Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 2

his in the dark, at least. They looked their best in full moonlight.
    "I smelled your magic all the way inside." Tammas came and sat beside him. "What did you do to the grass?"
    "I grew it."
    Tammas sighed. "If I could do what you can do..."
    "Then what?"
    Tam chewed his bottom lip.
    Aeron liked to watch this funny little habit of his, so he didn't speak again until it stopped. "What do you want to be, Tam?"
    "I don't know. I know what I'm supposed to be..."
    Another habit of Tam's: not finishing his sentences. Aeron knew better than to wait for it. "I'm not supposed to be anything."
    Tammas wrinkled his nose. "Says who?"
    "My father. On days he bothers to acknowledge my existence at all." Aeron winced when it was out— he must have been more homesick than he'd known, to admit so much. A change of subject was needed. Tam often spoke of his dead mother, but never of his father, so Aeron asked, "What did your father do? Are you supposed to be like him?"
    "Yes, actually. He was the high cleric of the great monastery in town. He kept my mother out here to keep her a secret, and when I was born..." Tam shrugged.
    "Why didn't he live with her here? I like this place."
    "Some kinds of clerics are meant to be, um, chaste."
    "I don't understand."
    Tammas squirmed. "They can't..."
    Aeron liked to watch this, too. By that time he had deciphered the meaning of the new word, but he had no intention of saying so. He grinned. "Can't what?"
    "You're teasing me." Tammas laughed, red-faced.
    "I wouldn't."
    Tammas made an effort to school his face and failed beautifully. "I only mean to say that— that he was very high-ranking, and he would've lost his position if he was so open about a mistress and son. He would rather have kept the money and power than us."
    There was an astonishing thought. "Clerics have money and power?"
    Tammas laughed. "That's a longer explanation than I have the stomach for, I think. The upshot is that my mother wanted money and power for herself— security for us— and she thought I could get it if she raised me to the cleric life. It's the only way boys with no family can go up in the world. But I'm not powerful enough to rise that high. I think she— she always knew it.
    "Anyhow, I hate the monastery. It's the mendicant's path for me."
    "That seems wise. And much more interesting," Aeron admitted. The religion of the mortals, as Tammas practiced it, was simple. Take from the earth, thank the earth, receive blessings in return. They thought of elemental spirits as gods and treated them as such. The townspeople gladly paid for a gifted forest-cleric's ointments and poultices and teas, and Tammas had the trees to keep him company. Idyllic and charming.
    To add people and money and power would make it like Court life. Politics and backstabbing always followed power.
    "I would like to teach," Tammas admitted. "But the herbalism master is much stronger than me. Besides, they'd never give the job to a nobody."
    "You're somebody. Even I've learned from you."
    "You're the one who knows things."
    Aeron smirked and fluttered. "Yes, but you have moments of brilliance."
    Tam laughed and, as usual, his gaze trailed to Aeron's back. "Did you do something to your wings? They look different tonight."
    Aeron grinned. "It's only the moonlight, but thank you for noticing."
    "You must feel like an insect in a jar, the way I stare. I can't help it sometimes."
    "I've seen your bottle of crushed dragonfly wings." Aeron arched an eyebrow. He'd almost been sick again when he'd discovered it, but that was far from the most disturbing thing on Tammas' shelves, and most of it had come down from his mother.
    Tammas squirmed and looked away.
    Aeron took pity. "You can touch them, if you like. They won't break."
    He looked up from beneath a fringe of hair. "Really? I mean— I touched them that morning with the blankets, but..."
    Aeron had forgotten about that. What a strange mind this man had: he could forget his own rucksack in the middle of a forest path if some fascinating plant caught his eye but remembered the most obscure details with ease. Aeron said, "Go ahead."
    Tam leaned nearer, his ambient evergreen-lemon scent subverted by the spicy soapfoam he used to scrape the fuzz from his face every morning. It was already growing back, but it looked well on the sharp, pretty lines of his face. He held out one hand and touched, feather-light, at the top of Aeron's wing.
    Aeron smiled. "Just don't mind if I start fluttering; sometimes