Page 45 of Mischief Maker
“Is it strange?” I ask. “Knowing there are no more gods?”
He shrugs as he sips some wine. “Our time was past. The world is changing. Soon, it will touch even this place, you know—we won’t be able to avoid all those newfangled inventions they have down in the valley. It might even make our lives easier.”
I don’t like this thought. I want a simple life here, rebuilding the farm and the house and the barn, lying in the grass under the perfect darkness of night.
“I can’t believe an ancient god is telling me to modernize,” I grumble.
He kisses my cheek and offers me some more wine. “Who knows? Maybe it will make us even happier.”
The next morning, Kireth brings his hands to the base of a plant and starts to imbue it with his magic, intent on hurrying the harvest.
But nothing happens. His eyebrows crease, and he concentrates even harder.
“Why isn’t it working?” He sits down in the dirt, tail slapping the ground with frustration.
I kneel next to him. “Your magic must have been tied to your immortality.” I put an arm around his shoulders and run my hand through his wild hair, to the base of his horn. “But we don’t need it anymore. You don’t need it anymore.”
Kireth sighs a deep, weary sigh, and leans into me. “I suppose I’ll have to just rely on the water and the sun and the soil to do the work.”
“Just like mortals have since the beginning of time,” I say with a chuckle.
He shudders. “Mortal. I’m going to have to get used to that.”
When we’re finished with our work, we eat fresh berries and bread, cheese and wine to celebrate returning from the land of the dead with our hides intact. Soon my head is warm and fuzzy, and Kireth swings me up into his arms to carry me up the stairs.
He sways, nearly toppling over.
“Oops. You’re a lot heavier when I don’t have magic to help me.”
I giggle. “Welcome to being human.”
We fall into a pattern of life again: I see to the livestock, and Kireth tends to the crops. Every evening, we cook together and eat together, and Kireth likes to feed me blackberries and strawberries right from the basket. We repair the house and the fences, and with an extra pair of hands, we’re able to expand the fields in use for farming, too.
I am wary of the curse that still lives in a wooden box in our home, so we go on a journey to the forest down below the mountain. Here, Kireth says goodbye to his temple for good, where he will never return.
Then we bury the box deep in the dirt, hoping it will remain there, undiscovered, for the rest of time.
Kireth
I never could have imagined a life like this for myself. Even without my magic, it’s a bliss that’s almost beyond my understanding.
My sweet farm girl, with her twinkling hazel eyes and soft waves of brown hair, occupies every last corner of my heart. How I love watching her with a newborn lamb in her lap, or training one of the new dogs to round up cattle. In the winter, we plant crops to rejuvenate the soil, and spend many long, cold days inside finding new and inventive ways to warm ourselves up.
As the seasons pass, so do we both get older. It’s a strange and foreign thing to feel my body get tired earlier, to watch the wrinkles appear on my Faela’s face, to see them on my own in the mirror.
But I don’t regret a single minute of it. I hope that when we die, we get to do it side by side, just as we lived.
Epilogue
Some years later...
Faela
One of my favorite things is making my demon husband work a little for what he wants.
We finished our chores early today, and he wanted to fuck me in the barn on the hay. But I have bigger, better plans than that. When he swipes at the hem of my skirt, I duck out of the way and hurry out the barn doors, leaving him behind.
“Hey!” Kireth calls after me, glaring at my back. “Where are you going?” His cock is already thick and drooling and pulling hard at his loincloth.