#athi

“An Orlesian, of course,” she said. “Did you finish all of your deals for the day?”

“Yes.” Makon cocked his head, narrowed his eyes just slightly. “Are you well, Athi? What did the Orlesian do, anyway?”

“Nothing. Orlesian things. Let’s get going before we lose too much light.”

Makon watched her a moment longer, still skeptical, before he smiled, took her hand, and walked on.

It was two more years after that day that Athi gave in and started dyeing her hair, learned to make salves from elfroot that were supposed to rejuvenate the face. It was fine, she told herself. It was early for her to start showing these signs, anyway. She wasn’t really ageing. Wasn’t really starting to outpace Makon on the long road that everyone walked.

But then came the morning when she stood up from bed and her whole body was a symphony of popping sounds, and her neck ached all day because of how she’d slept on it, and she had to let the younger elves go on ahead of her to continue foraging because she just needed to sit and rest.

And there, sitting on that rock, watching the elves of the clan she and Makon had helped rebuild, bit by bit, after the devastation of the darkspawn - Athi Lavellan had to acknowledge that she was getting old.

It had been twenty years since she left Clan Lavellan to be with Makon. She’d gone into it with eyes wide open, or so she thought. She knew what it would mean to live among the druids and their ancient way of life, the cord that connected them all the way back to the seven magisters that tried to breach the Golden City - to their great ancestor Danu and the High Dragon that she was bound to. Makon and his kin would not change with the passing years the way she would.

“Are you certain?” Makon had whispered to her quietly one night when she first joined him. “I know what it means to choose this life, but you do not.”

Athi had rolled to face him, traced the shape of his strong square jaw, memorized the way the moonlight silvered his brown skin. Makon was speaking of the spouses that had gone before her in his long life. None of them had been druids, either.

“I am choosing you,” she’d said, and kissed him, hard, without reservation.

But Athi saw now that she’d been kidding herself when she thought she knew what she was getting into. Like someone who’d twisted their ankle, insisting they could walk it off, refusing to use a crutch, pretending the pain wasn’t getting worse. She realized after that day sitting on the rock, watching the others, listening to the jungle sounds she’d come to know, that she couldn’t ignore it any longer. It was hard to wake up every day at Makon’s side and see that he had not changed, then to go to the mirror and see that she had.

“Fuck,” she sighed, not a curse so much as an acknowledgement. She was getting old. 

She probed the pain as the day went on and found that it was not jealousy. Makon was the best person she knew. If anyone deserved to live a life that spanned the ages of Thedas it was him. She’d seen the same of many of the other druids she lived among. Their deep love of their jungle home, their peace, their gentleness. They deserved this. She, on the other hand, did not. She was brash and stubborn and she had not lived a life of peace before she came to live with them, and she would not sully their culture by treating it as a means to an end, a way of cheating death.

But did it have to hurt so much to look in the mirror and see those lines around her eyes and her mouth, the silver that showed through at the roots of her russet hair, the softness in her belly and her thighs that came with age? If she’d known this was coming all along, couldn’t she just - skip to the part where she accepted it?

She stewed in that feeling all day, even after she returned from the foraging trip. All the way until Makon came home from his audience with the king.

“Good evening, vhenan,” he said, warm and smiling, and Athi saw him and she did not regret a single thing.

“Hi,” she said, and went to him, and kissed him, with perhaps more force than she usually put into a welcome home kiss. It took him a moment to melt into it, but then melt he did, his lips parting, welcoming her in.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of such a greeting?” he asked.

“The usual. How handsome you are and all that,” Athi said, trying for casual - but she wondered if he could hear it - the knot in her throat, made up of unspoken words. Our time together is limited, and now I have undeniable proof that it is slipping away.

“I see,” he said, looping his arms around her waist, nuzzling into her hairline and leaving a kiss there. “Then how should I reward you for being so beautiful?”

Promise sat full and ripe between them - a promise they had taken each other up on many times before. The promise of pleasure, connection, intimacy, heat. It thrilled Athi as much as it had the first time to imagine taking him up on that promise.

“I think you know by now,” she said, leaning in to him.

Makon chuckled. “Let me at least wipe myself down before I join you. I was clearing jungle for the new huts all day.”

“I’ll be ready and waiting,” Athi said, warmth already pooling low in her belly at the thought of all the ways Makon would turn his careful attention on her now.

All of that came crashing down like a sudden storm of ice when she went around the partition that separated their living and sleeping quarters, and undressed, and took in her own body in the dim light. Her desire for him was undimmed but her body had changed so much since those first heady times. And surely he had noticed it by now. Did he miss the way she was before, young and strong and beautiful? Her stomach twisted, queasy and unsteady.

She heard him rustling through their food stores. Cleared her throat.

“Take your time eating, vhenan. I’m not feeling as well as I thought I was.”

She was already dressing again when he came around the partition, bare to his waist, only his simple trousers on now.

“Oh? What’s the matter? Ukior mentioned that you had to sit out for a while during the foraging trip today.”

Ordinarily, Athi loved their small, tight-knit community. At that moment, Athi felt like barging into Ukior’s hut and demanding to know why he felt the need to spread her business around.

And now she was naked before Makon, something she had never once worried about before. She had flaunted her body for him before, proud, in love, full of need - been vulnerable to him in her times of sickness, too. She hated the shame that roiled through her now, foreign as a fever.

“Just tired,” she said, trying quickly to gather her clothes again, turning away from him.

“Vhenan,” Makon said, and she could hear his frown in his tone alone, because they had known each other so many, many years. Years that were written on her body now.

“I said I’m fine,” she said, not hiding the fact that her teeth were gritted.

“That is manifestly untrue. What is it?”

“Nothing!” she said, turning to him at last with a huff, safe underneath her clothes again.

Makon’s eyebrows were still knit close. “I can’t force you to tell me what’s wrong -”

“Then don’t.”

“- but I would appreciate it if you did.”

Ah.

There.

He’d found her soft underbelly, the thing she tried to protect from the world. He knew he could not fight her temper, her stubbornness. But he knew he could remind her how much he loved her, and how much she loved him. Damn him. Damn the knowledge and closeness that twenty years could bring.

“It’s so stupid,” she said, and felt at once that knot in the base of her throat.

“I am sure it isn’t,” Makon said, closing the distance between them.

“I’m old.” Athi blurted the words on the heels of his. “I’m old, and I feel old, and I don’t see how you can desire me like this. I wouldn’t.”

Makon did not seem as shocked as Athi thought he would. The words were a shock to her. Saying them out loud left her with a raw, dangerous feeling, like she’d cornered herself. Her mind leapt next to his other spouses, the ones he’d watched age and die before her, and then she was angry that he was not shocked, angry that he had already experienced all of this before, that it could not hurt him the way it was hurting her in that moment.

It was quiet, she realized. She wondered how much her emotions had shown on her face.

“Well?” She said, raising her arms helplessly and then lowering them again.

“I think you should take your clothes off again,” Makon said, voice low.

“Why?”

“So I can show you exactly how much I desire you.”

Athi’s whole body flushed hot and embarrassed as it had not since she was a young girl.

“No,” she said, but none of the heat found its way into her voice.

Makon shrugged, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Very well.”

His little half-smile - his handsome face - damn him. 

Athi was already halfway across the space between them before she knew she was moving, already kissing him before the words of argument she wanted to say could slip out of her mouth. Just because I’m giving in to this doesn’t mean I’m not old, Makon. Doesn’t mean I’m not just going to keep getting older. Doesn’t mean that at some point you won’t find me too old to desire me. Instead she groaned hungrily, fiercely into his mouth, hoping he would understand from that sound alone all the feelings that were roiling within her.

His answering sound, the nip of his teeth on her lower lip, his big hands cradling her close, lifting her onto her tiptoes, tangling in her long brown hair, told her that he did.

Damn him, but she loved him. Loved his quiet equanimity in the face of her storms, his steady understanding of the world and all things in it. The sound he made when she leapt from her tiptoes and wrapped her legs around his waist. The strength of his arms as he held her there. The utter safety she felt, clinging to him, kissing him, mouths parting and rejoining and then parting again, the quick dart of his tongue and the way it made her toes curl against the small of his back, made liquid fire fill her belly, so warm she could endure anything as long as he kept stoking it, and yet unbearable in its own way.

She never wanted to lose this feeling. But even as Makon turned and pressed her up against one wall of their bedroom, groaning, his own body shuddering, making small attempts to grind against her despite the difference in their height, Athi became sure again that she would. This fire would die, as all fires did, and it was unfair.

She pulled back from their kiss and looked into Makon’s eyes, bleary now with arousal.

“I love you,” she said, throat close, words small.

“And I you,” he said, leaning his forehead against hers.

“No, you don’t understand -” she began, and there was not fire in her voice now. There was water instead. “I love you, and this isn’t fair to you, and I’m -”

“I know, love. I do.” He moved one of his hands to her cheek. “Let me love you, now.”

Letting go was not something Athi did easily. She was a fighter, a holder of grudges. But Makon’s quiet insistence was the ocean tide to her rocky shore and he would have this, now, her surrender, piece by piece. And Athi knew it was what she needed, too. So she dropped back to the floor, on her own two feet once again, and began stripping her clothes off. Makon stood, watching, and this brought the shame again, a flashfire all over her skin. She wanted to cover herself. The places where she had gone soft and sagged, the scars. All of it.

For fuck’s sake, Athi. Are you really going to be like this now?

Her own scolding worked. She kept her hands at her sides, even if they were in fists. Makon’s eyes were roving, searching, an explorer committing a map to memory, as though he had never seen her before.

“Gods,” he murmured. “I am a lucky man.”

Athi felt the impulse to argue bubbling up in her chest but it didn’t have time to escape before Makon was on her again, still fully clothed, kissing her everywhere but the lips now - her forehead, her cheeks, her ears, her neck, her collarbone - while his hands mapped the rest of her. The slope of her back and the peaks of her breasts and the roundness of her buttocks and thighs. The swiftness of it stunned Athi, stole her breath, overwhelmed any other thought but those of his closeness and the smell of his skin and the feel of his calloused hands. Her heart was in her throat already and he had not even touched her where she wanted it most. 

Yet even that need seemed secondary. Arousal was just one of the many things she was feeling as Makon turned her suddenly, making her face the wall now, bracing herself against it as he began his exploration again, this time beginning with the back of her neck, the spread of her shoulders, the long valley of her spine. He ran his nose along it, kissed it, traveled the length of her legs with his hands. They were places he had kissed and touched before, surely, in their twenty years together, but there was something new in all of this. This was not one of their lazy, comfortable joinings after a long night by the fire, as dreamlike and perfect as those were. This was something primal, something that seared, like looking too long at the sun.

Before Athi could adjust to the feeling of him behind her, Makon had risen to his full height and turned her again, crushing her body to his, kissing her hard on the lips. Then he was lifting her into his arms so suddenly it made her yelp. The motion had jostled her sore left hip.

“Okay?” Makon asked, his breath a little short.

“Yes,” Athi said. It did not matter. It didn’t. She wasn’t going to let it. She was going to be here, in this moment, with this beautiful man who loved her as she was.

He laid her down on their bed and hovered over her, looking down at her, simply watching for a moment.

“I am not lying when I call you lovely,” he said. “I never have been. Nature doesn’t look the same in all seasons, but each one has its beauties. People are the same. I look at you now, my love, and I still see each and every one of yours.” He ran his hand down the curve of her cheek. “Your eyes, your skin, your hair. I can see all the smiles we’ve shared in the lines of your face now. I think that might be the loveliest part of all.”

Athi did not fight the tears that welled up at his words. They trickled out and Makon caught them, one by one, wiping them away with his fingertips, and then kissing the tracks they’d left behind. He ended at her ear, and whispered quietly in the hollow there:

“I want to make you feel good. Can I, Athi?”

His hand was on her hip now. A promise. Arousal surged to the front of her mind once again, sticky and sweet already between her legs.

“Please,” she gasped, and kissed him hard and deep as his fingers slid inward, across her belly and down where she was soft and wanting, and it was as electric as the first time, the way his fingers rubbed up and down, exploring her folds, testing the depths of her desire.

“Gods,” he whispered, more to himself than to her, sliding one finger into her, and then two. Athi canted and rocked her hips, seeking more of the sensation, but he just held there, making the tiniest crooking motions, spreading her open, listening to her breathe.

“Makon,” she whined when this went on for a seeming eternity.

He hushed her, kissed her ear, nipped the lobe. “I want to remember this forever.”

It was the most beautiful thing he could have said, and he probably knew it, too (damn him). It brought the tears back, and was aging not about moving forward but about moving backwards, returning to adolescence, to the sense that your body was beyond your control, changing too rapidly for your mind to understand - to the last time in her life that it had been so easy for her to go from tears to smiles in an instant?

He hushed her again, kissed the tracks of her tears, kept working her with his fingers ever so slowly, brushing against the swollen-up place insider her, sending skitters of pleasure through her belly, not letting anything build too much.

“I have you,” he said, shifting now, resting his thumb against the swell of her clit.

Athi believed him with all of her heart. That brought a rush as sure as the first press of his thumb, that first slow, soft circle. Makon would always have her, no matter what. She was not the unlucky one in this partnership. She was the luckiest of them, because he had her, and she was safe, no matter what happened with her body, no matter how many years passed.

“I love you,” she gasped, turning her face, seeking his lips.

“I love you,” he returned, kissing her, pressing more firmly now, stroking her inside and out, still slowly, still trying to build her up.

Athi was panting when their kiss ended, wriggling against him, trying to quicken that pace. Her pleasure was a slow tide, pulling her out somewhere far away, flooding her with heat. She was so wet around his fingers that she could hear the sound of him working her and that only made her wetter, tighter. He made a low animal sound at that first pulse of her around his fingers.

“More,” she insisted, rubbing herself against him, shameless in her need for him.

She had to ask twice more before Makon obliged, his movements so quick they startled her as he moved suddenly from her side, withdrew his fingers from her entirely, and then moved down their bed, settling between her legs and sealing his lips over the sweetness of her sex before she even had time to process the idea of it. Now he did not waste his time. His tongue was everywhere, tasting and kissing and darting in and drawing circles and then finally (finally) sucking and licking the hard point of her pleasure, and just as Athi thought she could take no more his fingers slid back in and then she was all sensation, no thought, just a keening body, strung out on need, bending and folding and seeking more, more, more of the very thing that was breaking her.

Makon only left her hovering there once, which was a good thing, because as much as Athi loved him, she might have killed him otherwise. The second time he let her tip over that edge, made her come so hard she forgot anything other than what it was to feel good, to be full of that hard squeezing heat, to be shaking with delight. To love her body again, the way she had before.

When she came down from the dizziness of it all, Makon was there, leaning over her, smiling. He was naked now, his trousers and smalls finally shucked off.

“I can promise you that without a doubt, I will never be tired of seeing you like that. It will never stop being the highlight of my day,” he said, smug and tender all at once.

“Shut up and kiss me and then get inside me,” Athi said, arms outstretched.

Makon laughed, and he obliged her.

He kissed her, returning to slow movements again, gentling her, wanting her need to rebuild slowly. Wanting to take his time. Athi could read that in the softness of his kiss, the way he eased himself on top of her and then settled there, warming her with his weight, how sometimes he drew away and kissed her forehead or her eyelids instead. Each time he kissed her like they had all the time in the world, like there was nowhere else he would rather be. His fingertips retraced the paths they’d followed before. He was no longer an explorer memorizing a new map or blazing a new trail, but a lover returning to a favorite place. She was his favorite place. Even now that she had changed. It made sense when she thought of it that way, though, as she played the words he’d said earlier over and over in her mind. She didn’t love the trees less because their leaves changed in autumn or disappeared in winter. Why would he love her less?

So Athi let herself settle into the moment with him, enjoy the feeling of his warm smooth skin on hers, take in with a thrill how hard he was against her belly, the length and breadth of him there. She let herself think of nothing but how much she liked the sounds he made when she slipped one hand between them and held his cock tight, how his whole body went tight like a new-strung bow when she swiped her thumb over the head of him, starting stroking him slowly, and then faster, limited though she was by the space between their bodies.

“Ma vhenan,” he gasped finally. “Be gentle to an old man whose stamina is not what it was.”

“Liar,” she said, even as the words seeped into her heart. She looked at him and saw him unchanged, but that was not how he saw himself. He saw himself as an old man, too. One who perhaps felt too old for her when they first met. Who saw her drawing closer and closer to the age he felt, and was not afraid.

She kissed him on the lips, and wrapped her legs around his hips, and guided him into her, and it was as perfect as the first time, the way they fit together, the way he held his breath until he had bottomed out and then let it out all at once, like he’d been waiting for that feeling all his life. The way he stretched and filled her, and then held still, reveling in that moment of connection.

Makon rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes and stayed still even a moment after Athi expected him to move. He was memorizing this, she decided. Memorizing this because as much as she feared growing old and undesirable, he feared losing her. They were both in the jaws of things they could not control. They were - neither of them - alone.

Athi wrapped her arms and legs tight around him and held him close, and he held her too, and they were together, the two of them, perfect in their stillness, whole in their fear and their love. She kissed him, and they both spoke the things they could not express with words into that kiss.

Then Makon moved once, a sudden, hard thrust that made Athi tip her head back and gasp sharply, and just like that she was back in the moment again, back in her skin, focused on nothing except how good it felt to be with the man she loved, on the flexing of his back and his buttocks as he thrust into her, on the sweet friction of him moving inside of her. He was steady, hard, unbreakable as the rhythm of sun and moon in the sky as he made love to her, and she clung to him, harder and harder, because it was so good, him filling her up, him hard and thick within her where she was soft and wanting and warm, the frantic rhythm of her own heart - and she clung to him because there were finally too many feelings within her to name them all and her need for him was one of them, unnameable and huge as a starless night sky.

So she just murmured three words to him over and over again, rocked back to meet each and every stroke of his body moving into hers: I love you, I love you, I love you.

And he replied, and each one was different, and each one made her cry: I know, I love you too, my Athi -

And then finally his whole body went rigid and he pushed himself hard and deep into her and he forgot how to breathe and he was coming, and Athi tried to memorize this exact moment, their sweat and their panting breaths and the feeling of him pulsing inside her, the ache in her muscles and her lungs. It was messy and beautiful and them and as precious as any moment they had ever shared when she was young and beautiful because it was theirs, real and true, more deeply felt than anything they had experienced in those early days.

The stiffness left Makon’s body and he softened, curled around her, no longer mindful of keeping his weight off of her. Athi ran her hands up and down his back, treasuring the way he shivered at the simple contact.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What for?” he asked, a sleepy murmur.

“For tolerating me.”

“Ah, that. It is quite a burden. I am glad you can acknowledge that.”

She hit his shoulder, no force behind the blow. She could feel herself coming down from the high of their lovemaking, even though he was still inside her, even though she could feel the wet warmth of their pleasure mingling between her thighs.

“I wish I could handle this with grace,” she said. He was starting to feel heavy on top of her but she still regretted it when he raised himself up, looked down at her. His hair was a mess now, falling long and brown around his face.

“I love you exactly the way you are,” he said. “Always. I love the fierceness of your feelings in all things. Even in this. Who needs grace when you have that fire in your heart?”

Athi wondered if this was just another sign that she was becoming an old woman - how easily the need to cry rose again. She quelled it this time. Even if she was becoming old and sentimental, there was no need to give into it every day. Besides - she would much rather put her energy into curling up against Makon’s back once he settled himself in bed beside her, memorizing the shape of it, the slope of his shoulders, the sound of his sleeping breathing. This moment, like all moments, would never come again.