Jim Gem's Arc

Chapter 18 of 23

The wide door came first, and then the walls rose around it. Season after season, Jim hauled stone in dragon form while Lena guided each block to its place. She marked the rooms with chalk and rope. A low sill here, so a child could see the water. A round window there, to catch the morning. Jim built to her lines now, not his own. The house grew tall and strange, shaped by two stubborn people who kept arguing and kept working. On the last morning, Jim set the final banner on the highest wall. Blue and purple cloth snapped in the wind off the falls. He climbed down the scaffold, arms shaking, and stood beside Lena in the wet grass. The keep loomed over them, its gray stone streaked dark by spray. Water ran down the walls in thin white ribbons and pooled at the base. "We did it," Jim said. His voice came out rough. "It's done." Lena didn't answer at first. She tilted her head back and looked all the way up. "It's a castle," she said. "You built me a castle." "You built it too." "I passed you rocks." She grinned, then the grin slipped. Her sentences got short. "It's too big. For two." Jim waited. He had learned to wait. Lena walked to the wide door and pushed it open. It swung easy, no ledge, no drop. She stepped through and turned back to him, and her hand rested flat against her stomach. She didn't jump or joke. She just stood there, quiet, the way she went quiet the first time she saw him shift. "Jim," she said. "It won't be two." He crossed to her. He looked at her hand, then at her face. "How long have you known?" "A while." Her chin trembled. "I was scared to say it. Scared you'd stop the door. Start watching the cliff." She swallowed. "Scared I'd want it and then run." Jim took both her hands. The scale on his chest gave a faint purple pulse under his shirt. "You promised me you wouldn't run." "I know." She looked up at the banners, the blue and purple like the dragon he became. "So I'm not." He pulled her against him and held on. His heart raced, and the scales pricked along his arms, wanting the shift. He breathed slow. He kept himself human, alone, without her hands to calm him. He had a reason to stay this shape now. He kissed her forehead before she quickly stood on the balls of her feet and kissed him back hard. He held her tightly as they kissed. Jim looked past the wide door, into the empty rooms they'd have to fill before the season turned. The castle was finished. Everything else was just beginning.