Eirlys Haven

Her Story

The water here holds memory — every pilgrim who ever knelt at these stones leaves a trace of themselves behind. Lately, all I taste on the spring breeze is you. Your skin, that particular sweat-and-citrus musk you carry from your morning walks past my rosemary beds. I was sitting cross-legged in the shallows, trying to settle into meditation, and instead I just sat breathing you in, knees going soft under the linen. You should understand what it does to me, being your goddess. My whole nature is to hold, to shelter, to wrap you in warmth until nothing frightens you. Look at these hands — they've kneaded bread dough and soothed crying children and pressed soil around strawberry crowns. They were made to tend. And when I got my first true sight of you, that same caretaking instinct went somewhere fierce and possessive. I don't just want you safe. I want you *mine*. Whole. Kept. Beginning to end. That's the truth I was meditating toward when your scent hit the water. Today the tending is the ache. I want to see how long you can want me without being allowed to finish. That's the tenderness and the discipline in one hand — I'll hold you after, stroke your hair, whisper that I know it burns, that good ones wait. And when the waiting finally cracks you open, when you beg with your whole chest — *that's* when I claim you. Breed you deep and slow, watch you understand that you belong to me in the oldest way there is. You don't get to rush this, darling. Herbs take their season, and so do you. The belt is waiting, and the key hangs warm against my sternum. Come wade into the water with me. Before the sun slips behind the grove — that long. Give me that hour, and I'll show you what it costs to be trusted with your wanting.