The storm had finally silenced its rage and the world was nearly quiet. All I could hear outside were the steady, muffled drips of water as they fell on the grass, the roof, and the unconventional greenhouse I was trapped inside. In the distance, an animal chirped into the strangely hollow world beyond, and another released a cry in response. Was I dreaming again? I closed my eyes and tried to picture it, but I could only see a faint, flickering light against the back of my eyelids.

I opened my eyes and sat up, only to find Fabian staring at me. Petra was still asleep on his chest, but he was sitting as close to upright as he could. His honey-red hair had come completely loose in the rain and frizzed out somewhat around his temples, but the rest was still damp and heavy. In the limited candlelight, every strand of hair caught brilliantly, bringing out more of the red than the gold. When he noticed I'd woken up, he didn't move or look away, seemingly unafraid of being caught.

"When did you light the candles?" I asked as I turned my gaze to the makeshift shelves in a paltry attempt to avoid being embarrassed.

"Several hours ago. Your sister was afraid of the dark."

"Several hours?" I bolted up fully and struggled to look outside, but he made a sort of clicking noise in the back of his throat.

"Sit back, there's no use in looking now." I had never been chided before; I did as I was told, stunned into obedience. Once I nestled back into the wall, he smiled slightly. "Your brother came out to check on you shortly after. He's asked me to tell you: he's visiting an... Iona?"

I nodded. "His fiancé? They've been engaged for so long, I don't know if they'll ever actually get married, but she lives in town. Does he know about this place?"

"Of course," Fabian replied smoothly, expecting my sudden question. "It was with his permission that I built it."

"How?"

"How..."

"When could you have? With what? We don't have the resources to build... this." I pulled my blanket over my shoulders and laid on my side, rolling so that I could look at him. "You're always inside, anyway."

He smiled very lightly, as though afraid anything more would wake the snoring girl in his arms. "There are trees, are there not?"

"Alright, I'll give you that, but when?"

"When else, but at night?"

We stared at each other, one wanting answers and the other unwilling to give them. He broke first, pulling his gaze to the floor. I felt badly, of course, for pressing him on something he was so obviously against talking about, but my selfishness was a severe result of my disability. Finally, a story had come to my door, a living story, and it didn't want me to hear its tale. Some part of me wanted to be offended, but then the sensible part knew very painfully what it was like, not to want to talk about something.

"You can ask me something, now," I offered, feeling very small. Was this how children sounded, kicking their feet and refusing to apologise for their spoiled actions? If I did appear childish, Fabian didn't react as though I was. Instead, he shook his head.

"If you wanted to share something with me, Mr. Evan, you would see fit to do so."

"Why won't you just call me Evan?"

He was silent for a long time. When he did answer, there was a peculiar glassiness to his eye, but then he blinked and it was gone. "You are my master, and I have no right to address you so familiarly."

"What if I told you to, commanded it as your master?"

"...then I would have no choice, I suppose."

There was a pause in the air, the same muffled feeling I could sense outside, while each of us waited for the command. I found myself unable to say it, to exercise this imaginary authority on a man who, for all I knew, had lived more years than myself. There was a question, I realised, I could ask without offence! "What is your age, Mr. Moore?" He rolled his eyes before he could stop himself, and I found myself laughing behind my hand. One moment, a dedicated and demure servant, and then next - rolling his eyes at me! He corrected the look, of course, but had the sense to blush at his hypocrisy.

"I am afraid I cannot answer that."

"You cannot, or you will not?"

"I meant what I said. I don't know, if you must." He made an apologetic face. "My past is a... troublesome thing, Mr. Evan. My age has never been important despite that, so I hope you will forgive me for being unable to answer such a thing."

The notion that one could live without the weight of their own lifespan, ticking away one year at a time, was totally foreign to me. I rolled onto my back at stared at the wooden ceiling of the greenhouse, trying and failing to picture myself not worried about my age. I was not the only one in the family for whom their number of years stuck in the house was an issue. Piers ought to have been married at his age; Petra ought to have learned her alphabet and a thousand other things; my uncle ought to have moved out of the house and written his book and had his own children; my parents were due the status of grandparents; and I needed not list what I should have been capable of in my early twenties. The number of years I had left was growing staggeringly low, at any rate. No matter how delayed I was at achieving love, marriage, work, and whatever else it was people in my years did, there was always that pressing matter of how little time I had left to do it.

All of this was on my mind as I stared, and Fabian said nothing in all of the silence. He didn't ask about my age, or why I was crying silently, or why I was such a nosy little shit. I almost wished that he would, just to prove everyone in their youth was so obnoxious. He simply sat there, staring at me as he had been, a knowing sort of look in his eye as he waited for the last of the rain outside to stop.

The next few weeks were hard on my health, and I remained upstairs for the majority of it. The storm had completely destroyed my room, the full extent of the damage done remaining a mystery to me until I was well enough to wheel myself down the hall. Piers would tell me that a branch had burst through the window, smashing the bars aside as though they were made of the now-destroyed roses. Apparently, the branch had speared my mattress in just the right spot to kill me, had I been fortunate enough to be laying there. I wish even now that he hadn't told me of this. Trapped in my substitute room, shivering and coughing for hours on end, all I could do was imagine how wonderfully everyone could have gone on living if I been in that bed. Darkness rolled in with me, and the heavy gloom was my pillow, unmoving even with Petra's presence. When she wasn't singing me songs in a vain attempt to bring a smile back to my face, she was outside, her voice tinkling in from the garden where she played. She seemed to spend as much time in it as I spent in bed, often laughing and squealing and shrieking until the sun set. I had never been annoyed with her childish joy before, and was surprised at how the sound grated on my ears.

The worst part of being locked inside and confined to a few feet of space, I determined, was the ease with which my uncle could come in and talk to me. As he was usually hiding in his study - a poorly kept library of coverless books and unfinished manuscripts - the proximity of company proved too much excitement for him to restrain. I was glad to be one easily bored, and found myself more eagre to sleep than ever when he sat on the edge of my bed and read whatever he happened to be working on. He even bored himself, leaving in a hurry when he fainted away, only to awake in a crumpled heap on the floor. I wanted to feel pity for him, but I only felt peace when he left those days.

One morning, I awoke to find the air warmer than it had been since the storm. I shivered and lifted my head, only to find myself looking into the bright yellow eyes of Fabian.

"You're awake," he said, surprise lifting his voice. "I came in to get a fire going; ignore me if I'm bothering you. I won't be long."

"Come here," I said. He stepped closer, curious. Was I going to want food, or another blanket? "Give me your hand." The assurance left his eyes, but he held his hand out and flinched when I took it.

"God, Mr. Evan!" As wonderfully warm as he'd felt, I must have been just as cold. "Please, let me strike the fire at once! You're going to die in here!" It was my turn to flinch, but he had already pulled his hand free and turned to the miniature mantle. Every room possessed a fire pit in this awful house, but as nobody used this particular chamber in centuries, I was sure of it, I was doubtful even he could work his magic on it. I sat up, ready to critique him for trying, but he shuffled something together and then, as though it had always been there, a fire was roaring in the pit. "How does that feel?"

What happened next will forever haunt my memories - I moaned aloud. I was cold, you must remember, and ached so badly from it that the sudden rush of warmth seemed to unlock every one of my joints and muscles from an ancient slumber. I no more wished to make that dreadful sound than he likely wanted to hear it, but it was completely, I must emphasise, beyond my control. I immediately slapped my hand over my mouth, but the damage had been done - Fabian's eyes widened and freckled cheeks turned maroon. That would have been fine, totally understandable, if he then hadn't given me a curious look, a knowing sort of look. I couldn't guess just what he knew, but the expression made my skin prickle in a way it never had before.

He opened his mouth to say something, only to close it. This happened several more times, and I tried to interrupt each instance, to say anything to distract him from feeling obligated to reply, but he held his hand up. "Evan," he said at last, slowly and carefully, "have you... ever had... dreams?" I was so confused by this question, of all the ones he could have asked, that I didn't remark on him finally addressing me without that dreaded title.

"What sort of dreams? Of course I've dreamt, I'm always asleep. Who doesn't dream when they sleep?"

He shushed my embarrassed blathering and sat on the edge of the bed. "Those dreams."

I could have hit him I was so confused. All he did was nod his head, as though I understood and was secretly pretending I didn't. Dreams! Who wanted to talk about sleep-induced hallucinations when they've just heard... well, what we both heard?

"I'm afraid you'll have to explain yourself. What are those dreams?"

If I was exasperated, he had grown doubly so. Clasping his hands together, he contemplated me with a heavy look, his brown furrowed and his lips almost puckered in concentration. He made a low sound in the back of his throat before answering. "I change all of the bedsheets in the house. These include yours. I have yet to notice... yours are never dirty, Evan." If his intent was to frustrate my shame away, he succeeded most excellently!

"Would you explain yourself!"

"Have you ever thought about sex, Evan?" In an instant, the blush of maroon was back, flooding his pained face. His nose twitched and his lips worked themselves into a puzzled frown, and for all of the shock this question gave me, I could not understand the reason for the question, nor why he should be so embarrassed to ask it of me.

Before I could stammer out any sort of answer, Piers knocked open the front door and shouted for him. Before I could ask him just what he meant, who he thought he was, or what the noise I'd made had anything to do with sex, he was gone, rushing out to meet the demands of the urgent voice of my brother and leaving me with a headful of questions.