Work Text:
Jesus had died and Aziraphale lay behind the manger of her employer’s barn, wrapped in thick woollen blankets and loose hay. She had drawn the shortest straw among the dairy maids, so it was her duty to guard the cattle against witches for the night.
A cow burped nearby, startling Aziraphale almost out of her skin. She held her breath, and listened, but apart from the chewing of ruminating animals (and the sound of her own heartbeat) the night was eerily quiet.
She whispered an anxious prayer and snuggled back into the blankets, squeezing a handle of an axe just in case prayer wouldn’t be enough. Every Easter since Christ had been killed, the evil preyed upon the innocent until his resurrection. The witches sneaked around to collect ingredients for their vile spells and gathered together for their satanic sermons. Aziraphale was all alone, protecting Gabriel Engelspel's pedigree cows from their evil eye, because her master was more worried about his good cattle fortune, than his servant’s well–being.
Aziraphale was properly miffed about that, and the anger seemed to ease her anxiety so she gave herself permission to seethe. Apart from a single ray of moonlight that came through the gap of the window shutter, it was pitch dark, but she could hear the calm breathing of the cows, and the shuffling of the pig in her pen. Absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary, and honestly, she knew the only (alleged) witch in the village, and while Agnes was a peculiar one, Aziraphale couldn’t imagine her sneaking around in the dark. She had given Aziraphale ointment to treat chilblains once, which had been quite odd at the time, but the ointment had become a godsend two weeks later, when Aziraphale had got her hands chilled while working.
Aziraphale sighed and closed her eyes, listening to the cozy sounds of the animals. She wouldn't be able to sleep even if she wanted to, so there’d be no harm in resting her eyes a bit. She would still be ready, if any intruders made themselves known. She had her axe.
She fell asleep.
The next thing she knew was the tumble of four cows surging to their feet. Based on the wet splattering sounds, at least one of them literally shat themselves, which was a silly thing to pick out of the cacophony of moos and stomps that completely drowned Aziraphale’s own startled yelp. She rolled onto all fours on the dusty floor, frantically searching for her axe, as the door opened, letting in a widening ray of moonlight. A human-shaped shadow sneaked into the barn, and the light disappeared as fast as it had appeared.
The darkness didn’t last for long though, because the intruder had a lantern which they now opened, revealing a warm sphere of light.
“Whoooooa there, Beata, Hjärta, Hilda, and Krona, no food yet, ‘s not yet morning.”
Aziraphale’s fingers found the axe on the exact moment she recognised the voice.
“Crowley?!” she hissed, standing up.
The intruder startled and almost dropped her lantern, before pointing the light at the corner Aziraphale had been sleeping in.
“Oh,” Crowley muttered in response. She wiped her forehead with a nervous sweep, brushing away the red locks that had escaped her headscarf. “Um. Hello. That’s an axe.”
Aziraphale squeezed the item in question. “Why are you here?”
Crowley made a restless gesture that looked like she wanted to cross her arms, but aborted it in mid-shrug since that would’ve risked the lantern burning her skirts. Apart from the lack of a worker's apron, Crowley looked no different from how she’d been when Master Gabriel had dismissed her almost a year ago. Rumor had it she’d had a dalliance with Master Gabriel's brother, but nobody knew for sure.
“You’re not a witch.” Aziraphale continued, trying to shoo away the uneasy feeling growing in her stomach. The cows stared at the scene with only a mild suspicion now that they had deemed the intruder familiar. That would make all sorts of mischief easy! What if Crowley was here for revenge?
“‘kay, good, so… if I clip some hair from one of these ladies—” she waved the lantern towards the cows. “And be on my way. How’s that?”
Aziraphale straightened. “No.”
“Gonna swing that axe at me?”
“No? Yes! Don't come any closer!”
Aziraphale realized her silliness immediately. Crowley lifted one brow, laid her lantern on the floor and took scissors from her belt. She didn't have to come to Aziraphale because Aziraphale wasn't between her and the cows, but cornered behind the manger!
Many things happened at once. Crowley rushed between Krona and Hjärta to snip hair from the ends of their woofy ears. Krona startled and stepped as far back as her tether let her, and unfortunately kicked the lantern. Thankfully, miraculously, the fire snuffed out instead of spreading, but Aziraphale, in progress of storming around the manger, was left in absolute darkness in mid-run, and ended up stumbling right into a hairy, bony flank of a cow. Someone (probably Crowley) pushed her aside and someone else (probably the cow) kicked her shin hard enough for her to see stars, but she was nothing but determined.
The axe got lost somewhere, but Aziraphale threw herself at Crowley and got a hold of her arm (she hoped it was her arm, anyway). Unfortunately with a hurting shin and a completely lost balance, the effect was the opposite of what she had hoped for, and she found herself once again on her knees on the dirty barn floor, looking at the door closing in front of her.
“Fuck.”
She scrambled back on her feet and collided with the door with her whole weight in fear that Crowley might've barricaded it somehow. She hadn't, though, and Aziraphale practically flew outside. After the darkness of the barn, the starry sky and the full moon were almost blindingly bright. The eerie light sparkled on the patches of snow that were still around, and Crowley had nowhere to hide. Aziraphale spotted her on the footpath, standing astride a broom, of all things, with a dark coffee pot hanging on its handle—just like the witches in the most ridiculous stories nobody actually believed in.
“You’re not a witch,” Aziraphale repeated her earlier words, and grabbed her with a new sense of certainty and mortified fury. “That wasn't very sporting!”
Crowley tried to yank her arm back, but this time Aziraphale was prepared.
“Who was it? Mikaela? Ullrika?” she asked, trying to control her breathing. “I know they cheated when we drew the straws. Are they laughing behind the corner? Poor Aziraphale, got scared of a witch, ha ha ha. They paid you, or what?”
Aziraphale stared at her former colleague, chest heaving and hands shaking from either the shock, the cold, or just mortification. Or all of them, probably. Crowley stared back, eyes wide. She opened her mouth, and Aziraphale was ready to dismiss any excuse she might come up with, when suddenly something swayed.
No. It was Crowley, who swayed. Aziraphale tightened her hold, thinking the girl might faint, but—no.
Not Crowley.
The broom!
It dipped.
It was like a horse shifting its weight at first, but then it rose again, and its bristles lifted clean off the frozen path. Crowley twisted, trying to wrench herself free, but Aziraphale still had her by the arm.
“What the—don’t you dare run off!” Aziraphale dug her heels into the snow.
“I am not running, I am—” Crowley yelped as the broom jerked higher “—flying! Let go!”
“I will do no such thing!”
The broom shot up another foot.
Aziraphale’s feet left the ground.
There was a brief moment where neither of them quite processed it—Aziraphale still clutching Crowley, Crowley half-turned in alarm—before gravity seemed to forget them entirely, and they rose above the shingle roofs of the enclosed farmyard.
“Stop it!” Aziraphale gasped, now hanging off Crowley with both hands.
“’m not the one trying to hitch a ride!” Crowley snapped back, gripping the broom handle with one hand and flailing for balance with the other. “You’re making it worse!”
“What?!”
“Youre an extra weight!”
“I beg your pardon—!”
The broom tilted sharply. For one dreadful second Aziraphale’s grip began to slip and her feet kicked helplessly at empty air. Crowley swore and lunged, catching Aziraphale by the waist just as she began to drop.
“Have you completely lost your mind?!” Crowley hissed, hauling her back up with surprising strength. “If you fall from here, you’ll break your neck!”
“You’re blaming me?!” Aziraphale wailed hysterically, not believing her eyes nor ears nor the wind under her skirts.
Instead of answering, Crowley stilled, and looked at the moon like she had never seen it before. Then she looked over her shoulder at Aziraphale, and grimaced.
“Well, shit,” she muttered. “Hold on then.”
“I am holding—!”
“Properly!”
The broom surged to the sky.
Aziraphale didn’t have enough air in her lungs for a scream. She wrapped both arms around Crowley’s waist and held on for her life, as the barn, the yard, and the entire wretched village shrank below them in a monochrome blur of white and shadow.
She didn’t open her eyes until much later. The moon and stars were still there, but the world below had just…washed out. There was nothing below them but an endless plain of…void.
“Sweet Jesus…”
“Not the deity to swear on where we’re going.”
Aziraphale was too confused to even begin to unpack that. “But there’s nothing!” she insisted, staring down. “Nothing at all?! Where’s—Oh no. I’m not dead, am I?”
Crowley looked at her over her shoulder. “That’s the lake, Aziraphale. Of course there’s nothing, it’s just ice.”
“But—” Aziraphale kept staring down, until, indeed, she spotted a couple of darker patches that could very well be islands, and the darker veins of what must be the fissures on the lake’s ice cover. “Oh.”
It was a bizarre thing to see from above.
She didn’t have time to be transfixed with it for long though, because suddenly Crowley did something, and the broom dipped again, swayed a bit to the side, and started descending with increasing speed.
Aziraphale’s stomach lurched. “Oh no…Oh… Oh no! We’re—”
“Hold on!”
“We’re gonna die!”
“Shut up! Look!”
Aziraphale opened one eye (when had she closed them?) and peeked, nose smushed on Crowley’s shoulder blade. There was an island in front of them, lit with small fires that grew larger and larger as they got closer. Bonfires.
The villagers lit Easter fires to fend off the witches with light and smoke, but deep in her gut Aziraphale knew this was not like that. There was a pathway lit with lanterns that winded uphill until it disappeared into the forest, and a tiny log cottage by a lopsided pier that had seen better days, but still held strong against the forces of frozen lake around it.
That’s where they landed with a soft thud, holding tightly on each other for balance, as gravity once again remembered they existed.
“Welcome to Kyöpelivuori,” said a cheerful voice from the shadow of the cottage that must be a sauna, based on the scent. A girl with a black hair stepped in front of them, holding a bucket. Crowley nodded, dug a small coin from her hip pouch and dropped it into it with a tiny clink. She turned to leave her broom by the wall of the sauna, next to several other similar tools, when the girl interrupted her.
“I can count, you know.” Crowley glanced at Aziraphale, huffed, and dug out another coin. The girl smiled and whistled twice, which seemed to be a sign for a young man of curly black hair and dark skin. He arrived holding two linen towels, pushed them in Aziraphale’s arms, bowed, and left.
Crowley crossed her arms and turned to Aziraphale with a resigned sigh. “Well, this is…a thing.”
Aziraphale, who had had just enough time to remind herself of every salacious rumour about witch gatherings, could only swallow. “A…thing.”
“I—ngh.” Crowley waved her hand in the air as if it explained anything, and stepped closer, to a whispering distance. Obviously they weren’t alone. “Didn’t really think ahead, but… um. Now that you're here…” She bit her lip, searching for words. “Best if you pretend to be my friend, stay close, and—um. Don't freak out? Please?”
Aziraphale looked at her, and squeezed the towels against her chest. There had been a time she would've been overjoyed to be called Crowley’s friend, but now she was busy recounting the events of the night and second-guessing her sanity.
“You're freaking out.”
“I'm not.”
“You’re shaking.”
“We just flew here!”
“Yeah… that. But—” Crowley laid her hand on Aziraphale’s arm.. “It’ll be okay,” she pleaded in a whisper. “You don’t need to participate…you know, things. Just follow my lead, enjoy the food, and we’ll be back before sunrise, yeah?”
Aziraphale drew a deep breath, acutely aware she couldn’t get back home without Crowley’s help. She would have to deal with this somehow, and she would have to be calm about it. She was on an island with…witches? Who would be participating in…things? Best not to speculate on that. So far all of the conclusions she’d jumped in during this wretched night had been wrong, so maybe she should trust Crowley with this. Crowley might be a witch, apparently, but Aziraphale had known her to always be on the side of the underdog, and treating even the most timid maids fairly. That’s why she’d been so hurt and angry when she’d suspected Crowley had teamed up with others to prank her. Aziraphale was disproportionately relieved that hadn't been the case.
Now that she’d learned the witches weren’t all old scary hags with warts and evil eyes, she’d survived a flight in one piece and was now steadily on her own two feet, she was ready to feel…well, not curious, exactly, but something in that direction for sure.
“What are these for?” she finally asked, lifting the towels.
Crowley gave her a confused look, before taking one of the towels for herself. “We both smell like cow shit,” she said, and nodded towards the sauna. “Come on, we’ll be late for the banquet.”
In the sauna Aziraphale’s fragile confidence started to waver again. Naked women of all ages sat on benches, washed each other's backs, and rubbed herbs on their skin, all the while gossiping and laughing. It was like a bridal sauna, where the female relatives and friends of the bride prepared her for the wedding ceremony. Aziraphale herself had participated twice, and after washing and relaxing in the heat, they had drunk beer and done innocent spells for the bride’s good fortune and…well, fertility..
What kind of spells would real witches do?
Apart from a couple of greetings and nods, nobody paid Aziraphale and Crowley any attention when they washed themselves and climbed up to the benches to warm up. Crowley took the ladle, threw water on the stove, and closed her eyes, clearly enjoying the heat. Aziraphale tried to do the same, but she couldn’t help but steal glances from under her lashes. Crowley had no visible signs of the rough life she must have faced after losing her job, and even though they hadn't talked for over a year, Aziraphale realised her heart still fluttered at the sight of her. Or maybe that was just the nerves? Did nerves also explain the sudden urge to reach out and feel if the spark of power that let Crowley fly could be felt from her skin?
Aziraphale took the ladle instead, and threw more water on the stones.
Soon the girl from earlier came to the door to announce the time, and Aziraphale found herself following Crowley up the lantern-lit pathway under the starry sky, wearing linen gowns that someone had left for them at the front room of the sauna. The thin fabric didn’t warm much, but the heat of the sauna still lingered on Aziraphale’s skin when they got to a huge cabin on the hill.
Once they stepped inside, they were met with warmth from the huge stone fireplace and bread-oven, and the scent of a well cooked meal. There were over two dozen people sitting on blankets on the straw covered floor, all wearing light coloured gowns so they looked like ghosts under the dim lights of wall lanterns. There were remains of an ox on the stovetop, and a grey-haired man cutting pieces and setting them on thin wood planks that were distributed to the awaiting people. There were also dozens of birch bark baskets filled with dark rye malt pudding on the side table. Crowley picked up one and pushed it into Aziraphales hands. Everyone seemed to carry a pot or a pan with them, and Aziraphale soon found a reason for that when Crowley got several scoopfulls of soup into her coffee pot. All the food smelled so heavenly Aziraphale’s stomach growled out loud.
“Come.” Crowley took her hand and pulled her to one of the blankets, where they sat side by side by the pot. They shared one spoon, a drinking cup, and a wooden bowl since everyone had brought their own and Aziraphale of course had none. Crowley filled the cup with honey mead when people passed bottles from group to group, and offered it to Aziraphale first. She was about to decline out of politeness, but Crowley just winked, and drank directly from a bottle. Everyone seemed to be on their way getting a fair bit drunk in a relaxed, and quite sensual manner.
Aziraphale took the cup and drank to keep herself from restlessly fidgeting with her gown, or awkwardly staring at people. This definitely wasn't a celebration for the resurrection of Christ.
“You come here every year then?” she asked, when her mind finally eased the nervous whirr and settled on a pleasant fuzz.
Crowley had just put a piece of the ox meat in her mouth. “Hm? Um.” She chewed and licked her fingers, before picking up another piece. “Yeah. Ever since I was invited. Damn good meal, if nothing else. Here, you gotta try this.”
Aziraphale had no idea what came over to her. She could have taken the offered piece of meat by hand, like a normal, decent person, but against all the rules of propriety, she went and picked the offered treat up with her mouth. And if that wasn’t enough, just when she had been about to apologise, the taste of perfectly smoked meat spread in her mouth, and instead of any coherent words, out came a surprised moan.
Crowley stared at her.
Aziraphale grabbed her cup and finished her mead, before she remembered words existed and were supposed to be used.
“It is very good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Um.” Aziraphale swallowed, unable to find anything sensible to say. What on earth would be a good topic of a conversation at the witch banquet with your estranged friend, who used to be your favourite person in the world, and was now apparently a witch?
“Did you and Master Gabriel’s brother really have…uh…intimate relations?”
Crowley’s eyebrows shot up, and Aziraphale could have kicked herself. Instead, she took the bowl of soup, and stuffed several spoonfuls of it into her mouth to shut herself up.
“Nah,” Crowley finally answered, but the surprise didn’t leave her face. “Not that he didn’t want to, though. What’s got you thinking about that?”
Now that was a question Aziraphale had no intention of answering, even to herself.
“You got fired because of it.”
“I got fired because he couldn’t get it up when he tried to get under my skirts, and his pride got wounded.”
“Get what…?”
“His dick, Aziraphale.” Crowley’s eyeroll was visible in the dim light, and in all fairness Aziraphale probably deserved that.
“He tried to force you?!”
“Nah, I offered.” Crowley’s smile turned wicked. “He’d been following me for weeks, practically begging, and being an annoying prick about it. So I may, or may not have done a lil’ thing,” she wiggled her fingers, “and when I got into his bed, surprise surprise, his dick stayed limp.”
Aziraphale’s mouth fell open. “You put a spell on him?” she whispered, sounding a lot less outraged than she should.
Crowley raised her bottle in a salutation and drank, but then her smile dimmed. “Should’ve known he’d soothe his wounded pride by getting vengeance on me though. So yeah, got sacked.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale chewed another bite of the ox and swallowed. “I was—well, am—sorry about that. But I believe most of the girls would be delighted to know he got what he deserved.”
Crowley rolled her eyes, but looked a little pleased anyway. Then her eyes locked on something past Aziraphale’s ear. “Just a moment,” she said, distracted. “I need to say hi to someone.”
She stood up, and walked to the other side of the room, careful as to not step on anyone, or their food. Aziraphale watched her go to a curly haired woman, who wore several bracelets, and seemed to be very cozy with the gruff looking man, who had cut the ox earlier. Crowley took something from her pocket, and got a small pouch in return. A worry creeped into Aziraphale’s stomach. Most of the people around them were idly chatting over dinner, or just like Crowley, exchanging tools and mysterious pouches. “You don’t need to participate”, Crowley had said. So far there had been very little to participate on, but Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder, what kind of spells did these people do?! Apparently getting a man’s prick out of commission could be done with a flick of a wrist, so what else?
“Whats the cow hair for?” she asked the moment Crowley got back to her.
“Nothin’ bad.”
“But?”
“There’s no but.”
Two girls cuddled nearby like lovers, and Aziraphale was pretty sure one of the men had a hand under their companion’s hem. Crowley’s friend had returned to the ox-cutting man and caressed his cheek. Crowley’s sauna-damp hair was curly and gorgeous, and the dim lights made her eyes shine golden.
How much had Aziraphale drunk actually?
“Endangered yourself to steal that just for fun, then?” she replied, somewhat snidely.
Crowley sucked her upper lip for a moment. “Well, I didn’t expect anyone to actually be there,” she admitted. “Guarding the cows, I mean.”
“Huh? If my memory serves me right, you were in the cow guarding duty last ye—oh. You came here instead?!”
“Well, just like pretty much every maid ever who’s got that duty.” Crowley raised her jaw. “Well, not here specifically, but like… Nina used to rig the draw so she could sneak out the farm and meet her douchebag lover.”
“I thought Nina and Maggie were a…well, a thing.” A shiver ran down Aziraphale’s spine for saying things like that out loud. It felt less wrong in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, where rules had shifted like the fickle spring weather.
“Yeah,” Crowley replied easily. “That’s why I said used to.”
Aziraphale huffed to herself. “Well then…”
“Hn?”
“So I’m the only gullible idiot who actually thought we should do our job,” she muttered and took her refilled cup to her lips.
“No.” The seriousness of Crowley’s answer surprised Aziraphale, and made her pause her drinking.
“No?”
“No,” Crowley repeated. “You’re the only one who cares about doing the right thing.”
“Somehow you make it sound like a bad thing.”
“No, I—” Crowley ran fingers through her hair. “You’re the only one of that lot who I’d trust to not be a selfish prick. Just my rotten luck, that it was you there. Anyone else would've abandoned their post already.”
“Was it the right thing to try to stop you then?” Aziraphale asked. She was unsure if she should be pleased about the flattery, or upset about their meeting being called rotten luck.
“From your point of view, yeah.”
“And from yours?”
Their eyes met briefly and Crowley shrugged. “Must be, I'm a witch, yeah? The popular belief states—”
“Popular belief also states all the witches are ugly and evil, and that their gatherings are salacious rituals where they spread their legs to the devil himself!”
Crowley choked. “That’s …”
“Crowley, this isn’t an orgy, is it?”
“No!”
“Okay.”
“Disappointed?”
“No!”
They glared at each other for a moment before returning to their meal with burning cheeks. The point of the conversation had escaped them both.
“Luck.”
Aziraphale swallowed a mouthful of pudding and looked at her companion. “Excuse me?”
“It was for luck,” Crowley repeated. “The cow hair, cut in the middle of Easter night.”
“Oh?”
“Don't you think Master Gabriel has more than enough to spare for those in need?”
Aziraphale opened her mouth to condemn stealing, but couldn't quite get the words out. Gabriel had four fat cows who had produced milk long into the winter. His fields had barely suffered the summer frost, when many others had lost their rye. The granaries still had plenty of food to carry the family to the summer, and he wore the finest fabrics and wools while so many families in the village had to mix wood bark into their flour and share a single pair of shoes with several children.
“You got a point there,” Aziraphale admitted. The cows weren't hurt, and… well. Hair grows back, and she couldn’t believe Crowley would lie to her after all this. She might not do it in God’s name, but she wouldn’t use them for evil either. Gullible or not, Aziraphale decided to trust her. Someone started playing jouhikko, and with a stomach pleasantly full and mind softly drunk, Aziraphale decided she had a good enough excuse to lean on Crowley’s shoulder while listening to the poems sung by the witches.
***
Much later, when the dawn could already be seen as a pale thread in the horizon if you flew high enough, they landed behind the barn. Crowley took a small, embroidered handkerchief from her skirt pocket, and folded it open to offer Aziraphale a small tuft of coarse, coppery hair.
“You deserve some luck too.”
Aziraphale could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. The night had turned her world upside down and she had no idea how she would feel about it in the morning—well, after she’d slept, anyway—but right now the exhaustion mixed with alcohol, and made everything seem like a dream.
Aziraphale accepted the offer, and neither of them pulled back as their fingers brushed together.
“Crowley—” she started.
“We don’t have time—”
Aziraphale leaned in anyway. The kiss was a little awkward, more impulsive than planned, but Crowley didn’t miss a beat to kiss her back, free hand finding its way to Aziraphale’s waist.
They broke apart just as fast.
“Right,” Crowley said, a bit breathless. “Definitely no time.”
“Mm,” Aziraphale agreed. “None at all.”
A sound of a door opening on the other side of the yard startled them apart, and the time was up. Crowley kicked the ground and her broom rose above the ground just enough to allow her to fly out of the yard, safely between the buildings. Aziraphale sneaked back into the barn, and managed to grab a hayfork just before the barn door was yanked open again.
“See, she’s not here, she’s nowhere to be found!” Ulrika’s voice pierced the air. “She’s left the cows unprotect—” Her worried colleague-act fell, as she spotted Aziraphale lifting hay into the manger for the enthusiastic cows.
Master Gabriel frowned. “What is this supposed to mean?”
Ulrika glared daggers at Aziraphale. “She wasn’t here when I came to check!”
Aziraphale squeezed the handle of the hayfork, and put on her best surprised face while quietly fuming inside. There was no reason for Ulrika or anyone to check her yet, because she had promised to feed the animals in the morning, and none of the cows were in milk, so no need to come for that either.
“I needed to use the outhouse, sir,” Aziraphale said and curtseyed. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears, and thoroughly different than mere moments ago. The remains of Crowley’s lantern was still in the corner but neither Gabriel nor Ulrika had spotted it yet. “I was back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”
Ulrika was about to say something, but Gabriel had spotted Aziraphale’s blankets in the corner and cut her off. “Miss Ulrika, I think Miss Aziraphale has earned a morning off for doing her duties exactly as requested. Since you were in such a hurry to interrupt my breakfast—it is the most important meal of the day—you won’t mind feeding the animals for her, right?”
Master Gabriel flashed a sinister smile, and turned on his heels, leaving the barn. Aziraphale took a deep breath, laid the hayfork by the wall, and collected her blanket from her abandoned sleeping corner. A couple of steps, and she grabbed the broken lantern from the floor like it was hers, and bundled it with the blanket. Five, four, six steps, and she was by the door.
“You’ll pay for this,” Ulrika hissed, as Aziraphale passed her without a word.
She barely breathed until she got back into her tiny room where she wiggled out of her clothes, and under the bed covers in a flash, and laid still, fingertips on her lips.
“Luck, huh?” she whispered, and closed her eyes. It was an entirely wrong time of day to fall asleep, so she didn't, but as the Easter morning brightened behind her window, she let her mind wander, thumb caressing the threadbare but still legible C embroidered on the handkerchief.
.
Incredible art © Anixfelix (They're perfect 🧡)