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Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/44988388.
Fandom: Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Rating: General Audiences
No warnings
Published 2023-02-13 for the Candy Hearts Exchange.
Words: 400
Cimorene had missed watching Mendanbar work his magic. It was so unshowy: no staffs or cauldrons or potions; no handwaving; no rhyming couplets. Mendanbar just watched, or listened, or felt, and then he did some gesture that you could miss if you weren’t looking for it—or even if you were, sometimes—and the next thing you knew, you were leagues away, or your food had been seasoned, or your favorite dress, the one you hadn’t seen since before your son was born, had been found and presented to you, not even smelling musty after all those years in storage.
Cimorene ran her hand down the slightly shimmery green fabric as Mendanbar held up the dress. “I was so young when I wore this.”
Mendanbar drew his eyebrows together. “From my perspective you wore it just last week.”
Cimorene sighed. They didn’t really know how to talk about the fact that she had been aging while he hadn’t. “It’s out of fashion, I think. For court dress. Waistlines have moved down and people have belled sleeves that trail all over the place.”
Mendanbar lowered the dress. “Sounds messy.”
“Mm. It hasn’t really affected me, since I’ve been dressing like a villager anyway.”
“If you started wearing the fashions from sixteen years ago—”
“More like twenty, this dress wasn’t new when you got shut in here—”
“—then everybody would have to consider those things fashionable again, wouldn’t they? If it’s what the Queen’s wearing?”
“Well, maybe they would if I were a young social maven of a Queen, and not a onetime misfit who’s now the mother of a teenager.”
Mendanbar set the dress aside over the back of a chair, looking thoughtful. “So what I’m gathering is, after all that time when people told us to act socially correct, I’ve skipped directly to the part where we’re socially irrelevant. In which case, we’re free, aren’t we?”
Cimorene quirked an eyebrow at him. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were excited about being officially behind the times.”
“Who, me? Out of step with the modern world? Bewildered by my teenage son and awed by the wisdom and experience of my wife? Do you think that doesn’t sound like a part I was born to play?” He caught her hands in his and kissed them. “Why shouldn’t I be excited? These may be the best years of our lives.”