Only two nights without her, which is really just a drop in the bucket compared to all the long empty years before her —
And yet. Stephen sleeps even worse than the times he’s had to overnight away from the houseboat for work. He wanders the startlingly quiet house and works late into the night for a distraction, and tosses and turns whenever he does finally give up and try to get some rest. His hand always unconsciously reaches out for the other side of their bed, only to find it cold and empty. It means that by the time she returns in this pre-dawn gloom, he’s only had a small handful of hours of sleep, exhausted enough that he was pitched into dead unconsciousness; until the smell of Gwenaëlle’s tea and gentle creak of floorboards disorients him into wakefulness, bringing him suddenly sitting bolt upright.
More nightmares, until his vision adjusts to the darkness and he sees the edge of Gwenaëlle’s shoulder, the curve of her wings.
“You’re back,” he says; and he’s annoyed with himself for how surprised and desperate and vulnerable that sounded.
(Still remembering, perhaps: Gwenaëlle slipping through his fingers over and over. A dream crumbling around them. A silhouette on a mountain path, walking away from him.)
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And yet. Stephen sleeps even worse than the times he’s had to overnight away from the houseboat for work. He wanders the startlingly quiet house and works late into the night for a distraction, and tosses and turns whenever he does finally give up and try to get some rest. His hand always unconsciously reaches out for the other side of their bed, only to find it cold and empty. It means that by the time she returns in this pre-dawn gloom, he’s only had a small handful of hours of sleep, exhausted enough that he was pitched into dead unconsciousness; until the smell of Gwenaëlle’s tea and gentle creak of floorboards disorients him into wakefulness, bringing him suddenly sitting bolt upright.
More nightmares, until his vision adjusts to the darkness and he sees the edge of Gwenaëlle’s shoulder, the curve of her wings.
“You’re back,” he says; and he’s annoyed with himself for how surprised and desperate and vulnerable that sounded.
(Still remembering, perhaps: Gwenaëlle slipping through his fingers over and over. A dream crumbling around them. A silhouette on a mountain path, walking away from him.)