In the real world, Svea would never have been so bold as she was with this man. She wouldn’t have taken the kiss in stride. She’d have been horribly awkward until she could pull herself away and hide in her house with the door shut, locked and bolted. But he was a figment of her imagination, and none of this was really happening anyway. He didn’t even exist. There was no sense in shame with no one to judge her. And yet she found herself blushing, more at her self-judgment than his, when she was so forward.
Luckily, he let it pass, and Svea breathed a sigh of relief and glanced out the window at the icy landscape outside. The storm seemed to have gotten worse, but the fire still raged inside the cottage. She turned when he asked another question, and frowned a little in thought.
“I suppose so?”
Did she really have a way to tell though? She remembered going to bed, without recalling getting up, but that could mean she’d been hit on the head with a log for Nana to fetch. She glanced over the walls and the sofa and the toward the kitchen where suddenly the smell of roast chicken and vegetables became a reality and glanced back to the man. “I end up here sometimes. But it’s too clean to be home outside, you know. Dreams.” She chuckled at the thought of fully cleaning her cottage and how long that state would last. But she realized suddenly, or perhaps it was something deep and foreign reminding her of her promise. She was dangerously close to breaking her oath.
She smiled at the man and offered an explanation that was half-truth, and the rest false by omission. “My familiar is an energetic ball of chaos in fur form.”
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