“Oh!” Her eyes shot wide, and she leaned forward to stare into his face. “What did you just do?”
“Experiment,” he gritted out. Surely his eyes were as wide and wild as hers. “Think the broken right has been doing something to stir up my left ground. Like, not like?”
“Not sure. More…?”
“Oh, yeah…”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s…”
“Good?”
Her only reply was a wordless huff. And a rocking that grew frantic, then froze. Which was fine because now he did drive up, as that bowstring snapped at last, and everything unwound in white fire.
He didn’t think he’d passed out, but he seemed to come to with her draped across his chest wheezing and laughing wildly. “Dag! That was, that was…could you do that all along? Were you just saving it for a wedding present, or what?”
“I have no idea,” he confessed. “Never done anything like that before. I’m not even sure what I did do.”
“Well, it was quite…quite nice.” She sat up and pushed back her hair to deliver this in a judicious tone, but then dissolved into helpless laughter again.
“I’m dizzy. Feel like I’m about to fall down.”
“You are lying down.”
“Very fortunate.”
She tumbled down into the cradle of his left arm and snuggled in for a wordless time. Dag didn’t quite nap, but he wouldn’t have called it being awake, either. Bludgeoned, perhaps. Eventually, she roused herself enough to get them cleaned up and dressed in clothes to sleep in, because the blue twilight shadows were cooling as night slid in, seeping through the woods from the east. By the time she cuddled down again beside him, under the blanket this time, he was fully awake, staring up through the leaves at the first stars.