Flann makes the very sound

As soon as Osh had unclasped the first medallion from Flann’s hair, her little shy voice asked, “May I hold it?”

The answer seemed almost absurdly self-​evident, and yet Osh was delighted she had asked, for he knew she reserved her little shy voice for his ears alone. Of the rest of the world she made demands.

“Do you think your hands unworthy of what your hair may hold?” he teased, but he leaned low to hand it down to her, taking advantage of his stoop to pass his face near her head and leave behind a warm breath that would linger a while in the loose coils of her hair.

“No!” She smiled and made a happy sigh. “But it’s all the day long I was wanting to see. Everyone has been telling me how pretty they are, but even in the mirror I could never quite see.”

She turned it over in her hands as he went to work on the second one, and after a moment she added uneasily, “It is fine, isn’t it?”

“I think they are fine enough even for you, my darling.” He added softly, “They were my mother’s.”

“Your mother’s…”

“Yes. Here is the one Liadan likes.” He bent to kiss her neck with his breath and pass another jewel into her hand. “With all the ‘shiny-​danglies,’ as the Old Man said.”

He unlooped a long coil of her hair and slid his hand down its silk to the end, as he would soon slide his hand down her bare arms and up her bare legs. Her head rocked slightly as he pulled it to the side and let it go, but she could not feel his hands at the ends of her hair, and she did not make a sound.

He slipped his fingers beneath the last little jewel in search of its clasp. “I always liked this one best. The red one with the little blue. That is Osh: he likes the pretty colors better than the shiny-​danglies.”

“Osh…”

“I always saved it for last,” he whispered.

“Is that why Rua wasn’t happy?” Flann asked, not shyly but timidly.

He breathed suddenly in a great gust. “What?”

“Because they were your mother’s?”

“Rua was unhappy?”

“She wasn’t looking glad to see them…”

Osh opened the clasp at last—for the first time in twenty years, after closing it for the first time that morning.

“If she has ever seen them, she has been ‘snooping’ in her father’s belongings,” he grumbled. “Rua never knew my mother.”

“But perhaps she was guessing…”

“Here, my darling.” He handed the last jewel to her. “Now they are your belongings, and if Rua goes ‘snooping’ again, she will be sorry your sister ever taught her the word.”

“But, Osh… if they were your mother’s… oughtn’t Rua have them?”

“She has her own mother’s jewelry, as she should. These I thought to give to my sister’s daughter when she married my son. I did not want any other elf to lay his hand on them until Paul.”

More particularly he had not wanted Ris’s hands on them, but he did not like to remind Flann of Lor.

“However, though I love my Cat-​daughter, I never look on her and think she would wear them well. But you do them honor. And I hope they do you honor, too. I loved my mother very much.”

Flann cradled the jewels limply in her fingers, as if she did not dare even clasp her hand around them.

He took a deep breath and held it for a moment, as if courage could be found in the air. At last he told her, “I took these from my mother’s hair the last night, before she went to sleep for the long time. She was younger than I am now—it is that long ago. And I hid them, because I think it will make me sad to see them in another lady’s hair. But today it makes me so happy.”

He could not see her smile from where he stood, but he was coming to know that curve of her cheek.

“You see, I was saving them for my darling Flann, who was not yet born. That is how wise I was.”

She laughed.

“Here, let us see whether I am still so wise.”

He leaned over her until his breath purled into the crease of her collarbone and flowed down her breast.

He pointed at the silver-​beaded medallion that lay in her hand. “This is for Liadan when she is grown. I think she will always like the shiny-​sparkle-​danglies. And this one, which shows the old elven story of the cloud that got caught in the pines, it is for our little tell-​me-​a-​story daughter who will have a head that gets caught in the clouds.”

Flann leaned her head back against his shoulder. Her mouth was still smiling, but she sighed his name in a sort of pained ecstasy. The vowel was so low in her throat as to be nearly a moan, but her breath hissed the sibilant through her teeth. It was almost what he wanted to hear.

“And this one is for our daughter with the black, black hair, and the red, red lips, and the blue, blue eyes.”

“Ach, Osh,” she said in her little shy voice, “are you thinking of having children of our own?”

“Dreaming of,” he corrected.

He took the medallions from her hand and hurried to lay them on the mantel. When he bent over her again his breath was still lingering warm around her neck, and he breathed it up again, sweetened by her body.

He asked, “Aren’t you?”

“I daren’t even dream any longer,” she murmured, not unhappily.

“How am I to make your dreams come true if you don’t have any?” he protested.

She sighed and stretched her legs out before her, curling her toes in her soft green slippers. Her sigh was sweet, but it was silent.

“Somehow you do anyway,” she said. “Somehow you’re knowing what I should like even before I do.”

He whispered against her neck, “Then let me show you.”

She shrugged her shoulders as if she were finding her gown too snug and too concealing. She was so silent he could hear the chair creaking beneath her as she squirmed almost imperceptibly.

At last he simply laid the flat of his hand against her collarbone. Her heart pounded rapidly enough he could feel it up that high, and he pressed his palm against it. She was breathing in short breaths, but she did not make a sound.

Liadan was with a nurse, and she would not be allowed to interrupt them for anything short of a fever. His own children were at home, and there were no elves near to hear.

He slipped an arm behind her shoulder and pulled her suddenly against him, holding her head where she could breathe nothing but her own breath against his neck.

At last she opened her lips and made the very sound he had been waiting to hear—waiting with such aching longing he could almost believe he had truly been wanting her since before she was born. For his ears alone was her soft moan, little and shy and startled and sweet.