Sleeping in was as foreign to Gavriil as being married again, but the restless urge to wander the forest hadn’t struck him quite yet. Not as forcibly as it usually did. The bed was warm and with Evangelina nestled in next to him, he was even more unwilling to leave. Long habit of rising early saw to it that his sleep at this hour was light indeed and he was awakened by the first of her stirrings. He jumped at the first nip she gave him but didn’t open his eyes, curious to see how much she would do to get her way.

It turned out that testing a Leventi woman’s determination was like testing whether a river would still thunder on in its purpose. Evangelina was in no way deterred in her purpose to make sure he was awake. “Hey, wake up I want to see Meganea at sunrise,” she half whispered. Gavriil didn’t need to open his eyes to know that it was nearly too late to see the sunrise. He could feel the chill already attempting to leave the air. Very early morning had a stillness about it, a calm silence. Far away, a sparrow was already chirruping.

“Better hurry, then,” he mumbled, finally opening one eye.

“Take me hunting.”

That earned her an immediate wakefulness that had him half sitting up to gauge whether or not she was serious. He’d often thought about taking her hunting with him once she was living here but had been contented in the possibility that she may not want to go. Sibyl almost never came with him, except to set the rabbit traps. She never went to see if the traps had caught anything, though. For a farmer’s daughter, she’d been terribly sentimental about rabbits but had favored rabbit stew. One of those human dualities that wasn’t easily explained.

”Please.” He smiled at the afterthought of politeness she’d added. In answer, he nodded and threw back the covers to get out of bed. Before he could do that, though, she was draping herself across him again, half pinning him down with her nails gliding along his stomach. It was hard to tell if she actually wanted to get up or if she liked talking about it.

Gavriil was shockingly just as ready not to go hunting, for once. His hand slid along the smooth plane of her back while she bit him again, mumbling about breakfast. “I’m positively ravenous.” He actually smirked. Ravenous was one word for it. An apt one.

“Are we leaving the bed or staying?” his voice was a deep rumble in his chest from disuse. In answer, Evangelina rolled onto her stomach and began fishing around on the floor, for her robe, he assumed. Gavriil was at last free to sit up properly and he was in the process of swinging his legs out of bed when he heard his name sailing out of her lips in a tremulously long whine.

He looked back to find her butt up in the air and her head and shoulders completely invisible over the side of the bed. “Gavriil, I think I’m stuck.”

“Stuck…” he grinned and crawled across the large bed on all fours to investigate how ‘stuck’ she was with none of the hurry she appeared to feel she needed.

”Gavriil, help me…”

He knelt right behind her, considering her bottom with some thought. Oh he’d help her. There wasn’t time for any real fun if she truly did want to get out into nature but he’d chance it. “You do seem to find yourself in odd situations,” he observed, hands sliding along either side of her thighs. His touch glided up along her hips before his light grip closed there and with a fluid heave, he had her pulled back against him and sitting straight down on his lap. One arm slid around her waist and he rested his chin on her shoulder, watching her profile.

“Were you really wanting to see the horses? Or were you showing your tail?”

The emerald green shimmer of her robe fluttered like a ribbon and heaped itself in generous folds on her lap. Gavriil’s fingertips wandered towards it, under it, pushing it aside until it pooled on the bed, and gave her no ability to hide. Her hair brushed against his face, catching in the unshaven hairs of his jaw. She seemed to be very slightly embarrassed but he didn’t comment on it. Whatever flutters of insecurity she may feel now would be long gone soon enough, once she got her bearings, and came to think of this house and this bed as her own.

“Anyone could have found themselves in that mess,” she protested, prompting a deep, single laugh to rumble in his chest. Yes, anyone might but she seemed to far more frequently than the average person. He let that pass and she went on, leaning back into him, while his hands roamed her torso. His attention wandered along the swell of her breasts, over her stomach, the rounded curves of her hips and thighs, but despite the splendor that was her person, he was listening. “Is that what you were doing? Taking a good long look at my tail?”

“I am human,” he lifted his head and kissed her temple. “Where else am I to look?” For a few seconds, they sat like that, her still pressed to him while he revisited the explorations of last night. But time was slipping by and she seemed to rouse back to her purpose when he was starting to forget why it was she was reaching for the robe in the first place.

“And yes, I do really want to see the horses and go hunting and see the sunrise.” He made an impatient noise. ”But I can see the sunrise just fine from here out that window, you know. I’m greedy, I want all of it. Everything.” Gavriil pulled back a fraction and looked at her, then out of the window. He weighed the pros and cons. There was almost nothing more serene than walking in the cool of the morning and if nothing else, they could always end up tumbling in here by mid day. The sun would not wait for them to make up their minds and would rise anyway.

“Then let’s see what we can find,” he pulled her to him for one last, long kiss but then he was shifting out of bed and walking towards the washbasin. Already his mind was racing ahead to the kitchens, where no doubt the cook already had food waiting. Gavriil was not an unpredictable person and he liked to have his routine set. It made life so much easier when servants knew what you wanted and had it ready without you needing to even ask.

This ended up being the case. He dressed in a tunic of deep blue with brown leather breeches and sturdy boots. Strapped across his torso went his quiver, in which were his arrows and his bow. A dagger tucked into his belt and then he was ready. For Evie, he did insist that she wear one of the presents he’d gotten her. They weren’t the sort of things one could present at a wedding but he had later that night. Perhaps they weren’t terribly appropriate things to get a woman but if she was sharing his life, he thought he might try to outfit her for it.

Sibyl had come hunting with him only a handful of times. It wasn’t something she liked to do. Though she’d been born a farmer’s daughter, she’d taken to the life of a Lady with poise and grace. She was content to walk in the fields, gather flowers for the house, ride through the forest with him, but hunting? No, she left that to him and their children. Evie didn’t seem to want to do that and Gavriil was interested to see if she kept up the desire. If not, he was prepared to accept it, since that was what he was used to in the first place. He was perfectly aware that Dorothea was an anomaly in her desires to go with him into the forest.

The night of their wedding, wrapped in soft cloth, tied with ribbons Evie could use to tie back her unruly mane, was a tunic of deep emerald green, fitted to her size. Beneath this was a pair of doeskin breeches and calf skin boots. Whether she put these things to much use, he could not say, but they were fine quality and what she would need if she was to come with him. As to her abilities with a weapon, he wasn’t going to get her a good one until she proved that she really wanted to shoot or not. One of his spare daggers would do for her nicely and then he’d tossed onto the bed for her while he’d dressed.

Once they were both ready, they went downstairs and through the semi dark of the house into the warm coziness of the Dimitrou kitchens. Only the youngest maid and the cook were awake but a cooking fire already burned low and constant in the hearth, over which water boiled in a large hanging pot. On the counter, wrapped in two neat parcels, were the flatbreads for their morning meal, figs, strips of lamb, and soft cheese. Two horns of watered down wine were beside these and Gavriil packed his into his satchel at his side, waiting for Evie to do the same.

Then they were striding out into the cool of the morning, late, but they could at least check the traps, even if the animals were very likely all heading to bed by now. The Dimitrou compound had a high wall around its borders with several ivy covered gates leading out into the savage terrain beyond. Gavriil crossed the back courtyard past the stables and climbed the worn path up the steep hill and into the trees. This forest was well traveled and well loved. Deer trails and human paths snaked positively everywhere and it was here, on a wide strip that Gavriil finally stopped and looked down at his young wife.

“Which would you like to do?” he asked, his voice purposefully quiet. “See the rabbit traps or look for deer?”

He had no plans to ride through the forest this morning and had led her up onto the path, away from the courtyard for that reason. Wrongly, he’d assumed that she would want to check the traps, which, in hindsight, he understood that this was a silly thing to think. Where there were horses, Evangelina would be also and they didn’t need the horses for the traps. Truthfully, they didn’t need the horses for the deer, either and if he was on his own, he’d have stalked straight into the trees.

But she was an inexperienced hunter and stalking up on deer takes quite a lot of practice with how to walk and how to use the forest to one’s advantage. Ideally she’d be intimately familiar with the ground they were covering, too, so that she wouldn’t make a lot of undue noise. As neither of those things were the case, and the horses, at least, knew the terrain better than she did, he opted to turn back.

“Deer,” he repeated. Taking her by the hand, he led her back down the lichen covered steps they’d just used and into the courtyard. At this time of morning, the paving stones were still in shadow and each was rimmed with fuzzy moss that added a pleasant shock of green to the place. Along the wall of the compound stood the stables and Gavriil walked briskly over to the short, low building. There was a larger barn that was newer than this one and nearer to the fields. It was in that one that the horses who were bred to be sold were kept. In these smaller stables, with six stalls on each side, were kept the family’s personal horses.

A groom, out of long habit, had Gavriil’s mount ready but not one for Evangelina. This oversight annoyed him but he said nothing to the servant. It was the steward who would hear about it during their midmorning meeting. “Ready one for Lady Dimitrou,” Gavriil’s tone was not overly sympathetic to the groom’s realization of his error. “This is time I didn’t want wasted,” Gavriil muttered to Evie. Their hands were still joined and he looked down at their interlaced fingers. “How disappointed will you be if you do not bring back a kill?” He was positive she wouldn’t but that didn’t signify anything if this was her first time. Nor was it the true goal. If they could then that would be a triumph indeed. If not, then they’d simply try again tomorrow. He was patient in such matters.

By the time the groom had one of the horses generally used for hunting brought out for her, rather than her own horse. Gavriil didn’t know if she’d attempt to insist on using her own or not, but explained that for their purposes today, this one would be better. Swinging up into his saddle, he led the way out of the south gate and rode the two of them around the wide road that meandered through the trees. They were in near enough the same place they had been before but the sun was higher.

They should have stayed in bed. Planned better. He was a little agitated that she wasn’t going to get the full experience now that she would have if they’d had this idea at a better time. None of this did he say to her, however. His actual words were, “To the right. Do you see that split in the bushes and the deep track there? We’ll follow that trail at first but it will wander and mislead us soon enough. When it does, we’ll look for signs then as to which way to go. And, above all, we must be quiet and tranquil.”

He was sure that once they broke the treeline, his gruffness would be soothed and his spirit settled again. It was always that way once he was deep enough into the forest. One last thought struck him and he turned to Evie. “This probably won’t matter for us today, but if you come out alone, be wary of following trails like these to come back home. They might look like they’re leading in the right direction but they are notorious for leading someone astray. Without fail, every time we host The Hunt, I have to come out here and track some poor lord or other down.”

He urged his horse forward and threw out over his shoulder, much calmer than he was about the trails. “Oh and by the way there are bears but they shouldn’t be a problem.”