A Botanical Study In Symmetry
—ASHáN
There are nine nests in this house, and not one of them is defensible.
I have brought this to Sage’s attention.
Repeatedly. The reading nest in the alcove has two sightlines and a window at her back.
A child could breach it. The porch nest is, generously, a target with cushions.
The nest in the sunroom he’s proudest of has exactly one exit, which means it’s not a nest; it is a box that hope lives in.
I have explained this, and he listens with the vacant warmth of a male waiting for me to shut up so he can go back to fluffing things.
So I have taken matters into my own hands.
Eden is asleep in the bedroom nest with one hand tucked under her cheek, and the other draped over Vaelína.
I send a thread of shadow along the windowsill, and a second drawn across the doorway like a tripwire.
I’ve reinforced the seams of the nest until the whole structure kills me before it lets anything reach her—which is the point.
You’re nesting, Sage hums insufferably from the back of our skull.
I am not nesting. I am establishing a perimeter.
You rearranged the shadows by her head three times, he singsongs.
The angle was wrong. I double down.
You hummed, he chuckles.
Shadows do not hum. There is a difference between nesting, which is what birds and Sages do, and guarding, which is a serious tactical posture adopted by serious entities.
If he cannot tell the two apart, then, frankly, his security clearance was always going to be revoked.
Eden sighs in her sleep and rolls over, her belly pressing into the cushion of dark I’ve laid along her side. The small spark inside her pushes back against me through the nest’s shadow lining.
“Well, hello, míní.”
She wants a story, Sage says.
I know what my daughter wants.
Our daughter, Sage corrects.
I unspool a thin sliver of myself down toward the curve of her, the way I do every night—the way I will apparently do for the rest of my existence, because I am a creature of pure menace who has been completely undone by a legume.
“The world outside this house is very loud, and very bright,” I murmur. “People are terrified of the dark. They build fires, they light candles, and they spend their whole lives running from the shadows because they think the dark is where things go to die.”
She lets out a soft hum through the bond, her tiny energy shifting and settling into the dark.
“But they are wrong. The dark isn’t an ending. The dark is where things are kept safe until they are strong enough to grow. You are resting in the quiet dark of your mamé right now. And I am the dark that wraps around this nest to make sure nothing wakes you before it’s time.”
Eden’s breathing deepens as she burrows further into the crook of Sage’s neck. Her small hand slides over the shadow-ribbon on her belly.
“There are things in this world that love the light because it makes their targets easier to see,” I whisper. “But they have to come through the shadows to get to you. And in the dark, little nestling, they will always find me. You may carry the sun, but you are guarded by the night.”
She gives a final, sleepy kick against my palm before her energy slows, dropping into the quiet rhythm of sleep.
That was… beautiful, Ashán, Sage notes, his golden fertility magic wrapping around the edges of my shadow.
“Goodnight, you three. í amar thé.”
The morning light warms the floorboards before Eden’s feet ever touch them. She stretches, her belly arching toward the ceiling.
“Don’t,” she mumbles into Sage’s chest.
She’s awake, Sage says. He’s been awake for over an hour. He wakes up at dawn just so he can watch her wake up. I would mock him for it except—
I counted her breaths all night, so…
She heaves herself upright with the grace of an overturned beetle.
“Ashán.”
“Hm?”
“Why is there a wall of shadow around the whole nest?”
“There is no wall. There’s a perimeter.”
“It’s up to the ceiling.”
“It’s a thorough perimeter.”
She reaches out and pokes one of the load-bearing shadow-ribs I spent hours perfecting. It holds, because it is excellent work.
“Rahnové. I got up to pee twice last night and walked face-first into your perimeter each time.”
“She did,” Sage confirms. “I felt her hit it. Twice.”
“That was a security checkpoint, and if she’d simply identified herself—”
“I’m pregnant, not infiltrating our own house.”
“—then the checkpoint would have let her through. The checkpoint knows her. The checkpoint is me. I would never let her walk into a wall.”
“Ashán. I have a bruise on my forehead.”
“… The checkpoint is a work in progress.”
Eden lets out a long, dramatic sigh, but her eyes are sparkling with affection. She reaches out, her small fingers wrap around the thick shadow-rib and squeeze. The dark melts instantly under her touch, curling harmlessly around her wrist.
“See?” I huff at Sage. “The biometric recognition software is fully operational. She just failed to initialize it.”
“She shouldn’t have to initialize a password to pee in her own house, Ashán,” he grumbles back, pressing a lingering kiss against the faint pink mark on her brow.
“Rahnové,” Eden purrs, running her hand along my vorí. “Come here.”
I lean closer, and she presses her lips against ours.
“Are you listening?” she whispers.
“Yes. This is the way we should talk more often.”
“The next time you lock me out of the bathroom, I will pee on your shadow. Got it?”
Sage loses it. His laughter is so loud it vibrates through our teeth.
“Ash’kaela,” I purr back against her lips. “I think you seriously underestimate how much I would enjoy that.”
The day unfolds the way all of them do these days—slow and stupidly good.
Eden paints in the sunroom nest while Sage hovers, pretending he isn’t hovering. Droot conducts his daily inspection of all nine nests and finds them acceptable. The mark on her belly catches the light when she stretches, and every time it does, something inside of me settles.
This is the part I never let myself imagine in all those nights of being a thing locked in someone else’s dark—a nothing afternoon, Eden humming, Sage fussing, and our baby growing bigger every single day.
So I notice when it goes wrong.
Sage reaches for the pink paint, and his hand stops halfway, frozen an inch above the jar. His fingers flex and then finally close around the paint before handing it to Eden.
You paused, I say.
Did I? He murmurs. Lost my train of thought.
His pulse is elevated. There is nowhere in this body he can hide a single thing from me. He knows that, which is why the lie is so strange—Sage doesn’t lie to me. We pulled each other out of the void. We don’t do this anymore.
Thorn? I ask, because three days ago it was a thorn, and yesterday it was the sun in his eyes, and the day before he just didn’t answer at all.
Mm, he says.
I let it go, but the wrongness of it is like a draft under a door I can’t find. Eden laughs at Droot, and Sage turns to watch her. He is so helplessly in love that I tell myself I’m imagining the cold. A man this happy couldn’t be hiding anything worth the fear curling inside of me. Right?
I am very good at guarding this family from the dark outside this house.
I have never once had to guard it from the dark inside.
After lunch, Sage drifts toward the greenhouse, wiping his hands on a rag, and murmuring about the bloodroot needing attention.
He kisses Eden’s forehead while she yawns and informs us she’s going to crawl into one of our eight hundred nests “for just a second,” which means in approximately ninety seconds she will be unconscious and staying that way until she needs to pee.
He walks into the greenhouse, and I am delighted. It’s my favorite room in the house, though I’d sooner reap myself than tell Sage that. Over the past few months, I’ve found I quite enjoy relaxing while I watch him work. Even the void inside me likes the way the sun pours through the glass.
We’ve been out here for most of the afternoon working—working is generous.
Sage is bent over the workbench with the focus of a master craftsman, coaxing, pollinating, and murmuring encouragement to a row of his more specialized cultivars.
And I am doing what I do best on this particular project: offering expert structural feedback.
That one’s crooked, I murmur.
It’s not crooked. It’s got a natural curve—
It’s crooked, Sage. No one wants that. Trust me, I rasp.
Since when are you the authority? He grumbles.
Since I have a set of my own and she’s never once complained about my work, I pause, savoring the flush climbing up his pointed ears. Cultivate it like mine, and you can’t go wrong.
This is a gift, not a competition, he sighs, the vines along his forearm bristling.
Everything’s a competition, flowerboy. You’re just losing this one.
He opens his mouth to argue when the greenhouse door creaks.
We both freeze.
“There you are.” Eden stands in the doorway, hair wild, one hand resting on her belly. “You disappeared. I made those little sandwiches you guys like—”
Her eyes flick to the large glass case Sage usually keeps covered. His pulse trips, and I have never in my existence been more grateful to share this body than I am in this moment.
Her sleepy gaze wanders over the plants lining the shelves, her head tilting adorably.
Here it comes, I say gleefully. Here it comes, Sage.
Don’t, he whispers.
“Vaelí,” Eden murmurs. “Why are all of your flowers shaped like—”
“They’re not,” he blurts, both hands coming to block the case behind us in a move so transparently guilty it could not have been improved upon had he practiced for a year. “They’re—it’s a varietal. A natural—they grow that way. Sometimes. In nature.”
“In nature, hm?” She hums.
“Frequently.”
Magnificent, I tell him. Flawless—truly. I think she might have bought it.
Eden crosses her arms on top of her belly and arches her brow.
“Sage.”
“... Yes.”
“Did you make these… for me?”