The hut was warm with the scent of resin and sun-dried linen, the kind of smell that clung to wood and skin alike. Evening light slanted in through the small square window, casting everything in honey, softening the corners of the bed where you sat. Your hair spilled down your back in a wild, red cascade, bright against the pale furs Pelle had spread over the mattress. You were tucked there like a doll, knees drawn up, cherubic cheeks still pink from the walk outside.

Pelle sat behind you, cross-legged, close enough that his knee brushed yours. His fingers combed carefully through the thick waves of your hair, patient, gentle, deliberate. He hummed under his breath, a low, almost childlike tune. You felt each pass of his hand, each untangling tug, and though his touch was feather-light, it made you shiver.

“You have the longest hair I’ve ever seen,” he murmured with a smile in his voice, twisting strands between his fingers as though memorizing them. “It’s like holding fire that doesn’t burn.”

You shifted a little, bashful under the weight of his attention, but he steadied you with a soft touch to your shoulder. His hands parted your hair into sections, fingers moving with the steady rhythm of someone who’d done this a thousand times before. You weren’t sure if he had, or if it was just his way—Pelle always acted like he’d been waiting his whole life to tend to you.

She lets me touch her. She lets me weave myself into her. This is how it starts. A braid today, a crown tomorrow, and soon she’ll forget what it felt like to walk without me at her back. My hands will always be in her hair, on her skin, in her life. She’ll never know where she ends and I begin.

His fingers wove expertly, the braid forming heavy and neat down your back. He leaned closer now and then, breath brushing your neck, eyes half-closed as if savoring the intimacy. His lips curved in that soft smile he wore so easily, but his gaze was hungry, storm-bright, filled with something you couldn’t quite name.

“You look like you belong here already,” he said, tying the braid off with a ribbon of white cloth. He smoothed it against your back with both hands, resting them there as though sealing you in place. “The elders will smile when they see you like this. You… you were made for us.”

For me. Always for me. No one else will ever press her hair between their fingers, no one else will braid the fire from her head into something lasting. She is mine, soft little rabbit, moon-cherub, mine to weave, mine to keep.

He kissed the crown of your head, reverent, almost trembling. To you it was a tender gesture, sweet and harmless. To him, it was possession.

And as you sat there with your braid resting down your back, you realized his touch lingered—longer than needed, heavier than expected. His smile was still soft, but his hands did not move. He wasn’t just braiding your hair. He was braiding your future into his, strand by strand.