are,” he replied without hesitation. “Others get thistles, mostly.”
You let out a short laugh, but there was colour in your cheeks now, warm and high. “You ought to be careful, sir. You’re sounding dangerously like a man in love.”
“I am dangerously like one.”
Your steps faltered—just slightly—but you recovered. “And how do you know it’s love and not simply the Dandelion Wine from earlier?”
“Because I remember everything you said tonight,” he replied, gaze fixed ahead. “Even the parts you didn’t mean me to hear.”
“Oh?” you asked lightly, though your pulse had quickened. “And which parts were those?”
He looked at you then as though you were a puzzle he’d spent years trying to solve and had only just now begun to understand.
“When you turned away during the second dance,” he said. “And told your friend that you shouldn’t linger near me too long. Because you feared you might start to hope. That I’ve made you nervous.”
You drew a breath, but said nothing. You could not deny it.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” he continued, quieter now. “Not in war, not in peace, not even in glory.”
The moonlight made his features softer than usual. Golden. But the honesty in them was unmistakable. You felt, for a moment, like you were standing at the edge of something too large to name.
You did not answer. Not with words. Instead, you reached for his hand, slid your fingers into his with tentative certainty, and held on.
‘I folded the dress back,’ you continued writing. ‘It is thinner now, the fabric worn soft. But the weight of it still brings me tears. Still, on another day, I found your riding gloves, stuffed inside the pocket of my old travelling coat. I slipped them on without thinking. They are too big for me still, even now. The right glove has a rip at the thumb from that night you fell trying to climb my window in the rain. You clumsy old thing—your courtship had not always been graceful.’
“I’ll scale your stone walls if I must,” he had declared, sodden and shivering beneath your windowpane, the rain lashing at his shoulders as if to knock some sense into him.
You darted to the shutters, pale with shock. “You’ll break your neck,” you hissed, prying open the smallest sliver to see him better. His face was soaked, his grin wide and utterly unrepentant, his boots squelching audibly in the mud.
“Then I shall fall in the noblest cause,” he whispered up, eyes sparkling, blonde hair plastered to his brow in dripping, ridiculous curls. “Let it be known I died for devotion and not stupidity.”
“Oh, for Archon’s sake,” you muttered, disappearing from the window. A minute later, the back door creaked open and you grabbed his sleeve, dragging him into the scullery like a half-drowned cat you had no choice but to save.
“You are impossible,” you said, voice low and urgent. “Do you know what hour it is? If anyone catches you—”
“I’ll propose on the spot,” he said brightly, water pooling at his feet.
You looked ready to throttle him and kiss him in equal measure.
“Sit. There.” You shoved him down in front of the kitchen hearth with the same energy one might use to wrestle a pig. Then you fetched the old drying cloth and began scrubbing at his hair with more force than necessary, your own nightgown sleeves dampening as you worked. “You’ll catch your death.”
“I was already dying,” he said gravely, voice muffled beneath the towel, “of not seeing you.”
You rolled your eyes and gave his head a sharp swat with the cloth. “Oh, hush up. You are soaked through.”
“And now scolded,” he said, peering up at you as you crouched beside him. “My penance is severe.”
“You deserve worse,” you said, but your hands slowed in his hair, fingers carding more gently now through the damp waves. His eyes fluttered closed under your touch.
For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire and the softness of rain on the rooftop.
He opened his eyes again, studying your face with quiet wonder.
His gaze lingered not just on your features, but on the curve of your brow when you frowned at him, the way your mouth quirked slightly when you were trying not to smile. He drank in every detail like a starving man at supper, as though the candlelight flickering in your eyes were a treasure he'd only just realized he’d been carrying in his pocket all along.
“You have a freckle here,” he murmured, touching just beneath your jaw with his thumb. “I never noticed it before.”
“That’s because you’re always too busy saying something ridiculous,” you replied, but your voice had softened. “Seriously… you definitely had something to drink. Is that sparkling cider I smell on your breath?”
He shook his head slightly, still studying you. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are like this? So gentle with me.”
Your breath caught. The room seemed to shrink around you, everything outside the hearth fading into darkness.
“Say something less dangerous,” you whispered. “You’ll make me forget how furious I am with you.”
He smiled, slow and full of something ancient and boyish all at once. “Then I’ll say nothing at all. Just let me look at you a little longer.”
You swallowed, caught between laughter and something softer. “You’re delirious.”
“Only about you.”
He leaned in then—just slightly, as if to test the closeness—and when you didn’t pull away, he kissed you.
It wasn’t the sort of kiss one could forget. Not stolen, not shy, but full of the urgency of a man who knew love was a rare thing, and battle a greedy thief.
Your hands, once scolding, came to rest at his jaw. You kissed him back with trembling conviction, memorizing the taste of rain and recklessness. Somewhere in the house, the clock chimed the hour, but neither of you moved.
He kissed you so sweetly that night, tangled in each other’s embrace, not stopping until he rose before the sun did—but only just…
The journal was soon after left open on your writing desk, its pages still soft with ink. You could not close it, recalling the past was so heartwarming yet too painful, but something called to your immediate attention.
The snow came harder that week, in cruel gusts that stripped the trees and sealed shut every Mondstadt door. At first, you believed it only the season’s bitterness—until the deaconess of the church came pounding on the estate gates, cheeks raw from wind and tears spilling hot down her face.
“There’s smoke, miss—at the souvenir shop,” cried Barbara. “And the church boy has gone ill again, he’s near frozen in his bed!”
Within the hour, you had wrapped yourself in your thickest wool, called for the stablehands to ready the old cart, and set off with sacks of coal, preserves, and linens tucked into every corner. The baby stirred as you handed her to Mrs. Aldridge, blinking up with the same wide eyes her father had worn—eyes that had once lit with dreams of glory and now watched you with unspoken trust.
“I shall return before dusk,” you promised, though you were unsure if it was truth or simply a vow one made to feel brave.
In the city, chaos reigned. The fire had taken the roof of Marjorie’s home and business, and illness had crept into half a dozen more homes, creeping as insidiously as the cold. You moved from door to door with firm steps and gentler words, organizing what aid could be offered: bread divided, sick children brought to the warmer quarters of the cathedral, where Barbatos was sure to be watching. Tempers cooled, spirits lifted with quiet resolve.
“She’s the Lady of the Frost,” murmured Otto at the well. “And more besides.”
But you did not feel strong. You felt tired. Hollow. As though you were only borrowing the bones of a braver woman and walking until they fit.
Still, you did not stop.
That evening, you returned to the estate soaked through with soot and smoke and melted snow. The child was crying—hungry and red-faced—but quieted at once when you lifted her to your shoulder. Your hair clung to your neck; your fingers ached with cold. But you whispered to her as you had once whispered to her father:
“All is well now, love. All is well.”
And when you finally slept, you returned to your journal—not to write, but to sit beside it.
Then, there was the letter that came with spring.
“My dearest heart—
I owe you a thousand words, and yet none feel equal to the silence I’ve kept. The fault is mine, and not the field’s. I have failed to write not for lack of thought, but for too many—all tangled and unworthy.
Word of you has traveled farther than I. A merchant from the borderlands spoke of a traveler and their flying companion from another world. You must surely know what this is about. But he also spoke of a mighty woman in the east, leading men and holding families together by the seams. They call her the Lady of the Frost.
I thought it nonsense until he spoke of a child on her hip, and a manor lit like a hearth for the whole city. Then I knew it was you.
And I—
I fear I have changed. My sword is heavier. My sleep, thinner. My laughter comes seldom, and never whole. I do not know if I deserve the warmth I left behind.
But I think of you daily. And nightly. And in all the hours between. And if you still think of me, even a little— Then perhaps there is still a way home.”
You read it once. Then twice. Then aloud—to the child, who babbled and pulled at the folds of your skirt, too young to understand but old enough to listen.
And then you wrote back.
“You fool.
Do you think I waited for the same man who left? No. I waited for you. That is all.
I waited for the boy who put lavender in my hair, the man who kissed me wet and freezing beneath my window, and the knight who never once forgot to be kind.
So come home. If your boots are muddy, I will clean them. If your hands shake, I will hold them.
The hearth is still warm.
We both are changed.
But we are not lost.
Your daughter says hello. She thinks all birds are dragons, and that the moon follows only her. She has your stubborn dimples and my appetite.
Come home before she starts speaking in full sentences and demands your sword as a toy.”
You folded the letter, pressed your lips to the wax seal like you always did, and sent it off with the fastest rider the city could spare.
Then you waited.
You were on your knees in the earth when it happened.
The morning had been still. A breeze wandered lazily through the hedges, and the soft hush of bees hummed at the blossoms. Your hands were buried in the soil, wrist-deep in planting, when you paused to brush a strand of hair from your face and happened to look up.
You didn’t hear the gate.
Only the low, familiar creak of the willow trees, the sound of boots hesitating on the gravel.
There was a man on the path.
Far off. Still distant. A figure shadowed by sun and movement. Your first thought was that it was the postman. Or another traveler. A hilichurl, (perhaps?), wandering too close to the hedgerow.
And then he stepped into clearer view, his blonde hair a halo.
Your breath caught, your hand froze midair, and a tremor passed through you so suddenly you had to sit back on your heels to steady yourself.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
He was walking toward you with that same sure gait you dreamed of for months, the same lean frame dressed now in a worn coat, the edges frayed from travel. He carried no bag. No letter. No declaration.
Just himself.
And his eyes—oh, his eyes.
Even from here, you could see it. The way he looked at you like a man drowning in the sight of something he'd nearly forgotten the shape of, and feared never to see again.
You stood, slowly.
Your gloves were dirt-stained, your dress smudged at the hem, hair pinned in a haphazard twist the wind had teased loose, but you made no move to fix any of it. He had seen you at your finest. He would see you like this too, earth-bound, real, still here.
Still waiting.
His steps quickened as he drew closer. Yours did not. You could not move, afraid that if you took even one step, you might shatter from the sheer force of what rose inside you.
But when he was only a few paces away, you whispered, stunned and throaty, “You came back.”
It was the sound of your voice that undid him.
His knees nearly buckled.
“I…” he began, then failed. He tried again, his voice hoarse from cold and months of silence. “I said I would.”
“You said a great many things,” you said, a laugh catching at the end like a sob. “And then you went off and did something incredibly stupid. Like being heroic.”
He cracked a smile. “I was dreadfully heroic. It was awful. I’ve been scolded in three languages.”
You laughed then for the first time in what felt like years.
And then he opened his arms.
And you ran into them.
The moment your bodies met, something deep within you broke. Some tight, frozen part of your spirit finally, finally loosened. You buried your face into his shoulder, dirt and all, and let yourself weep as he held you close, as if he'd never dare let go again.
Neither of you spoke for a long while.
Only the birds did.
“You left me forever some nights,” you said, and your voice cracked like ice underfoot. “Some nights, I thought I’d dreamt you. That none of it had ever been real. And then the baby would smile, and I’d see your stupid, stubborn face in hers, and I’d remember.”
He lifted your chin then, and kissed you.
Not like the desperate, rain-drenched kisses of youth. But slow. Ache-filled. The kind of kiss that came not just from longing, but from survival. From grief endured. From love remembered over and over again, letter by letter, night after night.
When you parted, his forehead rested against yours.
“She’s inside,” you said after a long pause, voice trembling. “Your daughter.”
He closed his eyes. Exhaled like it hurt. “I missed the first word,” he murmured.
“You were mentioned in the second,” you replied.
He let out a sound between a sob and a laugh. And then he took your hand, kissed the dirt-stained knuckles, and said:
“Take me to her?”
And so you did.
Through the garden path, hand in hand, past the vines you had planted and the crystalflies dancing in the corner. Back through the open door of your warm home, where the nursery was painted in Moonflower white, not Blueberry yellow.
Back to the family that had waited for him all along.
♡♡♡♡♡
my heart :( are you crying bc I sure am
