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"You can open your eyes now, Sophie." Letting go of one of her hands, he takes in a deep breath of fresh air: he's led her to their flowers, to the very end of the path just before the ground turns to marsh. There, he's got a table covered in a fluttering white tablecloth. A single candle lights the scene; the table is laid out with place settings
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There. That should be a little bit better. He doesn't do it quite as well without Calcifer's assistance, but there are a fair few things he can do by himself. Small healing spells are among that number; he used to do them on Sophie's heart when she was old. Sometimes she knew and other times he suspects she didn't, but there's no ego tied up in this kind of work. That's one lesson Mrs. Pentstemmon taught him well.
There are many wizards, Howell, but few can be numbered among the best. If you want to be one of the best, you must release yourself from outcome. There's no glory in helping people. The help is its own reward.
He didn't always understand that lesson, but he does now. Selfless magic isn't something one needs to like; it's simply something one needs to do without a second thought. It's something one does because it's the right thing to do.
That also happens to be the way he feels about loving Sophie.
"But let's don't mince words. Let's have ourselves a bit of relaxation, shall we?" Reaching down, he plucks a flower -- a perfect freesia spray -- and hands it to her. The flowers are as much her doing as his at this point; he'll always think of her now when he sees or thinks of flowers.
And he doesn't even mind. What he wants most is to put the war away for an hour, maybe two. He wants space in his life without that menace hanging over them. If this is the way he finds to do it, well... he hopes Sophie enjoys it as much as he does.
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She accepts the flower, instead, considers a moment, and then carefully removes her hat and tucks the flower behind her ear instead.
"I do love you, Howl," she says, looking up at him, and hears with only a little surprise that her voice is as clear as it was the first time she spoke after the spell had been lifted.
. . . it would be too much to hope that he would blush too, she thinks, a little wistfully.
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Dw i'n dy garu di. He'll teach her to speak Welsh. He'll take her to other worlds. He'll do anything to see her smile and hear her tell him she loves him.
He'll even argue with her for the right to hear it.
He... loves her.
"Dinner, cariad?"
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Things are getting harder to come by. There's rationing in the land now, in preparation for war.
But he steers her to one of the makeshift chairs and pours her a glass of brandy and sits opposite her, soaking in the evening. He has to find sanity in a time of insanity; he has to carve out little moments alone with her when there are so many people making so many demands on their time. It's been a nonstop parade of messages from the King -- four and five times daily -- each with new and more complex demands. He knows himself: at some point, he'll simply refuse.
And that will be after he's charged the king a ridiculous amount of gold for the things they have done. It's just the way things work. And as much as he dislikes the concept of benefiting from war, it has put a tidy sum in their pockets.
That's a good thing: he happens to think Sophie deserves to live in the absolute lap of luxury. He lifts his glass to hers.
"To you."
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Sophie shakes her head, hanging onto her glass of - brandy? Well, she may take a sip, but a sip, she tells herself firmly, is all. Romantic evenings are one thing; indulging in alcohol when there's a war on and work still to be done is quite another.
(Never mind that a good many people would say that when a war on is the best time to indulge in alcohol.)
"To -"
She's struck by happy inspiration.
"To the castle," she announces. "And all the doors - and the flower garden, and the shop, too. And Calcifer's fireplace."
Sophie doesn't really know how to do a pithy toast.
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She's his little no-longer-a-mouse, and he adores her. If he could have done so that first time he saw her on May Day, he would have adored her then.
"I can drink to that, if you let me add one thing to it."
He touches his glass to hers.
"To us. To you and me. To happily ever after." That, he thinks, completes the toast nicely. "Come, sit back, relax. It's only dinner. It's for you and me, because we deserve it."
What good is being a wizard if he can't bring a little beauty into their lives? Reaching over, he takes plates of food from where they've been hidden away and sets them on the table. If she won't take care of herself, he'll just have to do it for her.
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"As long as you don't forget to add in the hair-raising part, as well."
Their happily-ever-after may be happy, but even when Howl's being wonderful, like he is now - she is determined that she can't let herself be, well, overwhelmed by it. By Howl. She's seen more than enough women won completely over by his charm -
- but she's going to be his match. She won't be any good for him at all if she isn't.
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In fact, he won't stand for that. As he serves out a portion of food onto her plate and then his, he gives her a sly little grin. "If we weren't under the restrictions the King has put down due to the impending war, I'd take you on another hair-raising adventure just now. But honestly, we oughtn't risk it."
One thing he doesn't like is having his hands tied, and both this war and being in service to the king do that effectively and without question. "But when it's over, I'll see to it that your hair gets raised on as regular a basis as you like."
Pepper that with tender, sweet moments like this and things might just be perfect.
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There's no doubt about it: if time with Howl is guaranteed to be anything, it's the opposite of dull. Either it's terrifying or heart-thumping or, as in recent days, just plain exhausting, but Sophie thinks she'll never be bored again.
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He wants this moment to be perfect.
He needs it to be perfect.
What he hasn't told her (since she was so busy working and hardly noticed the fifth Royal Messenger of the day) is that the King has requested -- ordered -- him to Strangia, undercover, to... well, to spy. It's not a journey he particularly wants to undertake but he can't seem to find a way to slither out of this one: his hands are, regrettably, tied.
And he doesn't want Sophie to know: she's already got more than enough on her mind. This journey will be as perilous as his business with the Witch at midsummer... but he'll have less control.
"My hair, then. We already know how it looks under so many circumstances, don't we."
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An image of Ami appears in her mind.
"- blue, or purple! Though green would match your eyes."
She grins again, teasing.
The food is delicious, the breeze is mild enough that it's not doing a thing to disturb her hair, even without the protection of her hat, and Sophie is beginning to think that it is, perhaps, possible to have a perfect evening without something destroying it.
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He'd rather go without most days.
"I'm teasing. I'd go with green for you, but I fear blue or purple wouldn't do a thing for my complexion." For someone who spends as much time in the bath as he does, he's got a good enough sense of his own style.
What he really wants is to marry Sophie -- sooner rather than later -- and while she's already said yes, she hasn't yet decided on a date. "How are the wedding plans going, or should I not ask? You have been awfully busy working on supplies for the King." His only regret in it is that this silly war is interfering with their lives, and he'd rather not have that happen, diolch yn fawr iawn ichi.
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(The trouble, she knows, is that either way she'd end up feeling guilty. This is the difficulty with being possessed of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.)
"To be honest, I haven't had a moment to do anything with the wedding since the King started giving us work for the war - but of course it has to come first," she adds, with determined briskness. "It'll hardly do us much good to be married if Strangia comes marching in putting everything to waste."
Not that Howl couldn't just pick the castle up and move it - and some days, Sophie thinks he just might - but that would still leave her sisters and her stepmother and little Princess Valeria, and . . . no.
It's not an option.
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"Nothing you can say about war could possibly make me think that's more important than our own plans, Sophie." He's matter-of-fact about it; he's not accusing her of anything. They've both been busier than ever and he knows it. "If it were up to me, we'd have the wedding right here tonight."
It has nothing to do with his imminent departure for Strangia.
Nothing at all... or at least not much. It's just that for all his charm, all his wooing, all his flirtation, he's never truly been in love before. Where he used to get bored once the chase was over, things now couldn't be further from that truth: he wants to explore all manner of things, and he wants to do them all with Sophie at his side.
He loves her.
He's also never been big on following rules and protocol. However, Sophie is, and he'll bow to that; he doesn't want to see her unhappy.
"But it's not up to me, and I have the utmost appreciation for your wishes and the amount of planning a thing like that takes." All the appreciation in the world, however, can't keep him from reaching across the table to take her hand into his.
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"I'm going to try harder to be able to - I want to be married as much as you do, you know I do."
She pokes viciously at a potato with the fork in her free hand. "But it's no good to rush it, either, and have it be all a muddle and us - all right, Howl, me - feeling guilty in the middle of it and the King likely sending to call us straight out again -"
If they're going to be married, they're going to do it right. And how can they do it right with times like they are?
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