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As the Keep’s entrance opened, the two figures standing before Lord Arum were precisely who he was expecting to see. He was not, however, expecting their condition — Rilla harrowed and anxious, one arm thrown around Damien’s shoulder, who looked an absolute wreck. He was pale and shivering, hair soaked, wrapped in a cheery orange and yellow-striped comforter that seemed deeply inappropriate in its contrast to his miserable state.
“Honeysuckle!” Arum rushed forward without thinking to support Damien’s other side. One of his left arms went to Damien's back, and the other around the erstwhile knight’s shoulders, entwining with Rilla's.
“Oh, Lord Arum, I thank you but, truly, this is not necessary—” Damien’s weak protests were overlapped by counter-complaints on both his left and right.
“He nearly drowned—”
“How did you—”
“Out on the lake—”
“Were you attacked? Are you being followed—”
“Please!” Damien wrested himself from their combined grasp and stumbled forward, leaving Rilla and Arum clinging to nothing but a damp comforter. Arum let it fall to the floor in disgust.
“Though your concern for my wellbeing is heartening, I will be fine!" Damien seemed a touch unsteady on his feet, but his hoarse voice burned with a familiar ardency. "It was neither man nor monster, Lord Arum, but my own folly that left us in this sorry state.”
“Us…?” Arum turned to Rilla.
Rilla huffed in annoyance. “He’s exaggerating. About me, at least.”
Taking a closer look at her, it dawned on him. Rilla’s long hair was wound tightly in a bun, concealing the water dripping from it, and though she was wearing a long coat, the dress underneath was soaked. She, too, had clearly been in the lake — fishing Damien out, presumably.
“Amaryllis!” Cursing his ignorance, he started in on her, but she brushed him off with a serious glance.
“Really, Arum, I am fine. Damien was in the water for longer than I was, he needs to be treated.”
“At this time of year, the lake is too cold to take such risks.” Arum gave a rattling hiss, brow knit in concern. “The Keep and I will see to you both.”
Rilla nodded. "Well, see to Damien first. He was underwater for..." She gathered herself. "For too long."
“Need I remind you of my encounter with the fearsome crocodile-hound, whose soporific secretions left me awash on the shores of the very same Lake of Tranquility, with naught but a—” Damien interrupted himself with a vicious coughing fit of such length and severity that his knees began to buckle. Before he could slump down to the ground, though, Arum was upon him and cradling him with all four arms, holding him steady even as the gurgling coughs shook them both. Rilla hurried over and Arum placed a hand on her, too, as if to distribute the shock.
Eventually, it subsided and Damien gazed upwards blearily. He was a curious sight, Arum thought amidst his worry. With his strange, wavy hair wet down and clinging to him, and a blood-flecked froth at the corner of his mouth, the human seemed rather less fearsome than he once did.
Rilla cleared her throat. "Keep, open the shortest path to our quarters, please." With a ripple of bioluminescence and a contrapuntal tone, the Keep acquiesced. She moved through Arum’s home with an ease born of familiarity — a far cry from those early days when she had crept through it like a hunted animal, sizing up each successive chamber for threats and potential escape routes. Arum followed close behind, Damien limp and cold in his arms but still, thankfully, breathing.
“Keep, can you provision us… lanolin taken from the vegetable lamb, a sampling of all varieties of mint grown within your reach, as well as camphor bark, ginger root, galingale, and lemon? Have them delivered to my workbench.” Rilla made these requests briskly as they made their way to their quarters, not waiting to hear the Keep’s reply. Vines began to undulate and a chiming song rang out through the hallway, but still more important was the entrance to the well-used guest room which lay ahead.
Amaryllis's quarters, established upon her first arrival within the Swamp of Titan's Blooms, had been variously modified, extended, and adapted to new configurations over the time the three of them had spent together. Currently, the room held a trunk, two desks, a few personal effects scattered across the floor, and a very spacious bed, which Arum deposited Damien onto with surprisingly little protest.
“Do you have dry clothes?” asked Arum.
Rilla nodded, rummaging through the trunk that held her and Damien’s belongings. “He should have a set stashed away here. I don’t know if Damien is well enough to get himself changed, you may have to help me.”
“Do not neglect yourself, Amaryllis,” Arum said lowly.
“I’m not,” said Rilla, irritated, fishing a nightshirt out of the trunk. “Let me just take care of Damien first.” Her statement was punctuated with another of Damien’s wracking coughs.
“I hardly think you need to go to such trouble, my Rilla,” he said feebly. “Though I appreciate your concern — indeed, both of you —” here, sounding strained, he paused for a rattling inhale. Rilla and Arum traded an alarmed glance while he did.
“Save your breath, honeysuckle,” Arum interrupted, before Damien had the chance to continue.
“But—”
“Arum’s right,” said Rilla. “You need to rest and to get your temperature back up. So get changed,” she pressed the set of clean clothes into his lap, “and get in bed. I’ll get something mixed up for your cough, and Arum can keep you company.”
Arum hissed. “I, too, intend to prepare a treatment for your ailment.” As they spoke, Damien was fumbling out of his waterlogged clothing and into the woollen nightshirt. Arum was struck by the sudden exposure of skin. With no scales or mail to protect it, the human form — Damien’s human form — seemed terribly vulnerable.
“There’s no need,” said Rilla, reaching back into the clothing trunk.
Arum’s frill flared. “Human arrogance, tktktktk. As though your medicine is the very pinnacle of invention.”
“Look, I know what works,” Rilla said, affronted. “This isn’t the first time that I’ve treated a near-drowning.” She whipped her coat onto the bed, changing into a clean dress with businesslike efficiency.
“You presume my ignorance too quickly, Amaryllis.” Arum glared daggers at her bared back.
She turned to face him, dusting off the front of the creased but blessedly dry garment. “All right, we can take this conversation to the workshop. Damien, talk to the Keep if you need anything.”
Damien, who was by now a heap under blankets, mumbled his assent from somewhere within the depths of the bed.
“Fine! Let us be on our way.” Arum lashed his tail and exited the room, not looking behind to see if Rilla followed.
The Keep's inner sanctum now boasted a sizable extension with a second set of workbenches. Rilla tried to keep her space organized as best she could, which meant it looked downright military in comparison to Arum's. The tools she preferred were more standardized and much less organic — measures, forceps and scales in semi-orderly rows, a neatly-labeled home for each flask and lense (even if many of them never quite found their way home).
The Keep had not only delivered Rilla’s supplies in the interim, but also set up her workspace for immediate use. A greenish, waxy semisolid — vegetable lanolin — sat in a glass jar next to a neat arrangement of various bark, roots, and herbs. Most crucially, a copper samovar steamed away in the center of her worktable. She thanked the Keep for the foresight to light it, pouring a mug of hot tea for both Arum and herself. It was a blend of her own devising that had taken some weeks to perfect: black tea from the Second Citadel, plus the dried and zested peel of a citrus variety native to the swamp. The taste was warming, subtly astringent; foreign and familiar in equal measure. Damien and Arum enjoyed it as well, though she suspected Damien mostly did for its symbolic value rather than the flavor.
Rilla busied herself chopping, measuring and mixing. Arum picked up his mug with a nod, then set to business at his own table. When he worked, the Keep became his lab assistant, extending vines to refresh supplies and dispose of cast-away material. Four arms were already a boon in the laboratory, but the Keep had countless more, which took barely a nod from Arum to direct where he wished. Rilla had long admired their elegant synergy, even in the early days of her captivity.
“So…” Arum’s voice was quiet, tentative. It might almost have blended in with the background ambiance, but Rilla had been anticipating a break in their uncomfortable silence.
She set down the bowl of herbs that she had been grinding into a paste. “So.”
“What happened on the lake?”
Rilla sighed. “We'd gone out in the boat. I wanted to collect algae samples from the lake.”
“That is not typically Sir Damien’s area of interest.” Arum had ceased his work for the moment, instead clutching the mug of tea in two hands. He drew nearer to Amaryllis as she continued preparing the medicine, watching with idle curiosity.
“He’s usually happy to help. And today it was even his idea. Said it might help with inspiration for his next book of verse…”
“Yes, yes…” Was that a tinge of familiar amusement in Lord Arum’s voice?
“…what with him not having anything better to do these days,” Rilla finished. Arum sobered.
“Those were his words?” Both Rilla and Arum had noticed a change in Damien since his resignation from the Queen’s service. Though he still lived con brio — throwing himself headlong into the recitation of poetry, prayer, groundskeeping, and any menial labor requested of him by his partners — the overall impression was, nevertheless, that of a prized sheepdog who, after years of bounding across pastures, had been rehomed to a one-room apartment five stories high in the Craftsman’s Quarter.
“Well, he didn’t say as much. But…” Rilla shook her head, turning back to her work. Using tongs, she retrieved a thin glass flask from under a burner and folded its pungent-smelling contents into the container of vegetable lanolin.
“Mm.” Arum sounded disinterested, as he sometimes did about things that affected him deeply.
Rilla went on. “So, Damien dropped his notebook in the lake.”
“The fool.”
“Things happened pretty quickly after that. I nearly fell in trying to reach for it, but he caught me… then he jumped in after it.” Rilla laughed weakly. “I don’t know what he was thinking. He probably wasn’t expecting the water to be as cold as it was, to cause such a shock. When he didn’t come up, I had to…”
Arum hissed.
“Yeah. Thankfully, we weren’t too far away from the shore. But he was down there for a while. It was… really scary.” She shook her head, giving the medicine one final stir before putting a lid on it. “And we didn’t even find the damn notebook.”
“Did you at least keep the algae samples?”
“They’re still in the boat. They just slipped my mind after getting him out of the water…”
“Of course.” Arum paused. “Are you still feeling a chill?”
Rilla took a moment to contemplate. In the glow of the Keep, her hair still shone, as though it had been freshly washed. “Not really. I was braced for impact, and I’m a decent swimmer.”
“The Keep can fetch you your coat,” Arum added hopefully. “Or more blankets.”
“I promise, I’m fine!” Rilla said, amused yet firm. “Anyway, I’m gonna go see if Damien is awake for this.” She hefted the jar of medicine.
“Very well. Go feed him that… soup you have created.”
Rilla laughed again. “Oh, this isn’t meant to be eaten.” She turned the glass jar upside down, and the thick verdant paste clung to its walls. “It’d be a pretty terrible soup.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Tktktktk. Then whatever else it is you see fit to do with it.”
As she made her way to the Keep’s nearest aperture, Rilla craned her head to examine what Arum had been working on. A large white bulb of some sort was seated in the middle of the table, trembling slightly.
Arum quickly slithered back to his own workspace, blocking Rilla’s view with his body. “It’s not finished yet,” he said defensively. “The bud will bloom by morning, if we’re lucky, but I need to make some final adjustments.”
“Sure, sure,” said Rilla. “You know, I don’t know how I feel about experimental biologics being tested on my fiance.”
Arum scowled. “It will make it easier for him to breathe. I swear it.”
“All right.” She embraced him, enjoying the security of the four limbs folded around her and his brief, pleased purr. “Will we see you again tonight?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Now go.”
“Wonderful,” she said, and made her way back down the hallway to Damien.
Arum took a sip of his tea and grimaced, finding that it had gone cold. Taking this as a sign to turn in for the night, he padded down the hallway to the guest quarters.
He was greeted with another unusual tableau — Damien shirtless and propped upright in bed, staring plaintively into the middle distance as Rilla worked her hands over his chest.
"Lord Arum!" Damien saw him and sat up even straighter.
"What is—" Arum choked as he tasted the air. The harsh scent of camphor was overpowering, eye-watering.
Rilla stopped her activity, turning to face him. He could see the green jar, sitting open on the bedside table. “Oh, Arum, I‘m sorry. This must be quite strong, with your sense of smell.”
“Wh—” he cleared his throat once more, rallying against the all-consuming camphor haze — “Damien is ill, I can hardly see how your… kneading is helping his condition. Unless I have gravely misunderstood your aim, or perhaps human anatomy as a whole.”
Damien was blushing now, a full-body affair. “I think there has been some misunderstanding, Lord Arum,” he murmured.
“Yeah, I’m putting medicine on him.” Rilla held up her hands, slick with the same greenish unguent that shone on Damien’s naked chest.
“I see.”
Rilla gave Damien one last, superfluous knead before putting the lid back on the jar and wiping her hands dry. “An application of camphor and menthol on the chest before bedtime has been evidenced to help treat a cough. Clears the airways, gets the mucus moving around,” she explained.
“...Well, it also smells terrible, tktktk,” Arum rattled with displeasure. Rilla’s matter-of-fact attitude and Damien’s kicked-puppy look were irritating him further. “I shall rest in my own quarters, then, given recent developments. I bid you both good-night, and I do hope your vile cure works as intended.”
Come morning, Damien was still feeling poorly. His voice was mostly shot, a hoarse whisper the best he could muster without stirring up a painful-sounding hacking cough. After declining the offer to take breakfast with Rilla and Arum, he crawled under the pile of blankets and fell asleep once more.
“This is concerning behavior,” Lord Arum muttered darkly. “I had anticipated our honeysuckle to bloom with the sun, as he so often does.”
“Damien's on the mend,” said Rilla. “He’s going to need extra rest, whether he likes it or not. I know he dueled you on a broken leg, but he can’t keep pushing his body to the limits like that.”
“Then I will fix him some tea with lemon and ginger. He can drink it when he wakes — his fragile human body seems to need all the help it can get.”
“He’ll like that.” Rilla shook her hair out from its tie and began combing out the snarls and tangles from the previous day’s events. As the scent of brewing tea filled the room, she became aware of Arum’s eyes on her.
“Something you need?”
Arum seemed hesitant as he approached. “May I?”
“May you…?”
Silently, he was at her side, taking the comb from her grasp and gently tugging it through her hair. His other hands got to work sectioning and parting locks of hair, unpracticed but careful. Rilla stared ahead at the sunlight filtering through the apertures in the Keep’s ceiling until he was done.
She smiled and pulled him in for a kiss. “Thank you, Arum. That was nice.”
Arum grumbled, looking away. If he was capable of blushing, Rilla thought, he would surely be doing so now. “I was simply curious, that is all. I have watched you do it enough times for me to wonder what such a strange activity would feel like.”
“Well, is your curiosity satisfied, or could you see yourself doing this again? Because I really wouldn't mind if you did.”
“The tea is ready,” said Lord Arum stiffly.
Rilla laughed. “So it is.”
“Can you carry it for me? I will need to transport my cure to Damien’s bedside.”
“Sure thing.” She raised an eyebrow. “‘Cure’, huh?”
Arum’s ‘cure’ was the plant he had been growing in his workshop, root ball suspended in a pot of water. Now in full bloom, it resembled a massive lotus with petals speckled like a robin’s egg.
“Are you certain, Lord Arum?” Damien rasped, when presented with the plant. “It is rather pleasing to the eye, a very remarkable color, but I cannot see how it would…”
“Oh, just try it, honeysuckle.” Arum pushed the flower still closer to Damien’s face. On the opposite side of the bed, Rilla was staring intently, poised to take notes.
“If you are certain,” said Damien. He lowered his face to the petals and inhaled deeply. As he did, a dawning wonder overtook his features. Taking the plant from Arum’s hands, he went in for another deep, shuddering breath. When he emerged, he was beaming. “Remarkable. Remarkable! Saints above, I feel as though I have drawn my first true breaths since I was submerged in the Lake of Tranquility! Why, the effect is…”
“Magical?” Rilla supplied.
“Heh—” Damien’s laugh was halting at first, then bubbled to the surface with the strength of an overflowing fountain. “Yes, yes, exactly! It is a sensation most curious, the very air becoming richer, clearer, as if descending from a high mountaintop in the span of a second.” He took a sip of tea. “My throat still feels somewhat… raw. Ah, well, it is to be expected. Though this cure may be miraculous, it cannot be a panacea, after all. Still! What a triumph! Inside me dwells a renewed fount of strength, a gale, a veritable blacksmith’s bellows, a — hrgk —” he wheezed inelegantly, running out of air midsentence. After a coughing plunge back into the flower’s petals, he looked up again, subdued and somewhat sheepish.
“Well, it is a relief to see that it works as intended,” said Arum.
“Though the effect seems to be, unfortunately, rather localized,” added Damien.
Arum sniffed, indignant. “Anything more permanent would be the work of weeks, perhaps months — not a mere day. You will be well in enough time that to develop anything further is unnecessary.”
“Don’t remind him, Arum,” Rilla interjected, “he has enough trouble staying in bed as is.”
“Trouble? Hardly!” Damien chirped. “By which I mean, there’s no need for me to trouble the two of you any longer, languishing away like that. Between your topical application, my Amaryllis, and your air-purifying flower, my lily, I am practically healed! In fact, I think I feel well enough to accompany you back to the lake. You will be going back out on the lake today, yes?”
Rilla’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
“But I had heard you discussing it around breakfast…”
Firmly, Rilla shook her head. “We’re heading back to the lake, that is true, but you need to rest. Your condition is still delicate, no matter how well you may feel, and I don’t want you exacerbating things.”
“Worry not,” laughed Damien, “I won’t exacerbate a thing. The bracing air will be a refreshment, the midday sun above our heads a warming comfort.”
“Damien,” said Rilla, aggrieved. “Please, would you just listen to me for once?”
“I— I did not mean to…” Damien trailed off, crestfallen. Rilla put down her notepad and looked away.
Sensing the mounting tension in the conversation, Arum spoke up carefully, brow knitted in concern. “We are merely planning to recover your lost notes and Amaryllis’s algae samples," he told Damien. "It shall be an hour’s work and no more.”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” Damien seemed preoccupied and somewhat faraway now. Rilla had started putting on her boots and gathering up her field gear, and Arum silently got up to put on his cloak. By the time that they left, Damien was deep in prayer.
“You seemed somewhat upset with Damien this morning,” Arum remarked. They were approaching the edges of the swamp now, vegetation thinning out and ground growing firmer underfoot. The noonday sun lent a gentle warmth to the otherwise chill air.
Rilla sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. Normally I have a higher tolerance for his total lack of self-preservation, but… it must be something about the lake.”
“What do you mean?”
“It didn't sit right with me, how he was so eager to return to this place. You weren’t there, when we were out in the boat, but it was... The look on his face right before he almost drowned himself. I barely recognized him.” She glanced up at Arum as they walked. “You remember the grubs you designed with the Moonlit Hermit, the ones that preyed on human fears.”
“Of course I do. If not for them — for what they did… We would not have met.” Arum seemed ill at ease in his recollection.
“Yeah, but did I tell you how I found them to begin with?”
“You did not,” said Arum, with an aggrieved rattle.
“I was out in the woods with Marc, and we found a colony of numbcap that those grubs had infested. It mimicked the appearance of our loved ones to lure us in as prey. Marc saw his brother in there. And it spoke to me in Damien's voice, screaming for help. I thought he was dying."
“I am… sorry, Amaryllis,” Lord Arum said haltingly. “I had not intended such a consequence—”
“No,” Rilla shook her head. "Damien was a knight for many years, and death in the line of duty is not uncommon. I know this, objectively speaking. Used to think about it every time he had to leave on a journey, every time he came home with a femur shattered by an oni, or with a basilisk's fangs in his side. You can worry about it all you like, think about it every day, even, but nothing can prepare you for that awful moment of certainty when you see it happen before your eyes. So, given all I’ve seen, all I’ve feared… is it so strange, to think for a second that some magic could have bewitched him, lured him into the water somehow? When it’s already been capable of so much?"
Lord Arum was silent in thought for a long while. “But the Moonlit Hermit could not have been responsible,” he said finally.
“I know!” Rilla cried. “And there’s the fact that I have no evidence! All I have to go on is this… gut feeling. It’s completely unfounded in fact.” She heaved a sigh and re-adjusted her bag on her shoulders. “I hate it.”
“Well, Amaryllis, as you have oft taken pleasure in reminding me: after one’s initial observation, the next step in the scientific process is research, is it not?” Arum gestured ahead at the Lake of Tranquility that spread out before them. They had arrived.
Rilla allowed herself a small smile. “It certainly is.”
The recovery of the algae samples was a simple matter. The boat, a rickety old craft that barely sat two people, had been docked hastily by the shore. Within its cramped confines, several glass jars of murky lake water lay untouched. Rilla gathered them up, closing the one that had been left ajar, and tucked them away into her bag. That left Damien’s lost notebook, lying somewhere in the sediment that swirled at the bottom of the lake.
“Are you sure about this, Arum?” Rilla asked.
“Quite sure,” he said, undoing the clasps on his cloak. “Your idea to fashion some kind of sound-propagation device with a shrieking violet was interesting, but in the interest of expediency, it is no issue to merely swim down there myself and locate the book. 'Never use four arms when one will do,' as the saying goes.”
“Other than you, who says that?” muttered Rilla under her breath.
Refusing to dignify her question with a response, Arum leapt into the lake with a diver’s grace. As he disappeared neatly beneath the surface, Rilla peered out over the water. Yesterday, she and Damien had not strayed far from the water’s edge, and the chances of the notebook being disturbed on the lake floor or eaten by monsters were slim. Its retrieval would, in all likelihood, be conducted with little difficulty. Once they had it, though… how much could be recovered? The book itself would start to mildew and have to be discarded, but the writing within — could that be salvaged, in whole or in part? You’re beginning to sound like Damien, she chided herself, but as the moment stretched out — she by the shore and Arum under the surface — her worries began to mount. Slight motion on the water stilling to nothing, the air bubbles beginning to peter out, Damien as dark, unmoving shape sinking deep, deep below…
And then — movement. Arum breached the lake with a mighty splash and a triumphant hiss. Clutched in two of his arms was his quarry, a dripping mass of paper. Rilla’s heart kickstarted back to life in her chest.
“Arum! Over here!” she called, waving. After shaking the water from his frill, Arum began to paddle over.
“Run into any trouble?” she asked.
“Some of the blue-striped mawfish were getting territorial, but it was no difficulty to retrieve the book once I found it.” He cut a dashing if somewhat crocodilian figure as he slowly emerged from the shores of the lake, rivulets of water running down his scaly chest.
“Oh, that's a relief.” Rilla handed Arum his cloak and reached to examine the book more closely. “How bad is the damage?”
Arum lifted the notebook’s cover with one tentative talon. “Obviously the pages are delicate, but if we are careful it can be dried out, and, with any hope, its contents preserved.” He looked closer at the page he had opened to, studying the lone completed stanza. “‘A mind unmatched, a beauty without peer / Uprooted flow’r of Exile, left to roam / Her guiding light illumes my course to steer / Her voice, my heart’s refrain that calls me home’… tktktktk.”
Rilla nodded. “Ah, that must have been from his sonnet phase. Shame he never finished it.”
“Pretty words for his pretty human,” Arum scoffed.
“Oh, Arum, he’s written a fair number of paeans for you too. I don’t think he’d even met you when he was composing this one.”
“Yes, but he hasn’t written a sonnet for me. And I rather like his sonnets.”
“What?” A smile began to creep onto Rilla’s face. She wanted to ask if she’d heard him correctly.
“Well, don’t tell him,” Arum snapped. “But there is something rather elegant about the form, isn’t there?”
“But the meter, the rhyme, everything is so constrained. I would have assumed you’d prefer something more… I don’t know, organic?”
Arum gave a loose, lazy shrug. “Hasn’t our honeysuckle proven that he works extremely well under the proper constraints?”
Rilla blinked. “I see your point.”
On the walk home, she broke the silence with a carefully-posed question. “When you were down there, how was your visual acuity?”
“It was fine,” said Arum, in a tone that suggested he was surprised to be asked at all.
“I mean, you didn’t see anything unusual, did you?” At his silence, she prodded further. “Any creatures not native to the area, or… any evidence of magic?”
Then Arum got her meaning. “Ah. No, I think not, unless the mawfish have somehow developed powers of persuasion and the desire to seduce unwitting human men into their waters…” He marked Rilla’s stormy expression and stopped. “Which is highly unlikely.”
“Look, I understand that you’re not taking this seriously, but can you at least have a little more tact about it?” asked Rilla, frustrated.
Arum bristled with irritation. “Surely with your scientific mind you must agree that your fears are a little far-fetched.”
“Far-fetched? That’s rich coming from someone who regularly bends laws of nature!” Rilla fired back. “Saints preserve me if I show a normal amount of concern for Damien’s wellbeing.”
“Frankly, Amaryllis, I hardly see why you are so concerned about your frail little former-knight, that you would go blaming his idiocy on some imaginary bogeyman of a monster. As though all of monsterkind is so base, so incurably wicked as to be slavering over your blood at every turn, tktktktk!” As Arum raised his voice, his frill rose too, fully extending as he ground out his last words.
“I’m not!” Rilla shouted. “I just want to rule it out as a possibility! And considering the amount of times the two of you have tried to kill each other over something completely inane, I wouldn’t be acting so high and mighty. Taka-taka-taka-taka!”
“That’s… hold a moment.” Arum’s frill settled back down. “You don’t really think I sound like that, do I?”
“I mean—” Rilla looked surprised. “Well, of course it comes more naturally to you. When you do it, it’s more of a, tka-tka-tka…” she tried again, anger forgotten for a moment.
“Tka-tka-tka…” He echoed her, bemused. “No, that can’t be it.”
“Well, don’t think about it so hard, you’ll forget how.”
Arum growled quietly. “Now I’m self-conscious. Taka-taka … tika-taka …”
“Ah, Saints, look at us,” said Rilla, laughing despite herself.
“We are acting somewhat foolish,” said Lord Arum, too amused to be cross.
“Yeah, at least we can agree on that,” she sighed.
“Let us return to our third fool,” Arum said, sounding resigned. “He, at least, will have something to be happy about.” So the two of them continued on into the depths of the swamp. They walked past shrieking violets and wailing willows, flora and fauna (and all combinations thereof) growing stranger and more fantastic, until the grand Keep loomed before them and they were home.
“Oh, my thanks, a thousand thanks! My two beautiful blossoms, saviors of my very soul, truly, the Saints have seen fit to bless me with your presence! I am reunited with my own beating heart, lost to me by my rash error and returned by Saint Damien’s grace — and, of course, your grace, my loves, your unfettered intellect and intrepidity!” Damien sprung to his feet, casting the duvet cover aside triumphantly. “The heavy anchor weighing me down is at long last lifted and I’m light as the breeze, free as a bird, strong as an ox —” He stopped to sit back down and bring Arum’s flower closer to his face, replenishing his supply of air. “Ah… perhaps not quite that strong. Yet.”
“Oh, you’ll be back to your old self in no time.” Rilla grinned. “I mean sure, you won’t be beating Sir Angelo at arm-wrestling, but at least you’ll be in good company there.” Damien smiled back fondly, eyes crinkling at the corners.
The tension between them, entirely unaddressed, seemed to have dissipated upon Arum and Rilla’s return. Arum found that somewhat strange, but then, Damien had cleaned himself up while they were away. He'd bathed, fully dressed, even tied his hair back into its familiar little ponytail. Perhaps, while praying, he had also seen fit to cleanse himself of the burden of earthly animosity, or whatever it was that religious humans did.
Arum presented the damp but drying volume to Damien, who pulled the lizard lord in for a lingering and affectionate thank-you before accepting it. He opened the cover of his notebook, leafing tenderly through the water-warped pages. “Ah,” he breathed, “It is all there! Preserved, as though by the aegis of Saint Damien!”
“Or by the aegis of the waterproofed ink that Amaryllis formulated,” Lord Arum said pointedly.
“But of course,” said Damien, blushing.
“It’s not perfect,” Rilla said, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look. “There’s still a considerable amount of bleed-through.”
“Still, given the circumstances,” Damien mused, “it is rather miraculous. You did devise this recipe to guard against laboratory spills, my heart, not overnight submersion in a lake.” He turned to her, angling his head up while she leaned down and met him halfway. They came away from the brief kiss smiling, looking for all the world as though it had been a singular experience and not one they’d shared innumerable times before. Damien cleared his throat. “In any case, it is legible enough that I can begin copying my poems over to another notebook.”
After some examination, Damien was deemed well enough to move out of bed and into the workshop, where Arum and Rilla conducted their business. Rilla spent the afternoon running tests on her recovered samples, and Arum began the groundwork of designing new swamp-dwelling creatures. Early in the evening they set a kettle of soup boiling, from which Damien would ladle cups for both himself and Rilla, while the Keep continually refreshed Arum’s supply of fresh fruit. Later, Arum plucked away at a lute, dueting with the Keep, and Rilla attempted to perfect the plans for her next stringed instrument. Damien spent the entire day meticulously transcribing his old works onto fresh paper, stopping only for meals, prayer, and occasionally to read one of his poems out loud when the spirit moved him.
The following two days passed in much the same quiet, easygoing manner. Rilla and Arum jointly decided to remain close to the Keep during Damien’s period of convalescence. At some point, they agreed, Rilla and Damien would return to their neighboring hut, but until then, everyone was quite happy to exist within this cozy arrangement.
On the night of the third day, Rilla, Arum, and Damien were curled up together in the guest room bed when Damien disentangled himself from Rilla’s arms and got up. Through the thick veil of sleep, Rilla dimly registered it happening. Though there were a hundred ordinary explanations — a trip to the outhouse chiefest among them — she couldn’t shake her feeling of alarm. Normally, Damien was difficult to rouse from sleep, dreams so vivid and pervasive he could be heard mumbling through them. Now, the sounds she heard began to pique her curiosity — Damien was putting on slippers, shrugging on a robe, then another robe, then… rummaging through the desk? He paused in the doorway on his way out, looking back at where she and Arum lay. Rilla shut her eyes hurriedly, wondering how well he could see her face in the Keep’s dim bioluminescence. After a long moment he was gone, down to the workshop, and then after another few minutes back down through the corridor, past the guest room and towards the Keep’s entrance vestibule. Rilla was well awake and deeply curious by now. More time passed. Arum shifted in his sleep. She nudged him. He sighed contentedly and rolled over, embracing Rilla with all four arms. She squirmed out of his grasp, nudging him again.
“Arum! Wake up.”
“Amaryllis? What…” His low, dry voice, muddled by waking, came out practically a croak.
“Can you ask the Keep where Damien is?”
A long pause. Arum, eyes half-open, peered over Rilla to the empty space on the other side of the bed. “Damien?”
“He’s gone.”
Arum scrambled out of bed. “Gone where?”
Rilla was sitting up now, looking down the hallway for some sign of him. “I saw him leave, but…”
Arum shut his eyes and listened to the melody that rose up around them. “The Keep says he’s left. Headed for the lake.”
“Oh, Saints,” Rilla said faintly.
“Shall we go?” Arum asked. Rilla, already putting on her boots, nodded urgently.
In the Swamp of Titan’s Blooms, a storm was nascent on the horizon, moonlight dappled by fast-moving clouds. The rich scent of rain hung heavy in the air. Rilla observed this all faintly, distantly, panic blinkering her senses until all that remained was closing the distance to the lake. Arum was just ahead of her, moving primal and low to the ground, tail lashing in agitation and violet cloak billowing. She sucked in jagged breaths and struggled for calm, even as her heart pounded with the strength of Saint Aaron’s hammer. The path through the jungle was well-trod, so it would be easy to spot Damien, unless he had strayed from the path. Would he? Why would he? Why would he have done any of this to begin with?
Thunder rumbled over their heads. Rilla grit her teeth and kept pace with Arum. The lake grew nearer, nearer still, until they were just over the hill that looked out on —
Damien was standing on the shore, notebook in hand, up to his ankles in the cold lake. His hair was down, moving gently with the damp night breeze. Beside him, his slippers were lined up side by side in the grass. He turned to see the commotion and blanched.
“Damien!” Relief flared bright in Rilla’s veins.
“Rilla—” He took a step back by reflex and lost his footing briefly. Arum and Rilla splashed into the shallows at nearly the same time, after Damien had righted himself but just in time to clasp him in their combined six arms. He struggled for a second.
“Damien, what is going on?” Rilla pleaded.
Damien leaned back into Arum’s bulk, glancing upwards for a second before turning his guilty gaze towards Rilla. “My loves, it was never my intention to cause such alarm with my sudden flight of fancy. To take the air at such a late hour, well, I’ll admit it may be unorthodox. However, fortune smiles upon us, for nothing is amiss! Indeed, I am the very picture of content!” He might have continued on with his laughable attempt at nonchalance, face a pained rictus, but Rilla could take it no longer.
“What is it, Damien, magic? Monsters? What’s happened to you?”
He deflated. “W-what do you mean?”
“I mean, why in the Saints’ name are you standing out here in the middle of the night when you nearly drowned in this same lake barely three days ago? ”
“Well, Rilla,” he looked nervously at Lord Arum, “there is no monstrous influence on me aside from the obvious…”
“Honeysuckle, you have been acting most uncharacteristically,” said Arum gravely.
Damien's shoulders slumped. “I… oh, I have, haven’t I? And to think, all this time I’ve worried you so…” Both Rilla and Arum noted the quivering lip and the watering eye, but with a sniffle and a shake of his head Damien soldiered on. “I suppose I can do myself no further damage by speaking my heart.” He waited for his audience to nod their agreement before continuing on.
“It began with the air. Having had some difficulty falling asleep, my thoughts turned to the stillness in the air before the storm. It permeated the Keep, calling me outside to feel it for myself. So I went, in hopes that it might stir some inspiration within me.”
He shook his head, frowning. “I wished to better understand the stillness in the air, the tranquility of the lake. For there has been such a great and terrible stillness in my life of late. I have been as the deserts to the East, parched and listless, waiting for creativity to flow. Indeed, my recent efforts at transcription were the only time I have been moved to put pen to paper since surrendering my knighthood. Our journey to Fort Terminus with little Olala was the last of our adventures, and then… a period of unprecedented calm. Life has been pleasant since then, I’ll grant, but different. Quiet. For as long as I can remember, I have sought Saint Damien’s tranquility in the storm, the deluge, the crashing wave. My time in the Queen’s service provided me with the constant excitement of battle, a bottomless fount of flowing blood which splashed onto my pages. But now that well has run dry.” He laughed ruefully. “It is as though I have forgotten how to find tranquility on still waters.”
“So you came here. To the Lake,” Arum said, low and somber.
“Yes, that was the next step. It seemed rather natural once I was outside. My earlier experience in its waters was, to put it plainly, disastrous. A misplaced act of heroism, a manufactured turmoil which stirred nothing within me, only some muck at the bottom of a lake. And worse, it caused no end of worry to the two most important people in my life.” Damien looked up, eyes shining. “I cannot entirely explain my aims in returning here. My only thought was that perhaps it would reawaken some passion in my bloodless heart. After all, this was the very lake that once held me in its chill clutches. Might not this memory of peril stir some dormant voice of poesy within me?”
"Isn’t that something, Damien?” Rilla spoke, voice thick with emotion. “That the very same danger that you've been so eager to throw yourself into has been my deepest fear for as long as I've known you."
“Oh, my Rilla, my Arum... what am I doing?” Damien lifted his head to the sky, face contorted with misery. When he turned to them again, his cheeks were wet not just with his own, but with Saint Damien’s tears. As the rain began to fall in earnest he was clinging to his loves once more, sobbing openly. Arum rattled, somewhat uncomfortably. It suddenly struck Rilla that he hadn’t had much opportunity to see this side of Damien. Their love was more often communicated through clashing blades and bombast than through naked, unadorned emotion.
Battling a surge of emotion herself, she extricated an arm from Damien’s grasp, feeling around for his notebook. “Pass that to me, it’ll get rained on.” He surrendered it gratefully, and she tucked it into her coat pocket.
Damien wailed, suddenly. “Your boots, my forever-flower, your boots…”
“What about them?” Rilla asked.
“You’ve been drying them since you last jumped into the lake. And now they’ve gotten drenched again!” This revelation inspired a fresh bout of weeping as Arum awkwardly patted his back with two hands.
Rilla exhaled. “Why don’t we get out of the rain?”
“I think that would be prudent,” Arum volunteered. Damien nodded, sniffling.
They waded out of the shallows onto (relatively) dry land and, moving as a unit, began the short trek back. Saint Damien’s sorrow mingled with their own, pattering off leaves, flattening hair, running down scales and into the hood of Arum’s violet cloak. Rilla had her coat to protect her and Arum didn’t much mind the downpour, but by the time they made it back Damien was as wet and miserable as he’d ever been. He stumbled into the guest room, forlornly shedding his dripping clothes en route to the bed. Rilla joined him after tossing her coat onto the trunk, and Arum soon followed after toweling off with his cloak. They did not sleep just then, but talked long into the night, about men and monsters, about magic and duty and tranquility, as the slow drizzling rain cascaded against the Keep and thunder rumbled somewhere faraway.
The sun was faintly intimating its arrival on the horizon when Arum retired that night. Damien and Rilla’s conversation had gotten a touch too maudlin for him, and when it lapsed into yet another pregnant pause he quietly excused himself to the workshop. Humans and their endless sentimental nattering, he said scornfully to himself as he resumed preparations for one of his rituals. Then the Keep had decided to weigh in, and Arum fired back about how it was being overbearing, as usual, and one thing leading to another, they had stayed up bickering about Arum’s own life and Arum’s own choices until the rain stopped falling and a new day dawned. He had to admit, though, making his way down the corridor, that he did feel a little bit lighter having vented a number of frustrations to his sire-and-ward. Perhaps the practice of “speaking his heart” had some merit to it after all.
Rilla was sleeping sprawled out over the sheets, long hair flowing like an ink spill. At her side was Damien, curled up against the headboard, slumping over a sheaf of papers that had begun to slide out of his grasp and across the bed. The pen he still loosely held was threatening to drip onto the bedsheets. Arum hurriedly retrieved it along with the precariously-positioned inkwell, setting them on the bedside table before they could do any real damage. The Keep’s light had guttered out after Damien fell asleep, but Arum, with his superior low-light vision, could still make out the words as he straightened his poet’s scattered papers. They were marred with cross-outs and marginalia, not to mention a few blots of ink from a sleeping hand, but three stanzas, one familiar, two new, stood proud on the page he was holding:
Uprooted flow'r of exile, left to roam,
A mind unmatched, a beauty without peer,
Her eyes, my guiding light, my course to steer,
Her voice, my heart’s refrain, which calls me home.
My oath, my bond, my pledge of fealty,
My lonely lord of violet-eyed noblesse,
Whose steely scale belies his warm caress,
His wit and passion; boundless as the sea.
In hearts’ abundance, variance abounds
As night and day, while I at dawn admire
How each distinguished part exalts the whole.
At dusk, like bells, their counterpoint resounds,
My Lord and lady, moon and sun, inspire
A love redoubled in my threefold soul.
An unusual phenomenon occurred that day, in the guest quarters of the magnificent Keep which grew at the heart of the Swamp of Titan’s Blooms. It happened around 5 o’clock in the morning, after a rainstorm but before the sunrise, and could be traced back to the Keep’s own familiar, the august Lord Arum. This phenomenon involved a deep and prolonged rumbling noise in his chest, a rolling purr born of pure, tender sentiment and affection. It was a noise that Arum would categorically deny even being capable of making, had either of his lovers been awake. However, since there were no witnesses to the phenomenon, he was content to stand around doing it for a few moments longer before tucking away the sheets of looseleaf on the nightstand. Then, he clambered into the bed where Rilla and Damien lay sleeping and situated himself in the gap between the two of them. It was a tight fit, somewhat awkward and not at all traditional, but he felt a renewed confidence that the three of them could make it work, and would indeed be quite happy with the arrangement by the time the sun rose.