Warning: mature scene. You can skip the first +/- 15 paragraphs if you don't want to read them. As soon as Bear appears in the story, the mature scene is over ;)

The touch of her lips darkened the light in his chamber to a winter's night. First came a light kiss, then a teasing one. A yearning for more; more of him.

The taste of her stirred something primitive inside him. Taking the bait, he reached for her and pulled her so close her bosom throbbed against his chest. His fingers glided down her spine, lower and lower, until he cupped that firm, round ass of hers.

A soft moaned brushed into his ear, then moved down his neck. Her hands were everywhere at once, impatient movements yet filled with a feral persistence. Her scent was overwhelming, intoxicating, a promise of stirring worlds colliding to tunes of Lust.

"I want you. I want all of you," she whispered.

Hours before, when their bodies laid tangled under the covers, she had confessed he had been her first. Overnight, he became her second, and now in the morning hours, he would be her third. Like others before her, she had come for the stories and stayed for the man. The Greenlander at Bigcastle—a legend in his own right.

"A lady gets what a lady demands," he said.

"I'm no lady."

"You are to me."

In a smooth motion, he rolled her onto her back and drew her soft lower lip into his mouth. He mounted her to the tips of her fingers exploring his hair. Her body stiffened, but only momentarily. 

She replied to the increasing rhythm of his rocking with gasps of pleasure that intensified with each thrust. 

In the end, she moaned his name in total surrender. Her legs curled around him as he blessed the Holy Fourteen, the Summer Dragon and the Winter Bear for a dawn so fair and sweet. 

He kissed her thighs, then planted his lips along the curves of her body as he crawled back next to her.

"I want to do this all day," she said in a hushed tone.

Wrapping an arm around her, he nuzzled her nose against her neck."You and me both, Fiddler."

"Then what's keeping us?"

He said nothing. The barking and whining noises from the kennels outside spoke for him. He only had a few minutes left before a heaviness would pull at his eyelids. If he fell asleep again, he wouldn't wake for hours to come. 

"Must you really?" she insisted.

He hummed against her, preparing for a duty he enjoyed once he overcame the earliness of the morning. With small, ticklish motions, he stroked her back.

Then he got up.

Her hand brushed his side. "Nick, don't."

"I do," he said, before adding, "You should go too."

She let out a groan, displeased, as though they hadn't just shared sweat and other bodily fluids. He was immune to a woman's scolding or silent treatment. She would be back; they all did eventually.

He pulled the shirt at his feet towards him and put it on. Despite the perpetual light of summer shining brightly in his chamber, his vision didn't want to cooperate. He moved his head from west to east, seeing only a blurry haze of brown blankets turning into shimmering wood and a heap of white and grey fur where an elkskin should be.

"Bear!" he called the furry creature sleeping by the foot of the bed.

"Yick, yoof," came the Mountain Dog's yawning answer.

"Come on, Bear." Nick walked alongside the bed.

"Watch out," Fiddler warned him.

Too late. He stumbled over his boots, lightly enough to not fall over them. Knowing where they were, he picked them up. "Breakfast time, Bear."

"Reawr-reaw." 

With a fierce yawn, the heap of fur rose to the height of his shoulders, then approached Nick for his obligatory morning pat.

Nick rubbed the dog's back with firm strokes, his gaze focused on his chamber, blinking in an attempt to sharpen his view.

Throughout the years, healers and magicians from all over Ice, and one from Silvermark, had treated him. All had stated that his left eye was and would always be useless. Any experimental treatment had failed. His right eye, however, had improved to the point he could see half of what an average person could. On good days, that was, and only for a handful of hours. The headache that followed was but a nuisance for the opportunity to spend time with a book.

"You're looking for something?" Fiddler asked.

"My trousers."

"You weren't planning on walking around, buck naked," she said cheekily.

"I would never make it to the kennels."

"It would be a good story."

"Only in Sundale—it would be all the taverns and the market square talked about for days on end. The bare-skinned muttonhead getting shackled and thrown into the dungeon. You know, the army's so prude, they would fetch trousers before locking me up."

"Sounds like you have experience with Greendaler dungeons."

He scratched behind Bear's ears. "Nothing funny about them. They're cold, dark, and reek of old piss."

"Not so different from the stable or the kennels during winter."

"No animals in the dungeon though, unless you count the rats gnawing at your toes." He clicked his teeth together, mimicking biting noises.

She sat up on the bed, twirling her fingers around her blonde hair. Or that was what it looked like anyway. "You're not scaring me."

"No?" He lifted his eyebrow. 

"No."

He dropped his boots, jumped back on the bed and half-tickled, half wrestled her. She giggled, pawing at him, more the playful girl he had met five summers ago than the wild woman between the sheets.

"Imagine hearing a rat scurrying through your cell," he pestered her. "You can't tell where it is or when it will strike. The only food you've been given is a rock-hard crust of bread. It's you versus the rat. Two stomachs rumbling."

She threw her arms around him. Not resisting, he allowed her to clasp them tightly around him. "Gotcha! Whatcha gonna do now, rat?"

He set his teeth into her skin, nibbling noisily but not biting. 

Half a shriek and half a chuckling cry of joy. "No, Ni-ick! Don't!"

"Who's Nick? I'm a starving dungeon rat who found some yummy Fiddler." He worked his way up her neck.

"No, Stop! Stop!" Her body trembled with laughter.

A snorting bark came from his left.

Nick stopped to look up to Bear holding something brown in his mouth: his trousers. The animal dropped them onto the bed with a prickly gnarl, signalling to end the game.

"Duty calls." Nick disentangled himself from her embrace.

"Oh," she moaned

"Yeah, it was fun. But all good stories come to an end." He put his pants on, then proceeded to the elkskin where he had left his boots.

"What if we kept the story going, every day and night, summer and winter—you and me forever," she dreamed. "Grandfather can marry us, then all children born from me will be yours."

Nick stepped into his boots, jerked them up to his calves and fastened them. Sure, she could ask, but his answer didn't matter. Her grandfather would decline the request, breaking her heart as he delivered the bad news that Nick was promised to another Princess.

His farewell to her was short. Already planning their wedding, it was likely Fiddler hadn't even noticed he was gone. Even better.

Holding Bear's collar for stability, he took the backdoor at the end of the hallway and stepped outside to leak into the bushes. The dog followed his example.

The ground was sparkling; melting frost had turned the earth muddy and slippery. In time, one got used to anything, even snow and ice during Fallow's Moon. The sting of the afterwinter, the Icians called the almost moonly phenomenon between the Moon of Life and the Moon of Gold. Everything else was simply called winter.

Soon after, he stumbled into the kitchen, his nose twitching with a muddle of delicious smells: freshly baked flatbreads, roasted rye pudding and grilled deer meat. What he liked most was the silence of the place. Nothing could be heard apart from the occasional fat hissing down onto the burning logs and stirring noises.

Bear led him to the table closest to the back entrance, where Lament set aside a bag with food for the Mountain Dogs and a jug of curdled goat's milk for him. 

Nick scanned the kitchen, his left eye squeezed shut and narrowing his right. Redmane was crouching by the fire, adding more logs. Clover stood bent over a cauldron on the ground with a spoon in her hand. Nick caught the foggy blur of someone heading into the storage room, but the woman in the blue apron and with a crown of flowers in her blonde hair was nowhere to be seen.

"Yick, yish." Bear brought his attention back to more important matters.

"You think you're getting fish?"

As Nick opened the bag, he found a salty moss-like smell that proved Bear right. Prince Ash and his squad had gone fishing the day before. Since the King wanted nothing but the best for the dogs, they got their fair share of the catch too.

Nick grabbed a piece and presented it flat on his hand. "Bear, the royal taster, what do you say?"

A lick later, it was gone. Still munching, Bear pushed his snout against the bulgy bottom part of the bag where the big chunks for the adult Mountain Dogs had been packed.

"Roaw," he demanded. Bear's seal of approval had been given.

"You'll get more when the others do." Nick took a sip of the goat's milk; typically lukewarm to hot, it was cold already. Thirsty after his morning exercise, he finished it anyway.

To the sound of the bag closing, Bear turned his side towards the table, making it easier for Nick to hang the food over the dog's back. His faithful companion didn't stir as Nick latched the belts over the animal's shoulders. 

Nick nodded at him. "All good. Let's see how your family is doing."

One of River's first acts as King was to build a place for the dogs separate from the stable, which had proven to be less stressful for the horses and had given the dogs more space to roam around and play. The result had been healthier pups and foals that were slowly paying back the expenses the King had made.

The kennels housed ten Mountain Dogs at the moment, a low after a violent trembling disease had caused the deaths of four of the prime breeding dogs and the first batch of puppies. The second batch of seven puppies had lived, but four of them had already been sold, and the other three were running around Bigtown Castle, getting trained by the King's great-grandchildren, Bark, Piper, and Prince Snow. Another moon or so, when the pups would be taller than the children, the three would wreak havoc riding their dogs through the castle.

The latest batch of puppies, born from Prince Torrent's Patch and a young female called Opal who was a first-time dog mother, were yipping and yapping by the gate of their den. Noses of the older dogs came sniffing at the bars. They barked in a chorus of eager anticipation, to which Bear replied by strutting towards them, teasing them with the smell of what he had and the others had to wait for.

The barking turned to growls and whines, tails wagging against the iron fence. Shaking his head, Nick pumped water into the bowls and placed them in a row on the ground. By the time he was finished, Bear was padding around the bowls.

He sat down next to Nick, panting and happily flicking his tail, his ears pricked up. "Wrawra."

"Straight from the tap?" Nick asked

"Arf."

He pushed the lever. As the jet of water shot out of the pump, Bear shoved his head beneath it, first catching what he could, then licking the water from the ground.

"Muttonhead of a dog," Nick mumbled. 

He unclasped the bag's belts and took out the packages, preparing the dog's breakfast and throwing a couple of pieces to Bear. Lament always gave too much anyway.

After stalling out the fish and water, Nick took the key from the bag and went to the dens. The lock was big enough for Nick to see where the key had to go, an act of kindness of the King. Everything in the kennel had been built with the purpose of him working there, long before King River had asked him to be one of the caretakers.

An inch was all the dogs needed to slip out of their confinement. Four puppies were already darting across the inner court, towards their breakfast before Opal got out. A single pup waited for the mother, but she ignored him. 

By the bowls, Bear barked and circled round them to manoeuvre them away from the adults' breakfast. Success meant that the puppies were stumbling over each other, going for the same bowl instead of spreading out.

Nick unlocked the other den, finding that the big Mountain Dogs were only a dash more civil. They stormed out as though they had been cooped up since Dragon's day. Rascal stomped Nick's foot in the process, and Titan left a trail of slobber where he passed. Merry, a stout and mostly brown female, bantered with Bear before gobbling up the chunks of flathead fish in the bowl. 

After strolling back, Nick took the scales and weights from the shelf by the pump, then snatched the loudest puppy. 

While the creature flopped around in his grip, he felt the tag around the collar. Number five. Three days ago, the pup had surpassed six pounds, which was average for its age. He struggled the dog into the weighing harness, feeling its nails and teeth in the process, then added the weights until the scale was in balance. Six pounds and two ounces.

He placed the pup by an untouched bowl, then seized the next one with two hands. Number One was a female that had always been heavier and bigger than her brothers. She would make a good mining dog. At three weeks and a half, she sat at a comfortable nine pounds.

Repeating the numbers in his head, he scrunched up his eyes. The spotted male and the snow-white female were clogging up the bowl, leaving no room for the others to get a piece. 

"Come here," he said to Number Four, the little runt of the pack who was white and grey in patches with black socks for legs and paws.

The dog licked Nick's hand, smelling the fish, then njarfed squeakingly in disappointment. He set the puppy in the harness, removing most of the iron pieces until there were four one-pound bars left. The scale tipped towards the weights. He had lost weight, landing him at the same weight as a week ago.

He picked number four back up and placed the animal onto his lap, stroking him with one hand and taking a bowl with the other. The pup sniffed at the fish.

"You're lucky one of your predecessors caused some trouble half a century ago," Nick said. When he noticed the puppy still wasn't eating, he held a piece in his hand. More sniffing, then a hesitant nibble. "Runts like you used to be killed, for you can neither be sold nor used for breeding. Then came a Prince who was too faint of heart to break your necks, so he released the runts into the wild, thinking nature would take care of its weak. Seasons came and went, dozens of released puppies, until a small black dog survived the summer and tripled its weight. During autumn, the people of Bigtown complained of a cattle thief that grew with each report to the King. Some suspected a fox, then a wolf, and late witnesses spoke of the Winter Bear itself. As the dark moons deepened with bursts of a sharp, biting cold and changing winds that made it impossible to see, the creature stole a child that had ventured out into the snow. The chase for the monster of Bigtown claimed the lives of two more men and froze off the toes of four more. And you know, little runt, your old uncle proved that being small as a child doesn't mean you can't do spectacular things. There are plenty of opportunities if you look beyond what others are doing. If you can't be strong, be smart."

Number Four had his head deep into the food, no longer listening to what Nick had to say. A dripping wet number three sat down on his leg and yapped, signalling the bowl from which she had been eating was empty.

The shed's door rattled open. Number Three dashed towards the noise, with number five in her wake. Opal barked, but the puppies ignored their mother's call.

In walked Princess Rain, River's youngest daughter and the one who assisted him in the kennels. She had her hair in a messy bun and wore a dress that ended where her boots began. While he mucked out the dens, she took the pups outside for training, a delicate process that required years of experience. If a Mountain Dog got too attached to you, they could never get a new Master. What he and Seb had done with Bear had been tricky at best, and was generally discouraged unless the previous owner died and the dog renamed, and even then it depended on the creature's character.

She scooped Number Three and Number Five into her arms, approaching him. "Did you weigh these?"

"I need number three," Nick answered. "Five's good. I want to try separating Four, Merry, and Opal from the rest. Perhaps Merry can show Opal how to take care of him."

"Take Four to the King. If the pup's sick, it needs extra care," Rain said, sounding absent-minded. She handed him three.

"This is not like with Moose's nest—Four plays and eats well when he's with me. He seeks Opal's attention but doesn't get it."

"Father will know what to do." She patted Titan's head, allowing the barking of the dogs to command the conversation before saying. "I saw you and Fiddler leaving the banquet early last night. You spent the night with her, didn't you?"

It was more of an observation than a question.

"The night, the morning," he said.

She let out a grumble, to which he chuckled. Did the Goddess of Envy visit the Icians, after all? "Next time, you deny her advances."

"I don't see why I should."

He placed Three in the harness, then added the iron. It was peculiar for Icians to care about such matters. It wasn't a sin to love if both parties involved gave their consents. Even if he fathered a child—and he had suspicions that he had—the woman's husband claimed the child as his own. That was how matters were handled in this place.

"She's unmarried. Half of Bigtown will know you're the father when Fiddler gets pregnant. And what half of Bigtown knows will find its way south of the Horseshoe Mountains," she suggested.

"So what if it does?" He lifted his shoulders into a shrug. Seven pounds, and nine... no, ten ounces. "I don't plan on going back there."

"You sound so sure."

"That's because I am."

His mind drifted to the stack of unopened letters in his closet, to broken promises and faded memories. He never went to the School of Four Other Senses, didn't get his sight back, and learnt more about Ician dog care than military tactics and warfare. 

He had nothing to offer to Sundale, and Sundale had nothing to offer to him.