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Chapter Text

Chapter One – Moonrise

The night belonged to the moon.

It rose swollen and argent above the forest, spilling silver across the glade in a tide of light. The wards shimmered faintly at the perimeter, quiet traces of ancient craft: runes etched long ago into the bark of oaks, ivy that glowed in threads of green flame where it climbed the trunks, moss beneath the canopy thrumming with a low, enchanted hum. Old magic lay everywhere, gentle yet absolute, cradling the clearing in silence.

The wolf prowled within its circle.

He was no hulking brute but a lithe shadow, all long limbs and stark lines. His flanks were narrow, ribs etched against the silver glow, fur thinned in places where battles had torn through, though what remained caught the moonlight in a lavender sheen, soft as mist.

Amber eyes burned from his angular face, restless and wary, unblinking in the hush. Violence seemed carved into his body, yet when he moved it was with dreadful elegance, as though ruin itself had been reshaped into grace.

At the edge of the glade, another light unfolded.

Moonlight bent into form. Pale hair dissolved into fur, and a hare crouched in the grass, white as frost. Her coat glimmered faintly, her wide eyes luminous as twin moons. From her brow rose antlers, velvet-sheathed and impossible, gleaming like branches rimmed with silver.

The wolf stilled, growl fractured into silence.

The hare stepped forward. Dew scattered from her fur like falling stars. She did not falter, unbowed beneath his shadow. When she reached his chest, her luminous gaze met the amber blaze.

For a heartbeat he loomed above her, ribs heaving, jaws parted in hunger. A sound then tore from his chest, cracked and raw, neither rage nor desire but something deeper, almost breaking. Slowly the wolf folded down, curling himself around her slight form, tail sweeping close to seal her within his body’s hollow.

The hare pressed against his chest. Her nose touched the thin fur above his heart, antlers tangling lightly. What she found was not harshness but unexpected softness — velvet warmth carrying the scent of earth, faint smoke, and the ghost of chocolate lingering.

The Animagus self accepted this without question. Yet the woman within understood: this tenderness was his humanity, buried yet alive, woven into lavender fur and fragile ribs, present in the steadying of his breath as he sank into sleep.

The forest inclined itself.

Moondew lilies unfurled at the edge of the clearing, petals glowing with pale blue light. Flutterby bushes sighed, blossoms bleeding silver to indigo with each pulse of the wards. Even the devil’s snare, restless in its lattice beyond, slackened its coils.

At the treeline, a unicorn lingered.

Its coat shone white as starlight, its mane rippling silver, horn gleaming with quiet radiance. The creature did not turn away. Instead, its gaze fixed on the hare crowned with antlers. Slowly, solemnly, it bowed its head.

The wolf did not stir. He did not devour her. He guarded her.

Moonlight crowned them both as silence sealed the night.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two – The Pale Road

The glade still trembled with the residue of moonlight. The wards had dimmed, silver threads sinking into the soil, leaving only the hush of leaves and the sharp tang of crushed herbs.

The wolf convulsed, fur dissolving in smoke-like tufts as bone cracked and shuddered into frailty. What remained was the man — gaunt, bloodied, breath rasping, every scar blazing fresh as though carved anew.

Moonlight folded at the edge of the glade. The hare shimmered once, then dissolved into radiance, and Luna rose in her human form. For an instant she seemed made entirely of light — pale, luminous, skin bathed in silver as if the moon had spilled into her. Shadows clung like veils, concealing yet hinting at the soft grace of her frame. The moonstone at her throat gleamed faintly, the lone star that anchored her to flesh.

She crossed soundlessly to him, kneeling. Her hand pressed to his brow, cool and unyielding, her touch glowing faintly with light. Words fell from her lips, soft and lilting, neither spell nor prayer but a hymn of their own. The air hushed, listening.

The glow poured into him. Torn muscle knit enough to hold, bleeding stilled, breath steadied. He was left trembling yet alive, anchored.

His eyes fluttered open. Through blurred vision he saw her — hair spilling pale and endless, skin more radiance than flesh. For a heartbeat he thought he saw her bare, glowing in silver light, but pain and exhaustion clouded his sight. He closed his eyes again, afraid the vision would vanish if he looked too long.

“You should not…” His voice broke, raw with weakness.

Her hand smoothed the sharp line of his jaw. “I should,” she whispered. “The moon does not vanish when the night ends. It lingers, softening what it touches.”

At the treeline, the unicorn appeared. Its coat shimmered like liquid starlight, its horn alight with quiet fire. It did not come closer, yet its presence consecrated the glade, as though it bore witness to both wolf and man. Its shimmer folded into her light until she seemed more spectral than human.

Then it slipped back into shadow, leaving silence in its wake.

Luna lowered herself beside him, her pale hair spilling across his chest, her warmth a fragile anchor against the earth’s chill. He breathed her presence in, uncertain if he dreamed her or if she truly had come, moonlight made flesh.

When the trembling eased, she rose and offered her hand. He took it, unsteady but upright, the weight of his body pressed against her lightness.

They followed the pale road home, dawn threading faint at the horizon. Yet the forest had not surrendered the night. Moonlight flowers bowed along the path, their petals still glowing though the sun was rising. Their light clung stubbornly, as if the moon had kissed them too deeply to release.

They passed a fairy ring, mushrooms pale and perfect, woven into a circle that pulsed with quiet power. Luna touched one with the tip of her finger and smiled as though greeting kin. “The Fae never sleep,” she murmured, half to herself. The words sent a shiver down his spine.

Remus glanced back once and thought he saw the shimmer of the unicorn again, slipping between trees. When he looked a second time, the forest was empty.

Luna hummed as they walked, a sound soft as breath, carrying the strange peace of the glade with it. He could not decide if it soothed or unsettled him. She seemed wholly at home in this lingering twilight, half-moon, half-dawn, while he walked beside her battered and uncertain. Yet still he did not let go of her hand.

The memory clung, half real, half dream, and all the more dangerous for it.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three – The Quiet Hearth

The path wound down from the glade into the hollow where the cottage lay. Stone walls greyed with weather stood rooted in the hillside, ivy trailing across the roof like a crown left untended. Smoke drifted faintly from the chimney, carrying the scent of ash and peat.

Remus’s steps faltered at the threshold. His hand lingered on the latch, knuckles scraped raw from the night, skin drawn taut over bones too sharp. The cottage was his refuge and his cell, its walls steeped in years of silence. To let her cross this threshold seemed perilous, as though her presence might unmake the shadows he had so long allowed to claim him.

Luna did not hesitate. She passed him lightly, bare as moonlight, her skin pale and luminous as though she had carried the glade with her. Shadows followed her curves like ink, never quite concealing, never quite revealing. She moved as though such nakedness were not a vulnerability but a truth, as inevitable as dawn.

Remus followed, shoulders bowed, fully conscious of his own bareness. His body, thinned and scarred by years of transformations, felt brutal beside her radiance. The moon had stripped them both, wolf and hare, down to essence, and left only man and woman to walk back through the door.

Inside, the air smelled of woodsmoke, parchment, and dried herbs. Books lined the walls, their spines cracked, margins filled with his careful hand. The hearth lay in shadow, though embers glowed faintly beneath the ash.

Luna moved to it as though she belonged. She knelt before the fire, hair tumbling unbound down her back like a spill of light. With a flick of his wand, Remus coaxed the flames higher, and their glow caught her skin. For a moment she seemed more apparition than flesh, a creature the moon had forgotten to call home.

He stood, struck by the rawness of it. No cloaks, no pretence — only scars and light, silence and fire.

When she rose again, she crossed to the bundle she had left near the door. The ritual of dressing began as if it were part of the night’s magic: silks pale as frost drawn over her shoulders, whispering as they slid across her luminous skin; a gown woven fine enough to catch firelight like water; and at last a shawl of Acromantula silk threaded with enchanted webbing, its silver shimmer binding the layers together like spun starlight.

Piece by piece, she clothed herself in strangeness until she seemed less a woman and more an enchantment. Bare feet upon the rug, pale fabric spilling in folds, webbing gleaming faintly with residual magic — it was not modesty, but transformation.

Remus, still in the chair, did not look away. The ritual struck him as almost priestess-like, sanctifying the room itself. By clothing herself, she clothed the cottage, turning his lonely walls into something consecrated.

At last, she chose a book from his shelves — a battered volume of poetry, margins scribbled, spine nearly gone. She lowered herself cross-legged before the fire, drew her shawl about her like a mantle, and began to read aloud.

Her voice filled the cottage, soft yet luminous, turning worn words into incantations. They threaded into the beams, sank into the stone, wove through the air itself. Even the small, unremarkable things began to bear her mark: the teacups on the table glinted faintly, as if kissed by moonlight; the rug caught the warmth of her weight; the shelves seemed less burdened, less bowed by loneliness.

He leaned back into his chair, exhaustion pulling at him, yet his gaze did not stray. She read on, her voice making his battered home breathe as if for the first time.

By the time his eyes closed, the firelight danced as though it bent itself to her rhythm, and the house no longer seemed his alone. It remembered her.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four – The Trace of Dawn

The morning light was thin, washed of colour, seeping cautiously through the small windows of the cottage. Remus stirred in his chair by the hearth, bones aching, every scar reminding him of the night before. For a moment he thought he had dreamed it all — the hare, the moonlit glade, the ritual of her presence.

Then he saw it.

Her shawl was draped across the back of the chair opposite. It had been spun from the wool of mooncalves, shorn only under the waning crescent and woven with charms that caught and held lunar light. The fabric seemed impossibly soft, cool to the touch, breathing faintly as though alive. In the dawn it shimmered pale as frost, still carrying the glow of moonlight, its threads shifting with an inner radiance that refused to fade.

Beneath it lay the slip she had shed: a garment of Acromantula silk, pared back and fluid, cut on narrow straps and shaped to cling like water poured over her body. Now it pooled across the chair in languid folds, thin fabric gleaming faintly in the low firelight, its presence as intimate as breath still lingering in the air.

On the table beside him, two teacups rested. One bore the faintest rim of silver light at its lip, as if her touch lingered there. The other was empty yet still warm.

The air itself seemed altered. His cottage, once thick with smoke and silence, now carried a gentler breath, as if she had coaxed it into remembering it could be more than stone and shadow.

He rose stiffly, drawn to the chair. His fingers brushed the shawl, stroking the living softness of mooncalf wool. It shivered faintly beneath his touch, as though acknowledging him. He reached lower, daring to graze the silk slip pooled across the seat. The fabric clung cool and weightless to his fingertips, almost intimate in the way it seemed to echo her form. His chest tightened, and he withdrew his hand sharply, as though the act had crossed a line he could not name.

A flicker of light caught his eye.

It came from the narrow crack beneath the bathroom door — golden and steady, touched with silver shimmer, nothing like the pale dawn outside. He moved towards it without thought, bare feet soundless against the worn floorboards. The closer he came, the more the air shifted, carrying with it the scent of herbs, sharp and green, layered with the steam of warm water and something subtler, something luminous.

He paused at the threshold. Through the thin gap, he glimpsed her.

Luna sat in the deep copper tub, steam rising around her like a veil. Sprigs of rosemary and mint floated on the surface, their oils perfuming the air, mingled with crushed moonwort that glowed faintly blue where the light caught it. Her hair streamed pale and damp down her back, skin bathed in a radiance that seemed to come not from the lantern but from her own body.

She leaned back against the tub’s curve, eyes half closed, her expression serene, as if she belonged not in a man’s house but in some temple of forgotten gods. The water shimmered faintly with magic, eddies of silver threading through it, as though the moon itself had dissolved into the bath.

Remus leaned against the doorframe, breath shallow, scars pulling tight across his skin. He meant to retreat, to leave her privacy intact, yet her eyes opened.

She did not startle. Instead, she turned her head slightly, her lips curving soft as moonlight.

“You should not watch from shadows,” she said. “The moon has already seen us both.”

The words unknotted something in him — guilt, perhaps, or fear — until all that remained was the fragile thread of her voice weaving through the steam.
Remus straightened from the doorframe. For a moment he hesitated, scars prickling under his skin as though they might speak for him. Then he moved, slow but certain, and pressed his hand against the latch. The hinges sighed as he stepped inside.

The bathroom was small, the stone walls damp with steam, lantern-light gilding the copper of the tub. Luna did not shrink or cover herself. Her pale body gleamed faintly in the scented water, herbs curling around her like offerings. She watched him as though he were another element of the room, expected, inevitable.

He lowered himself onto the worn wooden stool beside the tub. For the first time in years, he did not try to hide the ruin of his body: the thinness, the scars carved deep across his chest and arms. Her gaze lingered, soft and unpitying, as if every mark told a story she already understood.

The scent of rosemary and moonwort filled his lungs. Steam curled between them, blurring edges until it seemed the room itself was dissolving into light.
“You are not afraid,” he said, voice roughened.

Her hand lifted from the water, drops trailing silver down her wrist. She let them fall against his scarred forearm, her touch as gentle as falling dew.
“There is nothing here to fear,” she answered. “Not tonight. Not with the moon ebbing.”

She traced one mark, long and cruel, where it slashed across his collarbone and down his chest. Her fingers followed it slowly, unhurried, as if reading an inscription left by time itself. Steam curled around them, the faint glow of moonwort casting the water blue against her skin.

Remus drew a shallow breath, every instinct taut with the old shame of those scars, yet beneath her touch something shifted. It was not pity she gave him, nor indulgence. It was benediction — as if her hand sanctified what he had once believed unredeemable.

His eyes closed, the weight of years pressing and then easing, released into the warm air between them.

The cottage no longer felt like his prison. It felt, for the first time, like a sanctuary.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five – A House That Breathes

The hours folded upon themselves in the small Welsh cottage; the silence softened into something companionable.

Luna brewed the tea first. She moved lightly in the kitchen, pale hair catching what little light the windows admitted. The kettle hissed, and she poured steaming water over leaves with a slow reverence, as though each moment deserved its own spell. When she set the cups down upon the table, the rising tendrils of steam curled into faint shapes — hares, moons, half-forgotten constellations — before dissolving into the rafters.

Remus accepted his cup with a small incline of the head. His scarred hands dwarfed the delicate porcelain, yet he held it with unexpected gentleness. He sipped, eyes half-lidded, the taste of bergamot and mint mingling with the memory of moonwort. Luna’s gaze lingered on him, and she thought the steam bent toward his mouth as if it too recognised him.

Later came a lunch of “picky bits,” as Luna called them — cheeses crumbling soft as chalk, pears that glistened with juice, bread still warm from the oven of a neighbour she had charmed into sharing. Remus cut slices with careful precision, his sleeves rolled back, the taut lines of his forearms marked with pale scars that caught the light. He offered her the first plate, an unspoken courtesy, and she accepted as though it were part of some ancient ritual between them.

The afternoon waned into dusk. They did not speak much, but neither silence nor speech was needed. Luna curled herself in the armchair, shawl about her shoulders, reading aloud from one of his battered books. Her voice transformed the text into incantation, each word turning to music, threading through the air like silver smoke. The flames in the hearth leaned toward her voice, as if compelled, and the shadows on the walls shifted to listen. Remus leaned against the mantel, half in shadow himself, watching her as if she were another hearth-light he might warm against.

When the moon rose, pale and full bellied above the hills, it cast its glow through the windows, pooling across the floorboards. Remus stood in its path, the light painting his body with reverence. He was lean, almost too thin, taut muscle stretched over bone, his frame marked by scars that scored his skin like half-faded runes. Yet there was beauty in it — not in spite of the ruin, but because of it, the fragility and ferocity bound together.

A towel slung low across his hips clung damp from the bath, water still shining along the ridges of his collarbone, trailing in rivulets down the flat plane of his stomach. Luna watched from her chair, the book fallen silent in her lap. The glow caught at his skin, and for a moment he looked like something carved of both shadow and silver.

She raised her hand slightly, not reaching to touch but to direct, and the fire brightened. Its light mingled with the moons, so that he stood bathed in both, no part of him concealed.

“The scars are maps,” she said quietly, her voice a spell of its own. “They show where you have been. They make you luminous.”

At her words the air shifted. For years the scars had been his shame, reminders of the wolf’s violence, the curse etched upon his skin. Yet her voice softened them, transfigured them. A faint shimmer stirred across his chest, soft blue light blooming where her gaze lingered, each mark glowing like starlight half-buried beneath his skin.

He stilled. The glow did not burn. It pulsed gently, as though her magic had coaxed moonlight into his body, refusing to let those scars remain only wounds.

Luna’s eyes, wide and luminous, did not waver. She had not reached to touch, yet her magic touched him still, threading itself through the fire, the walls, the very air.

The fire crackled low in the grate, but it did not fade as it usually did. The coals held their glow long past their nature, threads of silver clinging to them like memory. The cottage seemed to breathe with them: tea cooling on the table, crumbs on the plate, the scent of soap and woodsmoke tangled together. Moonlight pooled unbroken across the floorboards, the walls sighing as though blessed.

Time passed softly, marked not by clocks or words but by the rhythm of breath, the tilt of the moon, the fire’s slow collapse into silver embers that refused to die.

When Remus looked down again, the glow still threaded across his chest. He touched it with trembling fingers, half expecting it to vanish, but it remained — soft, unearthly, calm. He knew it would fade with dawn, but in moonlight it would return, her benediction etched into him for as long as he lived. His voice, when it came, was rough and low. “You have bewitched me.”

Luna only smiled, her shawl slipping further from her shoulders, her gaze steady as moonrise.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six – The Moon’s Echo

The fire had sunk to a bed of glowing coals, silver threads stubbornly refusing to die. The room was hushed, steeped in the mingled scents of woodsmoke, herbs, and damp wool. Luna had not moved from her chair, her shawl half-slipped, her eyes reflecting the moonlight like pools of quicksilver.

Remus stood at the threshold of the moment, breath uneven. His hand, still resting against his chest, felt the slow pulse of the glow beneath his skin. He stepped away from the hearth, into the narrow corridor, unable to resist testing whether it was true, whether it had followed him into shadow.

In his bedroom, the moon spilled through the high window in a long pale blade. He tugged his shirt open and stood before the glass. The glow answered at once. Blue light bloomed faintly across his scars, constellations strung over his chest and shoulders, pulsing in rhythm with his heart.

He raised trembling fingers, brushed one line that slashed from collarbone to sternum. It brightened under his touch, as though acknowledging him. For the first time in years, he did not flinch.

“You expected them to fade.”

Her voice was quiet, certain, from the doorway. He turned, startled, though perhaps he should not have been. Luna leaned against the frame, barefoot, shawl of mooncalf wool gathered about her, hair cascading pale and unbound. The light loved her, clinging to her as if she were its chosen vessel.

“They do not fade,” she said softly, stepping closer. “Not while the moon remembers you.”

Her hand came to rest lightly against his chest. The glow leapt beneath her palm, the shimmer swelling as if she had summoned the tide.

“You will carry it always,” she whispered, her eyes steady on his. “A mark that is no longer only pain. It belongs to you, and to me.”

He closed his eyes, throat tightening. Her words wove through him like another kind of spell, one that refused denial.

Her hand lingered against his chest; fingers spread over the faint blue glow. The scars pulsed gently beneath her touch, no longer brutal slashes but luminous lines, stitched with moonlight.

Remus drew a breath that shuddered. His hand lifted, uncertain, then settled against her wrist. He did not move her away. He anchored her there, his thumb brushing the fine bones of her hand as though testing whether she was real.

Luna’s gaze did not falter. She stepped closer, her shawl slipping from one shoulder, leaving her bathed in moonlight alone. Her other hand rose, trailing lightly along the ridge of a scar across his shoulder, following its path with delicate precision. She traced it not as wound, but as cartographer, mapping constellations onto his skin.

He opened his eyes and found her impossibly near, the silver of her irises reflecting the shimmer he carried. For a moment he did nothing, taut with restraint, with disbelief that such gentleness might belong to him. Then, slowly, his hand left her wrist and lifted to her face. His fingers brushed the edge of her jaw, feather-light, reverent.

Her lips parted, not in surprise but in quiet welcome. The air between them thickened, alive with the scent of mint and woodsmoke, the faint crackle of the fire still alive in the grate beyond.

“You should not…” he began, voice breaking low.

“I should,” she interrupted, voice soft yet steady as starlight. “Because the moon already has.”

Her words undid him. His forehead lowered until it rested against hers, breath mingling, his scars still glowing faint blue between them. For a long, suspended moment they lingered there, touching without kiss, pressed into the same breath, the same heartbeat.

The cottage seemed to withdraw around them, the corners melting into shadow, the sound of the fire softening until it was only the faint hiss of coals. All that remained was the pulse between them — his chest beneath her hand, her breath ghosting over his lips.

The shawl slid from her entirely now, folding into a pale heap on the floorboards. Her slip clung in places where the moonlight caught, its sheen fragile as water. Remus let his palm flatten lightly against her hip, not to claim, but to steady, as though she might drift from him if he did not.

Her fingers moved again, tracing a scar across his ribs. It flared softly blue under her touch, light blooming between them like a lantern. He shuddered, not from pain but from the strange, devastating grace of it.

“You glow,” she whispered, voice scarcely more than breath. “Even when you think yourself shadow.”

He opened his eyes. Her gaze was luminous, reflecting both fire and moon, as though she herself were lit from within.

The silence swelled, heavy yet delicate, and he leaned closer, his lips brushing the edge of her hairline, the faintest touch, no more than a breath disguised as a kiss. She inhaled sharply, and her hand rose from his chest to the side of his neck, fingertips lingering against the sharp line of his jaw.

Neither moved further. The kiss did not come. What lingered instead was the suspension, the ache of proximity, of knowing yet not yielding. His body curved toward hers, hers against his, silks and skin pressed together under the soft wash of moonlight.

The night stretched endless. The fire refused to die. The moon lingered above the hills, and the glow upon his scars pulsed in time with their joined breath.
When at last his forehead rested against hers again, his voice was rough, unguarded, almost a prayer.

“Stay.”

Her lips curved faintly, her eyes steady as moonrise. “Always.”

The cottage sighed as though in answer, the walls breathing with them, cradling their suspension in silence.

By dawn, the glow upon his scars had faded. Remus stirred in bed, his modesty preserved by a linen sheet. The moonlight had gone, yet its memory clung to him, vivid as breath.

He turned his head and found Luna already risen. Her silken slip lay pooled on the chair, pale as shed skin, while she stood before the mirror, pale hair cascading loose down her back.

Her voice drifted into the morning as she dressed, lyrical and mysterious. “Clothes are veils. We let them shape what others see. Silk remembers closeness, velvet remembers weight, and even thread remembers every hand that wove it.”

Her hands slipped into a new garment — a gown the colour of palest dawn, woven from thestral hair so fine it shimmered like glass when it caught the light. She tied it loosely at the waist, the fabric falling in layers that seemed half solid, half mist. Over it she drew a mantle of storm-grey velvet, embroidered faintly with silver thread that curled into patterns like wind.

Remus watched, the scars on his chest bare and plain. Yet he could not look away. She was no longer the moonlit creature of the night but something that made the daylight itself feel enchanted.

“You’re staring,” she said, voice lilting, a hint of teasing threaded through.

“You make it impossible not to,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep.

She turned at last, her eyes luminous in the morning light. Crossing to the bed, she touched the sheet at his shoulder, smoothing it lightly as though to anchor him to the day.

“The moon marks us both,” she whispered. “You in scars, me in shadows. Neither should be hidden.”

Her hand lingered, then withdrew. The cottage seemed to breathe with her still, every corner carrying her presence into the daylight.

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven – The Shadow of Daylight

The cottage was hushed, the air weighted with the faint perfume of spent firewood. On the table by the window, two teacups sat cooling, drained to their dregs. One bore the faint crescent of her lips, a pale print against the rim.

Remus’s eyes lingered on them, longer than he wished. The cups were proof, silent evidence of her presence. They seemed to hum with memory, though they now stood empty, hollowed vessels echoing her absence.

She stood at the door, pale gown whispering around her ankles, mantle of storm-grey velvet brushing the floor, edged in mooncalf fur. Her pale gown whispering around her ankles, hair spilling silver down her back, bare feet pressed to the floorboards with the ease of one who belonged in every space she entered.

“It is better if I walk,” she said, as though speaking to the walls rather than him. “The grass remembers more when feet are bare.”

He rose, words crowding but unsaid, and crossed the room to her. His silence was heavy, yet it spoke more than plea or command.

She turned. Her lips brushed the crest of his shoulder where scar met sinew, a kiss lighter than breath yet heavy as benediction.
“You glow still,” she murmured, though the daylight left his scars dull and ordinary.

Then she slipped into the morning, hair streaming pale against the hills.

Remus stood in the doorway long after she was gone, his hand covering the place where her lips had touched. Behind him, the two cups cooled into silence. The cottage felt emptier for her absence yet irrevocably altered by her presence.

The hills received her as though she had been expected. Grass bent beneath her steps, whispering against her ankles as though to hold her. Bare feet pressed into the earth without leaving mark, as if she were more apparition than woman.

Each blade of grass trembled as she passed, carrying her memory down into the soil. She moved with patience, not haste, her shawl folded into the wicker basket she carried.

The land answered her softly. Foxgloves leaned into her hands; bells beaded with dew that clung to her fingers like glass beads. Moonwort gleamed faint silver in the daylight, pliant and ready, bending into her palm with reverence. Sopophorous beans sweated slow droplets that she gathered carefully, murmuring thanks before tucking them away.

In the shadow of an oak, she found dittany rooted deep, its green sharp and unyielding. She coaxed it free, its scent blooming sharp and alive as she added it to her basket.

From time to time she paused, lifting her head as though listening. It was then she glimpsed fragments — a white flank dissolving into mist, the shimmer of a horn vanishing between trees. The unicorn lingered only as memory, never as presence, yet it was enough to make her lips curve faintly, as though she and the wild shared a private pact.

By noon the basket brimmed with herbs, their scents mingling into something both raw and holy. Moonwort glimmered beside sopophorous pods, dittany pressed sharp against foxglove stems. She cradled the weight against her chest, a harvest not of necessity alone but of devotion.

When at last she turned back, the cottage stood small against the breadth of the hills, smoke coiling faintly from its chimney. She paused, the wind tugging at her gown, her hair streaming like pale flame. For a moment she looked otherworldly, part of the hills themselves, as if she had never belonged to walls at all.

Her lips parted, words offered to no one but the air.

“Even the earth longs to be carried home.”

She descended, barefoot, each step a benediction.

The sun had slipped westward when she reached the cottage once more. Its stones glowed faintly with the day’s warmth, shadows stretching long across the door. She pressed her shoulder to the wood and slipped inside, soundless.

The room smelled faintly of ash and parchment. Remus sat at the table, a book open though his eyes lingered nowhere near the page.

What reached him first was scent. Dittany sharp and bitter, moonwort soft and cool, the sweetness of sopophorous pods. The air swelled with the breath of the hills, rich with untamed magic.

He looked up.

She was there, basket brimming in her arms, gown wrinkled by the walk, strands of pale hair clinging to her cheek. The shawl of mooncalf wool hung over one arm, its silver threads catching the dimming light.

Without a word she set the basket down. Herbs spilled across the wood, their mingled perfumes filling the room until it seemed half meadow, half cottage.
Remus closed the book slowly.

Luna’s eyes lifted to his, luminous, unreadable. “The hills lend what they wish. One only has to ask softly enough.”

Her fingers brushed the rim of the basket once more, then she turned away, as if it were nothing remarkable to carry the wilderness itself into a man’s home.

Remus sat very still, the scents wrapping around him. He knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he would never be rid of them.

The cottage smelled of her now.