The old hallway door in Livvie’s treehouse still works just fine! Or, well. It does now that I recreated it… she had it closed when everything was going wrong.

One of the times, I guess. One of the many times.

(Yep.)

Mmmhmm.

“And to what do we owe the… pleasure of your presence?”

I ignore the large servant’s unfriendly tone.

“It sounded like a good idea to make sure everything made it here intact. Sure, the subdomain was in a heaven before, but this one is different now isn’t it?”

“Very little has changed,” Julis hautily replies. “Simply the lack of sunlight, and the difference in weight.”

That makes me pause. “Weight? Why weight?”

“Then you haven’t noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

(Your plane has less gravity than some of the others, probably because of how close the moon is to the ground,) Nyx interjects.

Julis is starting to respond so I simply cut him off – it’s not like he’s been cordial enough to invite more. “Nevermind, my former System Assistant already cleared it up. So it has less gravity, whatever that is.”

“Yes,” he replies while managing to cover his offense at the slight. Why do mortals take themselves so seriously?

I could just eat him, but Livvie would probably be upset about it.

Whatever. The subdomain looks intact.

Other than the obvious anyway… that being how it’s now floating in the sky instead of in a massive body of water of some kind. Not a big surprise it was called an isle considering that, but it still technically is, just. Now it’s a flying island.

I wasn’t sure where exactly to put it, but this seemed like a good idea. The mortals shouldn’t bother them too much up here, and since I moved the entire population with the Feral Isle, my wife will still have plenty of challengers to fail to meet her challenge.

In a sense, we don’t have a need for the old hallway portal joining our homes…

Or she wouldn’t anyway, if she weren’t still meeting Izzy and me in the evenings for unnecessary rest in my own bedchambers. I’m not sure if it’s entirely just because she wants to, but at least part of it is jealousy considering the emotions she tries and fails to mask.

I wonder if there’s any point in us trying to hide anything from each other… not that we would or should. I get the impression pretty strongly that I shouldn’t.

…

Well whatever, I’ve ruminated long enough while walking around the treehouse. It’s all as I remember it from the extensive time spent here recovering.

I wonder when my fox wife will be at full strength again… considering recent events, it’s difficult to believe that she was still weakened in any way. Even now, she’s terrifyingly strong.

Not strong enough to kill me, but to be fair… I’m not sure anyone in any of the planes could.

Probably mother, ‘the administrator.’

I still don’t really know what that means, but I guess it’s fine for now. I’ll just… not think about it, not if I can help it.

Huh.

The reason why escapes me, but I find myself randomly opening a rift and taking myself to my wife’s bedroom… or, well. Her furs-on-the-floor room. I’m not sure it qualifies as a traditional bed in that sense, but I did spend an awful lot of time resting there with her.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

And the state of those furs on the floor is just as disheveled as ever, thrown in a heap as if recently used. But I’m fairly sure they haven’t, unless she’s resting during the day too.

…

Maybe she is.

Absentmindedly I flop down on it, causing the edges the flutter. I don’t understand why, but it just feels right to lay down in them now… and the feeling is nostalgic.

And so is the smell… the wild odor of the furs themselves, along with Livvie’s own fur and the smell of the outdoor pools we used for bathing…

…

Ah. She knows I’m here. Probably anyway, considering the embarrassment she’s emitting through our link…

…

…

At least she doesn’t have, I don’t know, my old school uniform stashed somewhere in some kind of weird shrine, I think she did that before, uh. What, six hundred years ago? Seven hundred? Of course I wasn’t a student then, I just-

Wait, why is that even embarrassing to her!? Oh gods, I don’t even want to know. She did it again, and I don’t want to know.

Which, I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t voluntarily show me anyway.

…

I guess I’ll just relax for now, and enjoy… huh.

…

…

It’s lonely here.

Why is it so lonely? It feels almost like an aura.

I offer only the faintest push of desire for her presence, and Olive – my Olive – appears in her trademark flash of blue flames to flop down next to me. She could have teleported directly into the covers with me, her foxfire or whatever it is isn’t actually hot… but I’m sure she has her reasons.

Even if it’s just a dramatic entry or something.

Well, whatever.

“Why is it so lonely in here?” I ask her quietly, pulling her into a hug with a dozen feelers in addition to my arms.

My wife is quiet for a moment before saying, “Asleep. Years? Years.”

Oh. Right.

She’d spent nearly a decade simply holding me, channeling her mana through me, hoping beyond hope that I was going to wake up soon… I’m sure she was terrified that I’d sleep forever, that she’d lost me gain after finally, finally getting me back… in whatever form.

But that feels wrong somehow too.

It feels… older.

Far older than me, any of my conscious me.

…

“How long did you live here, alone other than your retainers or servants or whatever?”

…

…

She won’t meet my eyes, and I understand what that means. She doesn’t want to tell me. She doesn’t want me to know, for whatever reason… and what I can feel from our link mirrors my reading.

I know she doesn’t have to say it though. It was a long, long time. A very long time.

Alone.

The fact that her plane was so isolated from her peers makes the reason clear… she was ostracized.

What I definitely don’t know though is why. There are quite a few possibilities… is it because she’s fae, or because she can call up the wild hunt on a whim? That’d be pretty terrifying, probably… like living next door to a volcano or something.

Also, what’s a volcano? It’s been a while since I’ve remembered a word and not what it means. I’ll have to ask someone later… if I remember. It’s not particularly important.

Is it because she’s not from a humanlike race? It’s hard to tell though, since typically the gods all have and use some form of Skill or something to at least look humanlike… even I do.

Or it could be a fixation thing… I know she spent a great deal of years, centuries even, trying not to develop a fixation. Maybe she isolated herself? Hmmm… if that’s how it happened, I wonder if my presence is in a sense liberating? If that’s the case though, was she in effect isolating herself?

…

It’s actually kind of fascinating to think about, to be honest. Wondering about something, and then experimenting until I…

Oh.

I’m like you, I absentmindedly project in my former Assistant’s direction. I got this from you, didn’t I?

(Probably.)

Huh.

I’d never really thought about it. At least I don’t think I had…

Well, whatever.

Some answers I don’t need. Especially here, in this moment.

It occurs to me that at some point during my rumination, Livvie started gazing into my eyes, and still is.

“Hi there,” I whisper, quietly running my fingers across her cheek.

Even if I can’t actually love her, even if I can’t feel it… isn’t this enough? It has to be enough. It was for centuries… it was enough for both of us for all that time…

So it has to. I choose to feel this, whatever I can feel for her. Because I want to.

…

I pull her a bit closer, wrapping the furs tighter around us with a few more feelers, and she lets out a quiet purr while tucking herself a bit closer to me.

This is good. This is where I should be, where I belong. Where we both belong.

And that’s fine.

…

I’ll just ignore this pull in the back of my mind to do this with Izzy… Even I’m not so naïve as to miss how wrong it is to think about someone else in this situation… granted I was talking with Nyx earlier, so I suppose that ship has sailed.

Also, I’ve never been on a ship. I’m pretty sure I haven’t even seen one, have I? Maybe a few that flew through the air… The only plane I’ve even been on that had that much water was the Deep Blue, and I ate it. It’s gone.

…

…

A quiet huff interrupts my ongoing rumination. That’s fine… she always did think that I spend too much time in thought.

…

My thoughts have run full circle though, or at least circled back… so I guess I’ll just ask.

“Why were you so isolated here for so long? Did you choose this?”

She blushes faintly before pushing through her embarrassment and quietly saying, “Talk… Hard.”

Oh.

Oh.

…

We lay in silence for a while, stretching on for what must have been at least a few hours…

And then she breaks the silence.

“Kit.”

“Kit?” I reply in confusion.

She nods faintly. “Kit.”

And then she pulls closer to gaze into my eyes, her hot breath washing across my face.

“Want.”