Choice Fruits by cuarthol, Dawn Felagund

Choice Fruits

He is a summer apple, thin-skinned and sharp.  Not a fruit to be eaten straight from the tree.  A little sugar, a little softening, to make him more palatable.  But she enjoys his company and his smiles.  He is generous with praise and attention, and she is shy and accommodating.

She knows whose son he is, and that tempers her responses, for it is a tree which would require much tending.

There is a foolishness in calling on him.  She practices her excuse as the miles pass beneath her feet, and her courage almost fails when she lifts her hand to knock.

His brother is crisp and tart, full of flavor, rich juices running down her chin and over her fingers.  Blackberry and honey and cinnamon, and she cannot get enough.  Bees in her heart, butterflies in her stomach, blossoms in her eyes; she is a wild summer meadow in his company, and he, warmth and light in which she grows.

But it is the younger who first asks.  Unwilling to give a firm answer, the sorrow in his eyes and voice forces her reluctant tongue.  The words of indecision are heavy in her mouth.  

Though he is pleasing, inviting, it is not he who has made her heart flower.

But his brother does not ask.

She chides herself for imagining more affection than was there, foolish hope by a foolish girl.  In the branches of the trees that once held them she waters her orchard with weeping.

In the end she finds she will accept him as her brother if she cannot have him as a husband.  He remains wild and full of life, and when he holds her son her secret heart wishes it was their child.  They laugh, and she does not see the echo of her own pain in his eyes.

In the end, she finds she cannot accept either of them.  Their swords, more bitter than axes, a frost gnawing her roots.  Her heart, withered and rotten, fallen to the earth to feed the worms.