Name: Dray
Story: everwood
Colors: Iceberg 10) Winter Wonderland, Silver 5) Polish, Ignition Yellow 5) "And you wanted better love, well, it's sleeping in your bedroom"
Supplies and Styles: Frame, Glitter (Jan. 5th, "January" -Helen Hunt Jackson), Glue ("Watching something methodically play out exactly according to plan is a source of pleasure to you on any given day, but even more so today. [...] Bravely step up to the plate when it’s your turn at bat during this Solar Eclipse. You possess all the necessary tools and talents to hit one out of the park.")
Word Count: 1700
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Implicit threesome, drug-use


The mountains were breathing washes of pink-purple light against the sliver of starry sky visible from the balcony of the bed and breakfast. Owen had thrown a coat over his nightclothes and minced out into the cold, the better to give the couple he'd left some privacy, but he'd stayed out here because the stark silence and vastness of the valley were compelling. With the door shut, he could hear the fragile icy noises of the aurora, could see the ethereal reflections against the icy mountain peaks on either side of the valley. He felt expansive, but that might just be misplaced afterglow...

Despite the grip of the cold this late in the winter, he felt warm enough to linger, and was startled when he heard the door to the balcony open behind him. Half turning, he was doubly surprised when it was Brandili who joined him on the balcony.

"Um..." he greeted her, feeling strangely shy for having his moment intruded upon. He was under the impression that after he'd left the pair of women to have their own fun, they'd more or less be done with him. Certainly, when the couple had joined him for the evening it had been Akadine who'd tackled him and Brandili who'd been content to sit back and watch, so seeing her now left him at a loss.

Brandili was buried under layers of her fur cloak, but her hands whisked out a long pipe from a deep pocket, and the accoutrements to go with it, and she leaned on the railing as she tamped tobacco down in silence. She gave a gust of a sigh as a shiver ran up and down her. "I don't know how you can lean out in the snow until half past midnight. It's freezing out here."

Owen found the pipe proffered to him, unlit, and realized that she was asking him to do the honours. "It's been that long?" he asked. He was tempted to dig for his pocket watch, before he realized it had been discarded back in the room, along with his presentable clothing.

"More or less." The tall woman gave a self-satisfied grin as she accepted her pipe back. They leaned against the railing together, quiet, as Brandili drew a lung-full and let it settle, and then gusted a cloud into the night. "I know you don't have any aims on her... but when you come around, she takes a cork out of something in her for you that she doesn't always do for me." Brandili offered him a puff, but Owen politely refrained.

He pondered the observation. Brandili didn't seem eager for a response, and in truth he wasn't sure he could or should answer right away, so they both watched the aurora for a few minutes while Brandili took a drag or two more from her pipe. He worried, though. "Did it make it worse, that we... you know..." Knowing he'd driven a spike between them would ruin more than the night.

Brandili chuckled sharply, turning loosely so that she could look him full on from under the folds of her hood, still leaning against the railing. "Oh, no, that's the first time in a couple of months that I've got that kind of a fire out of her. The girls, this place... It's hard, cooped up out here. None of us are used to keeping quiet, in any sense of the word. I liked it. It was good. She'll remember this and I'll get more than a night or two of extra care and affection once you're gone."

Owen felt a grin creep treacherously over his face for the strange compliment, and he cleared his throat in an attempt to mitigate that. "Should I be coming by more often? I'm not so bad with rekindling things."

"So you are," Brandili replied dryly. She pursed her lips to blow smoke to one side of her face. "And I don't know about that. I have a feeling Di's got warmed up enough to carry the pair of us through 'till spring finally hits for real. But maybe if you're good, I'd allow it."

Now he giggled. He couldn't help it. He liked the woman. Not in the same way he liked Akadine, but Brandili had a good head on her shoulders, and he felt strangely well cared for when she was looking him over. It wasn't a feeling he got often. "I thought I was being on my best behaviour."

"I don't mean anything rough by it... but my girl has low standards," Brandili replied, a luxuriant smile tempering her sharp, stark features. "And I know you have other talents than titillating bored battle-retirees. I need a real favour from you, a big one, and you're the only one who can do it."

This got Owen's full attention. She'd alluded before, but he didn't need to pause for thought when he responded, "anything." He performed tedious errands for the King and investigated monsters and murder for the branch of the royal court specializing in magic. He'd taught half a generation in the manipulation of arcane sciences in this last stint of his ongoing journey. He'd travelled half the world on behalf of the kingdom and regretted only roughly half of it. None of that regret had come from having worked with this woman, even if most of that work had been the most dangerous and two-faced business he'd ever run a front for.

"My cousin needs to know about my daughter," Brandili said, matter-of-fact. "Technically, I'm next in line for the crown, back home, but I was never cut out to rule. Nor's been running steward in my place since I was about fourteen, and I'm happy for it... but they don't know I'm over here, and they don't know shit about my Anahi, and that's going to cause problems in a few years."

Owen found himself gawping, and took the pipe when Brandili passed it to him, too surprised to resist. "I thought you'd made half of that princess story up," he admitted, finding his voice when she chuckled at him.

"Well, I did, sort of. My folks don't run a government the way yours do. The crown doesn't get to take a giant dunk on anyone who goes against them, and they definitely don't get to let their nobles go to town on the patch of land they dole out for them, come hell to those who lived on it before..."

He took a puff from the pipe, distinctly aware of the bitterness in her voice that seemed to match the acrid taste of smoke that suddenly filled his senses. She went silent as he gave a half a cough, awkwardly holding on to the strangely potent smoke before he passed the pipe back to her.

"I don't like to throw good after bad," she said, voice softening as she turned to face the door, looking back to the bedroom, "but your country is a little ass-backwards. I don't want Ahani growing up knowing it's the only option, and I want Nor' and the rest of my relatives to be ready for her when she's old enough to travel. Discreetly."

"I can do discreet," Owen murmured, feeling a flush creeping up. It felt strange, doing serious business in his underclothes in the middle of the night, but Brandili had a way of making him feel perfectly natural, if not sometimes a little off-balance. Her accusations of king and country rang true, and he felt the onus of those mistakes sitting heavily on his shoulders, nevermind that he wasn't a natural leader, either, and hadn't as far as he knew a drop of kingly blood in him. He wasn't a mage, who lived an extra hundred or two years longer than the average person, and he wasn't strictly human, to feel rooted in the current generation and the worldly concerns of that little patch of time... but he'd called this kingdom home-base for a very long time. It was a bit personally embarrassing when its leaders did foolish things.

Brandili brought him back to reality without calling any further attention to his creeping shame. "I'll write a letter. It will take you several months to sail to port and tread the right paths to be granted access past the royal cavalry, and I'm hoping you can make a good impression out of why I'm here, and why I can't come back." Her voice was quiet and steady despite the fervor lurking under her words. "I'm not ready to go home and I expect they won't like that, much."

Owen felt his chest expanding, beyond simple breath. The richness of Brandili's voice settled somewhere in his heart between the lingering afterglow and the effects of the smoke in a way he couldn't rationalize just now. He turned his back to the railing and edged a step closer, pressing his side against her arm and thigh. He thought warm thoughts and felt her shivering subside. He could do more than light a pipe without a match to show for it. Brandili sighed, and though it was tentative, she leaned against him and chuckled again. "Don't get any funny ideas," she teased him, before passing her pipe over again. "You want to help me polish this off?"

"I can do that, too," he promised. "Would you two like to stay, tonight? To sleep, I mean."

"I can already hear snoring," Brandili replied by way of an answer. She was droll about it, but when Owen listened he could hear Akadine sawing logs even through the closed door.

He giggled again, delighted. "I don't usually care for teamwork... but I'll make an exception for you.. I've got you covered." Owen paused as Brandili shot him a look out the side of her cloak. "Ah, metaphorically speaking."

"Good boy." Brandili tapped her pipe out even as she clapped his shoulder. "Now, do me one last favour and run interference for when that monster wakes up in the night. I intend to get the better part of a good night's sleep, for once."

"With pleasure," Owen chirped, all too happy to follow the woman back inside.