More than normal the house seemed oppressive, the walls pushing in on him, taunting him as if they knew they could cage him. The silence in the halls echoed against his mind and Daniel paced like a caged animal, the carpet shuffling silently under his shoes. It wasn’t as bad when Freya was around, her very presence could calm his frayed soul. Knowing her sweet smile might be just around the corner kept the shadows of his own mind from creeping ever forward.

Daniel paced downstairs, his robes swirling around his feet. The dim parlor greeted him, curtains still drawn. The house elves knew better than than to open them when it was only Daniel at home. Shadows suited him better than the light they let in. The light belonged to Freya, not to Daniel. A portrait of Daniel and Freya stared down at Daniel as he poured himself a glass of firewhiskey, the artist had caught Freya’s gentle smile but the playfulness that lit her eyes was nowhere to be seen. Instead her eyes watched Daniel, judging him for his actions. There would be no reprieve here.

Uneasy Daniel continued pacing, drink in hand. The amber burned down his throat, but provided a rare illusion of solace to Daniel on Freya’s absences. Daniel barely noticed where his feet led him until the bitter child of London’s winter air bit at him. Above the skies were as gray as his thoughts, the stone walls seemed closer together beyond the dead plants that Freya so carefully tended.

The garden was her space in their home, the one place that always reminded Daniel of his wife’s tender kindness, even when she was gone. Here the voices the oppression numbed, pushed to the side by the reminder that his wife would always return, that she would never leave him. He doubted she knew how much he needed her, how much she could push the shadows from his mind, but he knew that she wouldn’t - couldn’t - leave. They loved each other and surely that was enough.

The mere thought sparked the voices again, the troubled worries that had plagued him, the dark anxieties that whispered in his mind of her traitorous inclinations. Even the whiskey and the gardens could do little to calm them. Freya’s gentle voice was the only thing that could dispel his dark moods and as he looked at the gray branches of a leafless bush he began to count the months. Almost six since she had last been home. The weight of that thought tugged at Daniel’s consciousness, making him blind to the world around him. Near the bush a small shoot of green had sprung up, the first sign of spring after a long winter.

Freya Selwyn