Epilogue
Curing
Maisie
Six months changes everything and nothing.
The studio still smells like lavender and lye, still has the same scarred workbench and the window that sticks in humidity.
But the clutter is gone. Jars line the shelves in labeled rows: fractionated coconut, jojoba, sweet almond in ascending order by viscosity.
Finished product fills the drying rack by the window, sixty units of rosehip night serum curing in their amber bottles, waiting for Tuesday’s shipment.
The Verdance contract hangs framed beside the door, the glass smudged where I pressed my palm against it the day the first payment cleared and my credit card balance hit zero.
Oz is at the pouring station with the batch of chamomile cleanser, his form narrowed to accommodate the workstation’s low overhang.
His color holds steady at deep violet, focused and calm.
One tendril curls around the beaker, tilting it at the precise angle for a clean pour, while another monitors the temperature of the mixture with his innate sense for heat.
I hand him the tamanu without being asked. He receives it, and his surface ripples with acknowledgment.
We work like this for hours most days. A shift in my posture tells him when I need a tool passed; a change in his colors signals when a mixture needs my input. The studio hums with productivity, our movements synchronized into something smoother than conversation.
Mid-morning light slants through the window. I stretch my arms overhead, feeling the pleasant ache of sustained work, and set down my spatula.
“Break,” I say.
Oz’s pour doesn’t falter, but a thread of gold surfaces in his violet. His body flows around me before I can take a step. Cool and slick, sliding up beneath the hem of my shirt, spreading across my stomach.
I gasp at the first contact, the shock of his temperature against my warm skin, and then his surface warms as it always does, adapting to me.
“Oz—”
He pulls me back against him. His chest molds to my back, and tendrils trace along my ribs with deliberate slowness. One curves around my hip, dipping below my waistband. I shudder and lean into him, my hands finding his forearms where they wrap around me.
“Break,” he says, his voice resonating against my back. “You said break.”
“I meant coffee.”
“I prefer my original assumption.” His hand slides up my stomach, pushing my shirt with it. Cool air hits my skin, then his warmth follows, and I arch into his touch.
Then he lifts me.
My feet leave the floor and I make a sound that’s half surprise, half something else entirely. He sets me on the workbench, the scarred wood cool beneath my thighs, and pushes my skirt up in one fluid motion. His body flows between my knees, parting them, and he steps into the space he’s created.
“The chamomile batch,” I manage. “The pour—”
Across the room, an offshoot of him continues working at the pouring station. I watch it tilt the beaker at a precise angle, the amber liquid streaming into bottles, while the rest of him pushes my underwear aside and slides against me.
“Don’t you worry. We’re still getting the work done,” he says.
A laugh breaks out of me, and then his thumb—shaped and deliberate—finds my clit and the laugh dissolves into something else.
He circles slowly while he parts me with the cock forming from his base, cool and slick, pressing inward with a pressure that makes my grip tighten on the edge of the workbench.
He fills me in one long slide. No adjustment, no pause. He knows exactly what I can take because he can feel what I feel, the stretch and the fullness and the bright spike of pleasure that arcs through my spine.
“Oz.” His name comes out ragged.
He answers by changing the angle, by thickening within me, by pressing his forehead to the curve of my neck. His cock ripples against my inner walls, hitting a spot that makes my vision blur.
He swells inside me and I cry out, my nails digging into his shoulders, my hips rolling to meet his.
The orgasm builds in waves as his thumb still circles my clit with maddening persistence. The pressure crests and my pussy clenches around him, my whole body seizing as I reach my peak.
He holds me through it, his body shivering with that resonance he gets when he feels me come around his cock.
A knock sounds at the door.
We separate in a tangle of urgency. I yank my skirt down, shove my shirt back into place, run fingers through hair that’s definitely a disaster.
Oz flows off the workbench and reconstitutes into his primary form. The chamomile bottles stand in a perfect row on the drying rack.
Another knock.
“It’s Gram,” I say, and cross to the door.
She stands on the porch with her wool bag over one arm and her coffee thermos in hand.
Behind her, half-hidden in the shadow of the overhang, a gaunt figure waits.
Paco. The Ridge Walker.
He’s still shy about doorways, still hovers at thresholds like he needs permission for every inch of space he occupies. But he’s here, which is more than he managed for the first three months after the mine rescue.
“Took you long enough,” Gram says, pushing past me. “Paco, come in. She doesn’t bite.”
Paco ducks through the doorframe, his angular shoulders hunching to clear the jamb. His pale green luminescence pulses once, a flicker of greeting, and his dark eyes find mine.
“Coffee?” he asks.
“You just got here.”
“I can smell it.”
Gram settles onto the worn couch, already pulling roving from her bag. “He knows what he likes, Maisie. Don’t make him beg.”
I head for the kitchen, stepping around Oz, who has positioned himself near the workbench with the casual stillness of someone who absolutely didn’t just have his hands up my skirt.
I don’t look at him. If I look at him, I’ll blush, and Gram misses nothing.
The coffee pot is still warm. I pour a cup for Paco, keeping it bitter, just the way he likes it, and carry it back. He takes it with both hands, his long fingers curling around the ceramic, and makes a sound that borders on reverent.
“Good,” he says, and drinks.
Gram’s tools click. She’s felting something green, a mini-Paco, from the looks of it. Her hands haven’t stopped moving since she sat down. “Paco had a question about your oat bars. He wants to know if you’ll make the unscented kind again.”
“The ones for sensitive skin?”
He nods, still cradling the coffee. “The desert dries me out. Your soap helps.”
Something warm blooms in my chest. The Ridge Walker—Paco—using my soap. Coming to my door and asking for it by name. I nod. “I’ll put a batch on tomorrow’s list.”
A knock sounds at the door. This one comes fast and impatient, three quick raps in succession.
“Maisie!” I hear behind the wood. “Is Oz home?”
Bobby Crawford’s voice carries high and eager. I glance at Oz, who has already paused his work.
“Bobby,” I confirm.
Oz flows toward the door without hesitation. He’s learned the particular rhythm of these visits. The kids started showing up about two months after the mine rescue, tentative at first, then in packs. Now it’s almost daily.
He opens the door, and Bobby barrels through with Danny and little Sofia trailing behind. They’re sun-pinked and dusty, the kind of dirty that only accumulates from hours of desert play.
“Can you come out?” Bobby asks, already tugging at Oz’s arm.
Oz looks back at me.
I wave him off. “Go.”
The three children cheer. Oz flows through the doorframe, and I watch from the window as he crosses the yard and spreads himself low and taut across the hard-packed earth.
His body flattens and widens, stretching into a broad, smooth platform that hovers just above the ground. The children don’t wait for an invitation. They scramble onto him immediately, bouncing on his surface, their shrieks of delight carrying through the open window.
Gram appears beside me, her felting set aside. She watches Oz ripple beneath the children, catching them when they stumble, cushioning every fall.
“He’s good with them,” she says.
“I know.”
Gram lets a beat pass.
“You two would make a cute baby,” she says.
I choke on nothing.
“A little Maisie made of jello.” She pats my arm. “Wouldn’t that be the cutest thing?”
“Gram.”
She laughs, that warm, full sound that makes everything feel possible, and returns to her felting like she hasn’t just rearranged my entire brain.
Gram leaves around dusk, Paco trailing behind her like a shadow with coffee breath.
The studio settles. Finished product lines the shelves in tidy rows. The order board holds three new clients and Verdance’s quarterly reup. The chamomile batch cools on the drying rack, every bottle capped and perfect.
Oz and I head for the bedroom. My back can handle the mattress now. Oz had long since worked out most of my aches and pains.
I think about the delivery mistake. Six months ago, a crate the size of a refrigerator showed up in my studio, and when I pried it open, something looked back at me with golden eyes, and I was so scared I couldn’t scream.
The creature I feared. The creature I befriended. The creature I love.
I don’t know what the future holds. More orders, probably. More clients. Gram’s Tuesday dinners and Paco’s coffee habit and Bobby Crawford showing up to bounce on Oz like a trampoline. Maybe a boutique in Sedona. Maybe something I haven’t imagined yet.
I rest my head against Oz’s chest. His arm curves around my shoulders. His heat warms my cheek.
I close my eyes and breathe in lavender and lye and the faint mineral scent of him, and I let the future be what it is: unwritten, uncertain, and ours to discover.
The End