Year one of shared dreams.

  They arrive within breaths of each other, as they do now, and take the same bench without asking, a habit, earned. The willow keeps its hush, the pond holds a round of sky. Their shoulders don’t touch, but the space between them is smaller than it used to be.

  “How was training?” she asks, already smiling waiting for his usual answer.

  “Arrows grouped tighter. Sword master said my footwork looks less like I’m daring death to try me.” A faint, almost-proud exhale. “Only three new bruises.”

  “Progress,” she says, pleased. “Any smiles when you bled?”

  “Not today.” He doesn’t say whose. She doesn’t make him.

  She tells him about the town: how her new window faces a crooked alley that always smells like bread in the morning; the old stone bridge everyone uses even when the river is low enough to wade; the honey seller who hums and gives her the broken-comb ends for cheap. She mimics the hawkers’ calls until he almost smiles on purpose.

  “Do you like it?” he asks.

  “I like that it feels… possible.” She tips her head. “And you? Still sleeping with your boots by the bed?”

  “Closer to the door now.” He hesitates a beat. “It helps.”

  They fall into the easy spill of a year’s ritual. What hurt, what helped, one small true thing each. He admits he caught himself counting exits in a chapel. She confesses she braided her hair absently in the market when her mind wandered. He shakes his head; she grins. It’s all ordinary and exactly what they need.

  When the talk thins out to quiet, she studies him for a long, unhurried moment. He notices.

  “What,” he deadpans, “do I have something on my face again?”

  “No.” A smile climbs before she can stop it. “I found your name.”

  He groans softly, theatrical misery. “Let me guess. Gloom. Knife. Menace. ‘Temporary.’”

  “Tempting,” she says, enjoying herself. “But no.” She laughs lightly anyway.

  “Stalker is retired, then?” He tries for dryness; it comes out wary. “A downgrade?” He asks it but secretly hopes his new nickname isn’t something cold.

  “Promoted,” she corrects, eyes warm and steady on his. “Dream boy.” A beat, then, gentler, truer: “My dream boy.”

  The words land. He looks away like he’s giving the moment privacy; his mouth can’t decide whether to refuse or accept and ends up doing neither. Heat climbs his neck in treacherous, human color.

  “Highly subjective,” he manages.

  “Names usually are.” She keeps watching him, not pressing. “You can earn your way out if you hate it.” But she points to the flush of his neck. “But I think you like it.”

  He thinks about all the other doors he’s earned his way out of. He thinks about this one, open by choice. “…I don’t hate it.”

  “Good,” she says, voice softer now, as if the meadow might spook. “I’ll keep Wildflower, then?”

  “You will,” he says, and it sounds like permission and promise both.

  He clears his throat, retreats to normal questions with soldierly precision. “Eat?”

  “Stew with barley. Sat down the whole time,” she reports, like passing inspection. “You?”

  “Hot bread. Standing,” he admits. “Some habits die slower.”

  They breathe together, comfortably, the kind of silence that refills instead of drains. The willow flicks a few leaves loose. She leans an inch; he notices and gives a small nod. She closes that inch. Nothing breaks.

  “One true thing?” she offers.

  He considers the cost and pays it. “When I leave here, I try to remember the sound the grass makes when the wind moves through it.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She smiles, bright and quiet at once. “When I leave here, I try to remember the sound your breathing makes when you’re almost laughing.”

  He almost does, just to oblige. “Dangerous.”

  “Effective,” she says, and they both let it be a joke and not a confession.

  The edges begin to fray, the sign one or both of them were beginning to wake up.

  “Goodbye,” he says, meeting her eyes, letting the name sit between them like something chosen. “Goodnight, Wildflower.”

  “Goodnight, dream boy,” she answers, blush steady but unashamed.

  Months go by when they shared most nights together. Winter settling into the country now.

  They arrive almost together. Today the meadow is arguing with itself: on one side, summer hums with warm grass and bees; on the other, winter lays a clean white hush. The split runs straight from the willow to the pond, a bright green line kissing a drift’s edge.

  He plants both boots in summer and stays there like it’s a principle. “No.”

  Kairi straddles the seam, one foot in each season, and shrugs, pleased with her own excess. “I couldn’t decide… so both.”

  “Indecision is a weather pattern now.” He raised an eyebrow at her and frowned at the snow.

  “Apparently.” She steps fully into winter and crouches, hands already gathering snow. “Rule check: projectiles don’t count as touching unless they connect?”

  He considers the letter of the law, not the spirit. “Correct.”

  “Excellent.” She packs a misshapen snowball, sights down her arm, and throws.

  It flops into the green halfway between them.

  He does not move. “Impressive warning shot.” A small tilt to his lips as he looked at it.

  She narrows her eyes, scoops again. The second flies truer, skimming his sleeve without hitting. He lifts an eyebrow.

  “Range estimation improving,” he says. “Permission to hit if you can. Doubtful seeing how this is going.”

  “Smugness increasing,” she counters, cheeks pink with cold and effort.

  Third throw whistles close enough that he feels its air, and he still hasn’t shifted a foot.

  She abandons artillery for strategy. “New tactic.”

  He watches her as she scoops up more snow.

  She runs.

  He waits until the last two paces, then slips sideways into summer, and she skids through his wake, laughing, boots carving a half-moon into the grass. She whirls and charges again; he pivots out of reach, not touching, hands up in the kind of apology that’s mostly taunt.

  “May I enlist local support?” she calls, breathless and bright.

  “No.” He says quickly.

  The meadow ignores him. A root humps up just enough to catch his heel. He stumbles clean, surprised, ungraceful and goes down with an “oof.”

  Kairi arrives over him, triumphant. “May I?”

  “Yes,” he manages, already bracing.

  She drops a perfectly made snowball square on his chest. It bursts cold through his shirt. He huffs a laugh despite himself, steam ghosting in summer air.

  “Unethical terrain advantages,” he says, sitting up as she backs a step, grinning.

  “Creative use of environment,” she corrects, eyes sparkling. “But also, it didn’t listen to me. It just did it.”

  He sweeps his shin low, no force, just a neat hook, and takes her feet out from under her. She squeaks, lands on the winter edge with a soft whump. He rises slowly and deliberate.

  “Shadow Guard lesson,” he says, offering zero sympathy and too much amusement. “Don’t drop your guard around me.”

  She’s already up, snow in her hair, grin feral. “Oh yeah? Do I have to be on guard around you?”

  He stilled at that about to answer when she continued.

  “Permission?” she asks, because even games have rules.

  “Granted.” He says, while he was still thinking about if she needed to be on guard around him. Did she trust him enough?

  She tackles him with all the momentum her laugh can carry. They tumble, he turns so his shoulder takes the ground, then he shifts his weight caging but never crushing. In a breath he reversed the hold, wrists gathered gently, pin clean and kind. He looks down at her, hair haloed with flakes.

  “Yes” he says, a smug smile finally earning its keep. “Maybe you do need to still keep your guard around me…I could be unkind to you.”

  She blows a strand of hair out of her mouth, eyes bright. “Bullying now. You wouldn’t hurt me. So, what is this then?”

  “Training.” He says simply. He watches her and then adds. “Maybe awareness that I am still a man.”

  She huffs a laugh. “A boy still, what you are… thirteen, fourteen maybe?”

  He ignores her and a snowflake melted on her cheek. He reaches but stops. “May I?”

  She nods. He brushes it away with two fingers, careful as if it might cut him.

  “Traitor meadow,” he says to the sky.

  “She likes me more,” Kairi says, certain.

  “I know, well noted.” He replies looking back down at her. She hadn’t aged at all. It didn’t seem like it anyway.

  “Penalty for cheating,” he says, still holding her wrists but loosely enough that she could pull free. “Loser owes two truths next visit.”

  “I didn’t lose,” she says, chin up. “I won, by innovative tripping.”

  “You were pinned in the end.” He reminded her as he pointedly looked at her and squeezed her wrists lightly.

  She considers, then splits the difference with a grin. “One truth each and a rematch.”

  “Accepted.” He lets her hands go and stands, offering nothing so obvious as a hand up; she rolls to her feet anyway, brushing snow from her tunic with exaggerated dignity. They drift to the bench that lives exactly on the seam now, sitting with shoulders almost touching, steam and frost twining their breath.

  “One true thing,” she says, honoring the bargain. “I like winter better when you’re here.”

  He takes it, doesn’t deflect. “I like rules better when we break them on purpose.”

  “Effective,” she says, soft. She looks at him. “Or you just like to touch now.”

  “Dangerous,” he counters, gentler. “Maybe” He offers as honesty.

  The world begins to thin at the edges. They stand together, slow. He eyes the snow like it owes him a duel; she eyes his shirt like she’s proud of the wet mark she made.

  “Goodnight, Wildflower,” he says.

  “Goodnight, dream boy,” she answers, wicked sweet. Then, with mock solemnity: “Bring a shield next time.”

  “I am the shield.” He reminds her.

  She flashes him a look and flushes a little. “Prove that your consistent then.”