Honoured.

Home to the Devil and the magician who take notes and are collaborating this morning on breakfast. There's a roaring fire in the woodstove, all my tiny lights are lit and nothing else and the rain pours down outside like a punishment for something dire. They are making marshmallow fluff toast and hot chocolate mixed with coffee. My very own early cafe mocha, as it were. Lochlan makes a last-minute healthy choice to peel an orange, as is his custom so that I don't die of scurvy but I always feel like Veruca Salt at the chocolate factory in life. 

Or maybe that's Augustus Gloop. 

Shakti. Lochlan's voice floods into my head. It's amusing. Caleb can't hear him in here.

Either way, I am well-fed, rested-up, touched-out and content right at this moment. I reach up to hit the pause and Caleb takes credit. Almost instantly, before my finger can touch that invisible but necessary button, he crows that he knew it would work. Lochlan glowers at him but says nothing and I let my arm come back in close against my body for warmth. Not pausing right here, suddenly I'd like to hurry through. Suddenly my handknit sweater isn't warm enough and the fire's heat isn't reaching me and the coffee's grown cold in the cup. 

Lochlan feels it and comes and pulls me in against him, his arm tight around me, fist holding me to his heartbeat. A kiss on the top of my head stakes his claim and I am written into the logs as his forever. I always thought I never deserved it maybe, or that he was simply too good to be true. Oftentimes I thought I would never be good enough or that his standards were so high I couldn't see over the top and then he reminds me that life is simple, that we have what we need and we have each other and I can't hear the devil any more and then Lochlan works his magic and I can't see the devil either and it's a moment I can finally breathe.