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[queenofmay]

Many weeks of headache's had not led to their suddenly vanishing as Marian had long wished.

Instead it had led to an inevitable collapse after one of her classes.

She was flush with a high fever and nearly incoherent from the moment she'd fallen. It hadn't taken long for one of the medics in her new home to diagnose the problem. Her immune system, used to the troubles of a medieval British world, was not prepared to deal with a present era Britain, even a magical one.

They'd talked about magical cures, but the final decision had been that it would only be an option if the situation turned fatal. The illness wasn't looking deadly, simply hard because she'd never encountered anything of the like before. Given to run the course they said the immunity from her illness would serve her better if she was going to stay in Arch and visiting London Below.

The first few days were the hardest. She couldn't talk and she trashed, murmuring, sweating and being forced by someone she could hardly remember, except as a blur, to drink strange colored liquids.

The rest of the time was spent, somewhere in semi-lucid dreams or empty sleep, while her body recuperated. Exhaustion was semi-permanent for the course, but she had started looking better around the middle of the next week.

And it was then that Tom and Door had declared it safe for her to have other visitors.

Comments

[landlesslord]

Guy held the book as carefully as one might hold a child as he slowly sat at Marian's bedside.

More carefully perhaps. This book was heavier than the last child he had carried.

He looked up at his betrothed, unsure of where to start but seeing she was in no state to recognise what he was holding nor to make much of a decision about anything, went ahead to choose what to read himself.

Well.

"Perhaps we should see where it falls open?" He offered almost sheepishly, as he tilted the book open.


...Ah.

[queenofmay]

Marian watched him sit with glassy grey eyes, until her gaze shifted to the black leather since he was looking at the book. Just looked at it made her feel warmer and the room already felt like it contained no air.

She swallowed, hard, against the dry feeling and the helplessness even talking conveyed. "What is it?"

[landlesslord]

He almost didn't hear Marian's question, distracted in part by thoughts of how he should have chosen a suitable chapter before visiting and by reading ahead a little.

"The Song of Songs."

He found a suitable place to start, then turned to Marian.

"You are not too tired to listen?"

[queenofmay]

Her face comported a little more shocked confusion at the name, or the fact he'd brought The Bible, before it fled and she looked as though she was trying to take scope of herself.

Spacey and hot and bleary what came out was honest, if a little more weak sound than she liked.

"I might fall asleep during it."

[landlesslord]

Guy considered this for a short while, debating whether it would be better to leave Marian to sleep quietly. He was, however, here now and it did not seem right to him that Marian should be confined to her sickbed when he knew her to enjoy being outdoors.

Perhaps this would offer her some escape, at least for little, and she did not object to his reading, did she?

"Then I will read until you fall asleep."

He turned his eyes back to the waiting pages and began to read, carefully and gently. This was no mere storybook after all.

"How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is likea flock of goats
descending from Mount Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn,
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin;
not one of them is alone.

Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon;
your mouth is lovely.
Your temples behind your veil
are like the halves of a pomegranate.

Your neck is like the tower of David,
built with elegance;
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors."

He looked up briefly, to see whether Marian was still awake.

[queenofmay]

She had not objected yet, at least. Nor thought of it deeply, now that narration can remark upon such amazing turn of event.


Marian shifted under her blankets so she could turn on her side, keeping her eyes on him as he thought and then sat down. It was confusing, especially through the haze, to trying to figure out why Guy was here reading her a book.

But this thought was lost when somewhere around your lips are like a scarlet ribbon as she realized he was reading not only the Bible, which had been strange, but The Song of Solomon, which was even stranger.

Marian muffled a cough in the blanket that she didn't interrupt him as she cleared her throat, and watched him.

[landlesslord]

He read on, hoping that listening was not too much of an exertion for the maid in her sickbed.

"You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace."

Guy shifted uncomfortably. This was just a passage from the Bible. Not some divine announcement.


Wasn't it?

He continued, without pause, avoiding Marian's gaze.

"How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much more pleasing is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice!

Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
milk and honey are under your tongue.
The fragrance of your garments is like that of Lebanon.

You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain."

[queenofmay]

Head lolling partially to the side, she'd glanced up when he shifted uncomfortably. It was impossible to miss movement when her head seemed to make each sound so much louder.

Was he uncomfortable....or was that just her imagination?

And how had she never noticed that, in talking to him for years, his voice had some strange soothing pattern as he read. Words were lost but it was a constant sound, paced and pause, that made her heart feel slower and breathing easier.

Marian's eyes weren't obeying her entirely so she settled for closing them most of the way. It left only a slit of the, very bright, world she could see.

Mostly focused on a part of him sitting, with a corner of book moving, and the chair.

[landlesslord]

Guy read on, trying not to think too much of how the descriptions of Solomon's beloved could also be applied to his belo...Marian and dwelling even less, in his thoughts, on the racier imagery and metaphor.


It wasn't appropriate. With Marian so ill, at least.


He glanced over at her. At least she did not know what he was very much not thinking about and seemed to be falling asleep. The rest would do her good and as Guy came to the end of the chapter he quietly stopped, hoping that she would not wake at his ceasing.

[queenofmay]

The silence had only set in half a minute when she murmured, inaudibly and still asleep, shifting a little, as if her sleeping self had somehow noticed the sudden lack of sound in the room.

But Marian quieted her fretting, rather the way children did with a snuffled sound against the pillow. The movement causing her dark hair to coil around her pale cheek.

[landlesslord]

He had started to carefully re-wrap the book but, at the movement, Guy's breath stills and only resumes when he can see that Marian remains slumbering.

Satisfied that she was still asleep, he started to rise to leave and leaning closer to the bed, brushed the hair away from her face as gently as he could. Being near Marian had never seemed this peaceful before.