Bee And Foxglove

The Friends Go Out To The Festival

***Author's Note: Sulingen is now called Shuringen. I'd adapted the name from a German town name I thought had a nice ring to it (Solingen), but realised that with just one letter changed I couldn't say it aloud with a straight face!***

Though the tail end of Bee's terrible exhaustion took a month or so to completely fade away, life went more or less back to normal quite a lot quicker than that.

Things were a little different, though. For one thing, Bee and Foxglove felt their love for each other a smidgen deeper than before, if you can imagine that. They found themselves performing many tender little acts of service for each other – above and beyond the usual, that is.

For example, when Bee went out for firewood one day, she made a special effort to collect some of Foxglove's favourite wild salad greens, digging under the first snow with her hands.

Another time, one morning, Foxglove woke Bee up with a honey toast, decorated with a sprinkle of dried flower petals (and a coffee and a kiss, of course, as always).

"You know?" said Bee one evening, as she warmed her feet by the fire. (She had come in after a long afternoon of pruning trees).

"Hm?" said Foxglove, knitting.

"I feel like we get each other better now."

Foxglove just nodded. She knew what Bee meant.

Bee didn't complain anymore about doing incantation practice every morning. She could sense the weight of Foxglove's need for her safety, and doing the work seemed to flow naturally from that.

And Foxglove was clearer now on just how important magic was for Bee. Despite all her fear and unease, Foxglove still listened to Bee attentively when she talked about her magic and made sure to ask the kind of questions that prompted Bee to explore her passion. A couple of times, she had found herself being the one to encourage Bee. "It's your dream, Teddybee," she had said. "It's important."

*

The first snow melted, but then a week later it snowed again, and this one stayed.

Soon it was coming to be time for the Festival of Hearths, and Foxglove took out her calligraphy pen to, ah, scribe a missive to Vincent; in her most flowery handwriting, Foxglove kindly requested the pleasure of Vincent's esteemed society.

And so it was that Guinevere, Francis and Vincent rode up to Bee and Foxglove's door one evening. Bee and Foxglove greeted them, quickly wrapped up warm, and squeezed into the de Welltouderes' little horse carriage.

They made for Shuringen. Guinevere balanced a basket of spice cookies on her lap as they rode. Bee and Foxglove, for their part, carried bags full of cinnamon-plum preserve.

Once they had reached town and left their horses in an enclosure, the five of them stepped into a street full of inviting houses. "Where shall we knock?" asked Bee.

"As for us, anywhere would work," laughed Guinevere. "We're so rarely in Shuringen."

On the Hearth Festival, you see, you were supposed to knock at the doors of strangers. "Well, I think we know everyone in this street," laughed Bee, throwing up her hands in the air in mock defeat.

"Ignore her," laughed Foxglove. "We only know two households in this street."

"Three," said Bee. "Franky moved, remember?"

"Was that here?" said Foxglove, surprised.

"Yeah," said Bee. "But that's number 9, they don't have a wreath on the door." This most likely meant that Franky and his wife were out visiting hearths themselves.