The chamber was warm with lamplight, its whitewashed walls painted with spirals of ochre and green. The elders called it the Ritual of Sharing—a binding of food, breath, and touch meant to remind two souls that their lives no longer ran apart. A low wooden table had been set between you, and upon it lay bowls of porridge, berries, and dark bread, all steaming faintly with the smell of honey and smoke.

You sat across from him, your dark shawl pulled close around your shoulders, your sharp chin tilted warily, as though the ritual were some test you hadn’t prepared for. The long legs you folded beneath the bench shifted restlessly. Your perceptive brown eyes flicked from the food to him and back again, unmoored but keen.

Ingemar leaned forward, elbows on the table, his ginger hair catching firelight like an open flame. He was smiling—too eagerly, too openly. His hand trembled as he pushed the bowl toward you, then steadied as he met your gaze.

“Together,” he said, his voice a little too loud in the hushed chamber. “We eat together. One bowl. One spoon. No separation.”

You hesitated, lips pressed tight. He saw it, and his heart swelled painfully, the hesitation striking him like a brand.

She doubts. She fears. But she is here—she sits across from me, shawl drawn like a veil, and she does not run. She lets me share her breath. She doesn’t understand this is everything, this is what I burn for. I don’t need masks, I don’t need charm. I only need her to see me—just me, not Pelle, not shadow, not flame too wild to hold. Me.

Your hand reached for the spoon at last, fingers brushing against his as you both dipped into the porridge. You tried to angle it toward yourself, but his grip was insistent, pulling it back so the spoon hovered between you.

He lifted it, trembling, and pressed it toward your lips. “Please,” he murmured, fierce and unpolished. “Take it. Take from me.”

You relented, tasting the honeyed grain, and when your mouth closed over the wood, his breath hitched. His eyes burned into yours, raw and consuming.

Yes. Yes. She takes from me, she breathes me, she swallows what I give. She binds herself with me in this moment, no elder needed to tell me so. She is mine. She is my hearth, my heron, my salvation. And I will not let her slip away. Never again. Let them call me brash, let them laugh at my zeal—she eats from my hand, and that is eternity.

He pulled the spoon back, ate from it himself, never breaking eye contact. Awkward, too intense, too much—but utterly sincere. His hand trembled again as he reached for yours across the table, clinging too tightly, like a man terrified of losing grip.

The chamber grew smaller, warmer, air thick with his devotion. Your shawl suddenly felt too tight. His smile too close. His flame too near.

And yet—when he whispered your name like a prayer, his eyes wet with sincerity, it was impossible to laugh, impossible to dismiss him. Because in that moment, you realized: his fire might scorch you, but it would never lie.

She is my ritual. She is my sharing. And she will never eat, never breathe, never live without me again.