Love on the Dark Side

Once upon a time, there was a hero of most unusual qualities, known as the Black Knight. He was as beautiful as the night, with long silky hair like the sky spangled with stars. His long limbs were as lithe and swift as a deer’s. On the battlefields, his bravery was famous, and every knight would rather fight at his side than anyone else’s. His quick eye, fast reflexes and dexterity with both sword and bow had saved many of his countrymen’s lives – and ended many of their enemies’.

If all this had made him swagger, the other knights would’ve hated him. In fact, he was quiet and unassuming when he joined them in the taverns, and uncomfortable when attention was drawn to his daring exploits. The prettiest girls always clustered near his table, and bright eyes darted his way invitingly – but, even then, the other men were content. He had eyes for these beauties, to be sure, but he was wholly faithful to his own true love.

The spurned lovelies were usually happy to salve their pride with the attentions of the other knights, with hair and talk a little coarser, but still powerful men for all that. Later in the night, with muscular hairy thighs scraping hard between their own more delicate legs, pinned down by the heaving sweaty beefy weight, they thought it was just as well – the Black Knight was a shade too womanly, and might not have such a hefty slab of meat as this to offer a girl.

So the years went by, with the other men revelling in the wenches, while the Black Knight’s fame continued to spread. Before long, the stories held him to be the most lovely, the most chaste and the most skilful man ever to exist. Though he was much embarrassed by these tales, nothing he did disproved them.

His own love, Lily, lived with her mother in a quiet valley far from the kingdom’s castle. There she gathered herbs and made potions, as well as the usual homely tasks: feeding, healing and slaughtering the livestock; curing meat and scraping skins; planting, weeding and harvesting the vegetables; picking and preserving fruits; making bread, soap, candles and cheese; scrubbing and sweeping; spinning, knitting, weaving and dyeing; sewing, cleaning and mending clothes; and so on. She had a lock of her darling knight’s black hair, which she treasured, rubbing its softness against her cheek late at night when she longed for him.

Whenever his duties permitted, the Black Knight leapt on to his fast horse and galloped all day and night to visit her. Then Lily laid aside her work and they walked together, dreaming of the day when they could be man and wife. She was still a little too young, he was still a little too poor, the King could not yet spare him, the borders were being challenged again . . . For three years, this continued, and it was always to be next spring, next autumn . . . until it seemed the day would never come.

Her mother was a wise woman, as well as the wise-woman. She made sure her daughter knew enough of the rhythms of life to avoid being embarrassed before her wedding day by an early guest. The Black Knight and his true love lay down in the forest, in summertime, and he disproved the suspicions of the tavern wenches as he made her wail and screech with his thick staff. One sunny afternoon, they discovered that kisses could be even sweeter when mouths didn’t meet. They were elated and shocked by their invention, and she saw all the stars of the universe in the hair on his bowed head. The mother, seeing the cloud of birds frightened into the skies from the treetops, smiled to herself as she rocked and wove her wool on the cottage porch. In winter, whenever the Black Knight visited, the mother would remember an urgent visit to an invalid. Then, by the fireside, on the pile of rag-rugs and warm woollen blankets that the two women had made, in the close smoky air of the little cottage, he would prove his love for Lily again and again. Her mother always paused at the path’s summit, to see the steam that billowed from the snowy cottage, and smiled.

Now the king’s need of the Black Knight was no invention to keep his best fighter close. The little kingdom was hard pressed by its neighbour, which was ruled by a sorcerous queen. She used her dark arts to impart strength to her fighting men, and her cruelty to ensure they would always fear her more than death. Even her beauty was torture to them: her black dresses always cut low, her talons and lips crimson, her black crown of spikes resting high on her imperious brow.

The sorceress enjoyed the battles. Sometimes she watched from her horse on a hill crest, other times as a screeching crow, discernible from the other carrion-eaters by her crimson beak and claws. She savoured the bloody pitting of man against man, the straining muscles and spraying sweat of their toughened bodies. Less pleasing was how the Black Knight cut down her best knights. He lent courage to his comrades and darted nimbly through the press of bodies, playing both archer and swordsman, bringing death to her forces from far and near.

One spring day, watching from the clifftop, it seemed at last she would win. The Black Knight was hemmed in, unable to help his own side for fear of his life, and the black-armoured men were pushing the king’s forces steadily back. Then – the effrontery took her breath away – in the midst of battle, he broke off from returning the sword strokes of his adversaries. Dancing and leaping over the cold steel thrusts, he whipped an arrow from his quiver, fitted it to his bow, and pointed it – upwards. At her. Before she could even grasp his intent, the arrow was flying through the air and had buried itself in her gown. Flung from her horse, she was knocked out cold and did not see the remainder of the fight. By all accounts (reluctantly and bloodily obtained), her men had believed her dead and fled the field. She was gravely wounded, and any mere mortal would’ve no doubt died. As it was, she took two months to recover, nursing herself and her hatred in equal proportions.

For the Black Knight, those were months of purest happiness. As soon as possible, he escaped the celebratory banners and drunken feasting at the castle, readied his horse and sped towards his love. In the heavy warmth of Lily’s breasts, he drowned out the memories of bloodied flesh. The song of her ecstatic screams replaced the echo of battle in his ears. All her gentle, long, soft body wrapped him in its welcoming embrace. Peace, it seemed, had come at last, and the time of war was over – the time for love had begun. They set a date in midsummer for their marriage and began the preparations for a feast and celebration worthy of the king’s greatest knight being wedded to his one true love.

The first day that the sorceress was strong enough to walk on the ramparts, she was consumed with bitterness. The farms were long neglected during her campaigns. Swathes of forest lay scarred and bare. The king’s lands were rich and fertile, and she longed for them. It was all the fault of that damnable, beautiful knight! If only he were dead . . . But imagining his mangled corpse only made her sigh over the waste. He should be hers, not fighting against her, but using all that limber strength to please her. How powerful those slim limbs would be! How pared and graceful his bare body would look, spread on her sheets. That long black hair would curtain her face as he sank into her in quiet worship. His only weapon would be between his legs, leaping up in fat readiness . . . She rang her bell wildly. ‘Send me Sir Garth,’ she ordered. All night long she rode her knight, using him repeatedly while he sweated with fear lest he fail her – whether by weakening or by coming. She bucked and screeched, ordering him into this position and that, all the while imagining the Black Knight.

The Black Knight’s wedding present for Lily was to be a silver brooch to hold the lock of his hair, which he would ask her to twine with her own. Then the two would lie curled together, the gold and the black, encased in silver. When he took the king’s wedding invitation, he planned to detour past a silversmith, leave instructions and on the way back collect the finished piece.

All day he rode, thinking dreamily of his beloved. It occurred to him that he had never yet kissed the soft skin behind her knees, though he’d often admired it when he lifted her legs high and slid back and forth inside her. When he returned, he promised himself, he would amend that oversight. He’d raise her leg, her skirt slipping over her thighs, and brush his lips over the soft crease of skin. Then he’d raise the other leg, and her skirts would tumble further . . . The fantasy spun on pleasantly, so that by sundown he hurt with need for her. He lay by his fire, under a thin blanket, and let his hand wander inside his trousers, his mind full of his darling Lily, as he had done so often before. Soon, it would never be necessary again . . . He began to plan their wedding night while his hand stroked, but he got no further than undressing her before he came with a long shuddering groan.

The silversmith’s village was near the sorceress’s lands, and the knight shook his head at the sharp difference between these healthy fields and those neglected stretches. He lodged in the local tavern, where his identity was quickly discovered and many drinks pressed on him. Even one of the women, exceptionally beautiful and forward, insisted on buying him a glass of golden mead. He accepted it, not wanting to embarrass her in public, but said, ‘My fiancée will be very grateful to all these good people for their kindness to me.’

If she was disappointed, she didn’t show it. Instead, she was coolly charming, entertaining him with her witty cruel humour. He noticed how lovely her dark hair was, how pale her skin. The merciless perfection of her beauty cut the eyes, and her painted smirk suggested she was knowledgeable, too. He glanced at her plump half-naked breasts, and imagined releasing and handling them . . . At that, he decided the mead had gone to his head, and withdrew to his room.

The drink had only just started to take effect, however. By midnight, its hold was firm. She made her way into his darkened room, where he lay sleepless and consumed with lust for the raven-haired lovely. When her naked body insinuated itself next to his, a wave of fire swept through him. With a quick pantherlike twist of his elegant body, he held her pinned beneath him, his knee forcing her thighs apart. Delighted, she fought a little, straining her arms which he held fixed by the wrists, struggling to keep her thighs together. She would have the chaste knight force himself on her – and her groin melted at the thought.

They wrestled, skin rubbing, as she tested his strength. He was lost to everything in the darkness, his hunger to take her like a roaring in his ears. All he could think of was the sweetness of spearing her, whatever her resistance. Her hard nipples crushed against his chest as they fought – she was using her whole strength in earnest now, full of glee that he was so much more powerful – and it spurred him into a frenzy. His knee forced her open, his hips wriggled into the gap, and with one hard shove he sank to the hilt. Then he roared with pleasure, bucking and heaving in her slippery clasp.

He fucked hot and hard, thinking only of his gratification, the girl a mere sheath and a succulent shape to titillate him. He rode her to the crest of his pleasure, and shot his hot seed into her, then found it was not enough. After two minutes of gasping to catch his breath on top of her, his cock was painfully hard again without so much as withdrawing. Feral with lust, he began to slam into her again, squelching in his own juices. She was screaming, in pain or orgasm or both, he hardly cared, except that the sound made him even harder. He howled murderously as he came.

The news quickly spread that the Black Knight had abandoned his true love for the sorceress and the kingdom he had defended for the enemy land. He lived with her in her castle, and her little cups of mead, always seasoned with a snippet of the precious golden hair, enslaved him. Every waking hour, he was consumed with lust for her, obeying her spell to the letter. He hauled up her skirts as she stood looking over the ramparts, and took her from behind. He seized her in the corridors; he dropped to his knees before her throne, and pushed his head between her thighs in front of everyone; he lay on her bed, splayed and lovely, permanently erect, gazing at her with hunger. The time was ripe to attack the king’s lands, she knew, but it could wait . . . The Black Knight’s hefty staff, always throbbing and ready to split her, could not.

Lily wept bitterly. Her wedding day, so close at last, had been snatched away; her lover, so famous for his fidelity, was screwing the enemy queen with – by all reports – unquenchable passion, little caring who saw his clenching buttocks or pistoning cock. She was fortunate, however, to have a mother as clear-headed as she was far-sighted. The mother reasoned that only a spell could have torn the Black Knight from his beloved’s side, and made him behave so out of character. Through her work as a wisewoman, she knew just what sort of spell, too. It was not an art she ever practised, however the local maidens pleaded – love-spells are blackest magic.

In the lulls between her daughter’s stormy sobs, she spoke reason. She knew the terms and requirements of the spell. It relied on the beloved’s hair – that, for a start, guaranteed his love was true. The very extent of his lust for the queen proved how much he adored and desired Lily. The two women shaved Lily’s golden hair, burnt it and kept her bald, letting it be known as the girl’s way of mourning. Furthermore, the spell governed only the Black Knight’s waking hours; it could not extend to his sleep. This was where her lock of his hair came in – not for a love-spell, which her mother would never perform, but there are other ways to use hair.

In the hot dog-days of harvest-time, even the nights were sweltering. There was no work in the sorceress’s fields, for nothing had been planted, but the Black Knight ploughed her thoroughly and harvested their screams of pleasure. They lay asleep, their heads at opposite sides of the bed, their genitalia still clasped. The Black Knight’s back bore long scratches from the queen’s scarlet talons. She, splayed on her back, had a mouth swollen with kisses and slaps, and suckering bruises all over her breasts. The sheets were damp with their violent sweat. The door to the balcony stood open, letting in the scant breeze, and the moon stood high and small in the sky. The Black Knight dreamt.

In his dream, he lay by a fire on the roadside, dreaming. Twice asleep, he was twice removed from wakefulness. He dreamt with longing of a girl he’d just left, reliving their moments together. They’d followed the river deep into the forest, to a pool where the canopy of trees parted and midday sun fell on the water. The girl was tall, with golden hair, and beautifully formed. Most importantly, she was as gorgeous and desirable as only true love can be.

Teasing him, because she knew his long absence had made him ache fiercely, she darted out of his grasp and danced a few steps away to the edge of the water. Then she unbuttoned her gown under his eager eyes. Her light shift was almost transparent in the sunshine, showing the shape of the curving hips that he longed to be held within. She turned her back on him – he could just make out the slope of her buttocks, and sighed with longing to hold them against him – and she dived into the pool. He tore off his own clothes, clumsy with haste, his cock parallel to the ground. She stood up to her waist in the water, the wet white shift clinging in translucent folds to her breasts and hardened nipples. Trembling, slender and graceful, his shaft disproportionately thick, he waded towards her. The ends of her long hair were turned darker gold by the water and curled. She let him reach her, and his hands rose to cup her breasts as his head bent down to her mouth. The little gasp as his palms brushed her nipples was all he needed to hear.

Their mouths clashed fiercely, while shrieking moans flew like swallows from her. Together they fought the wet clinging fabric up to her waist, and as her thighs parted the cold slid over her opening. She wailed, falling back as he caught her and drew her towards the waiting spear. He pulled her slowly on to him, wedging her open. The heat of each other’s skin supplanted the chill of the water inch by inch, until all of him was inside her and she was speechless. His strong arms supported her watery weight, keeping her lying on the surface, tugging her backwards and forwards on his cock, the water sloshing over her breasts.

Each time he withdrew, his exposed shaft was cooled by the water, then buried again in her slippery heat. She sobbed with joy. Her eyes fluttered open to see his lovely face, falling hair, steamy eyes, parted lips – then rolled backwards and closed, as a new thrust brought her closer to the peak. For so many nights, he’d dreamt of her body yielding to him again that now he could barely control himself. All he wanted was to let go and spurt plentifully inside her, but more than that he wanted to make her come repeatedly. Withdrawing further, he used the cold water to keep himself in check, though the sight of her was nearly driving him over the edge. She was writhing and wriggling against him, contracting so hard as she wailed that suddenly he could hold back no more. He pushed harder, thrusting all his length inside as a long pure scream tore out of her mouth. High above them, from the trees, all the birds took flight in fright as the two lovers capsized in orgasm.

He woke in the queen’s bed, disentangled from her in his restless sleep. Unsure where he was, but peaceful, he watched the dawn through the open door. The edges of a few drifting clouds were burnt pale gold by the still unseen sun. The colour stabbed strangely at his heart. He lifted himself on to one elbow, a poem of languid male beauty in the early light, and took stock of his surroundings. The queen’s face was hard in sleep, her body brazenly exposed. He felt a flicker of disgust towards her, then woke a little more, and realised he had to have her immediately. She rose from sleep with him already plunging in and out of her.

The queen was growing uneasy about her lover. True, his lust was unabated. If anything, it seemed to be growing stronger and fiercer – she could barely tear him away from her. He ravished her at every opportunity and long into the night. In sleep, however, he cringed from her touch and muttered in his dreams. Her supply of hair was growing low, too. She’d flown, crow-formed, into the valley several times, but the wretched girl was still in that ridiculous practice of mourning, and her scalp was bare. Angry and anxious, the queen arranged to bring the wedding day closer. Once he’d vowed himself to her, the spell would be sealed, and she needn’t depend on the little bitch’s tresses.

The Black Knight, too, was troubled. The queen’s brew addled his every waking moment until he couldn’t think of past or future, and his only present desire was to use her fiercely. Still, there was a discordant note, always strongest in the early mornings before he fully woke. When he fucked her, he worshipped her beauty and desired nothing else, but part of him seemed to be punishing her too. Whenever he tried to think about it, his mind fogged over, and all he knew was that he adored her and couldn’t wait to bury himself in her once more. His nights were disturbed. Several times, he woke up walking around the castle, on the ramparts and once even out in the grounds. Some dream had led him out – some vision of a pretty running girl. He’d stand bewildered in the darkness, thinking his surroundings were a terrible place and he must leave immediately. Then, fully awake, he’d remember the queen and hurry back to bed. But all the time another dreamy desire was just out of reach, and he thrust harder, his cock straining towards that intangible ideal.

In the quiet valley, Lily grew thin and dreamy. Each night, she and her mother mixed their own collection of herbs with the morning’s scraping of light fuzz from Lily’s scalp and a snippet of the Black Knight’s locks. Being practical women, they arranged pillows, blankets and cushions to support her comfortably, and then the mother would retreat to her room and carefully seal the chinks in the door with twists of old rags. It would not do for them both to be carried through the spirit-world thus. Lily would light the brazier, and let the smoke surround her, carrying her into a trance. One night, the mother heard Lily scream out, and sat bolt upright in bed with all her mother-bear instincts ablaze. If her child were in danger . . . But then the scream came again, from high and shrill all the way down the scale to a breathless shuddering gasp that drew out, quavering. The mother lay down again, pulling the blankets back into place. Lily had found her true love, and found her way through the mist of the sorceress’s spell into his heart’s desire. All night, Lily gasped and moaned in her trance. When the dawn came, her mother took away the rags and opened the door. Her daughter was sprawled in front of the fire, her nightgown torn and a smile on her face as true sleep at last replaced the spirit-travel. So it went on, night after night, the mother sleeping with pillows over her head, the daughter sending her spirit in search of her true love.

By the time the queen’s wedding plans reached their valley, Lily was grown so weak from her efforts that she could scarcely stand. The mother was worried – Lily was reaching her knight, true, but only in their dreamtime. She was keeping their love alive, but that only made the sorceress’s hairy concoction more powerful.

At each village, her mother enquired after the news. With the Black Knight’s fame spread so wide, the gossip about him was equally enthusiastic. He had turned into a crow, said some, or the sorceress gave birth daily to fully grown knights, all with his strength and skill! As they approached the border, the rumours were less wild and more convincing. The wedding day had been brought forward. His passion had redoubled. The queen was now in the habit of discharging her sovereign duties, meeting emissaries, dismissing petitioners, and so on, while copulating with the knight. Sometimes he curled at her feet, while she sat at her writing table in the state room, his head making a bulge under her skirt while he drank between her widespread thighs. Just as often, her skirts were rucked up, exposing her to all the court, while his fingers made fast work inside her. She had been known to sign documents while bent over the table, her bottom bared, and his shaft shoving fiercely into her. However true or exaggerated, most reports agreed that the wedding was now fixed for winter’s eve, the night that heralded two long moons of darkness. It was an evil and powerful time.

The harvest was taken in; the days were shortening fast. The earth’s bounty had almost ended for the year – it still offered fat orange squash and late-ripening apples, but little else. The berries that hadn’t been picked were shrivelled and vile, festooned with cobwebs. Over the black stubbled earth of empty fields, autumn mists crept thick and eerie. The bare branches of trees loomed out of the white weirdness and the road was hard to follow. In the queen’s lands, the dying year’s untidiness mingled with the pervading neglect and bleak weather to create a vista of desolation. The Black Knight saw it, and it brought misery into his heart. Bitterly, he sought his solace in the arid lands of her body, and found only brief satisfaction. However much he wanted her, he always came wanting more, as if it were not her at all he wanted. When winter truly dawned, so would his marriage. Perhaps, he wondered, that would fulfil the longing in his heart. And on the eve of his marriage, he dreamt of midwinter.

Snow was whirling around a little cottage, humble and snug. The chinks of wood were well sealed with pitch, and a fire blazed – a mixture of bright embers which had burnt long and low, and fresh flaming logs. He felt at peace, sitting cross-legged by the fireplace on a pile of rugs – but not so calm, because opposite him was the most bewitching girl he had ever seen. Their eyes met in shy heated glances as his hesitant hands unlaced her gown and opened it wide. The shape of her breasts was clear through her shift, making him swell painfully in his trousers. He swallowed hard, as his clumsy, nervous fingers slid her shift down. She was bare to the waist now, like him. He wanted to grab her close, feel her nipples against his chest and all that soft flesh compressed against him. Still, he was determined to be patient.

He always planned his first time back with her so carefully. He had enough time to think about it – night after night, hearing others’ grunts and gasps, alone in his tent and yearning. But, once he was with her, it was always different. The Lily he returned to was so much more vivid and full-blooded than the pale shadow of memory that accompanied him. Her flame-lit eyes invited; she invented games to delight him. No doubt she, too, plotted each meeting with ardour, and so what played out was half of each, to the excited surprise of both.

‘But it’s snowing!’ he objected, and then followed anyway, thinking he could lick the snowflakes from her hard nipples and that she could lead him anywhere, undressed like that, and he would follow, cock first. Or maybe heart first, because, though his cock protruded alarmingly, his heart shot after her like an arrow. Into the blizzard they ran, her laughter guiding him.

Through whirling snow and over icy paths she led him, to a heavy door inset into stone. His veins pounded, thinking she meant him to take her there against the hard wood, the furnace of their lust defying the winter rage – but she was wrestling with the iron latch, and heaved her full weight to open the door. He had no memory of any such building in the village, but he followed his golden girl inside.

The sorceress’s hall was festooned with ivy and sharpedged holly, ready for the dawn wedding that would seal the somnambulist’s fate. On the far side, almost invisible in the shadows, a woman beyond middle age staggered under her burden, and laid her entranced daughter on the steps. A bow was slung over the woman’s shoulder and a quiver of arrows lay on her back. She loosened the girl’s bodice, readjusted her skirts and withdrew into the shadows. She faded into the night.

Lily had crossed the interior hall, and sat on the low steps at the front. He walked slower, nervous now, until he was close enough to see her eyes. They shone with the same pure love they’d always held, since first he and she had found each other. Then he was reassured, and his aching redoubled with the wave of love.

He knelt eagerly. Her thighs spread as his cheeks brushed them, and his tongue flicked on to her open petals. She shuddered and sank back, knowing his hands would always catch her. In thin wet lines, he traced her familiar shape – first the outer petals, and then the valley into which they led, then the slippery thinner inner petals, and at last the hard little stamen that made her scream out and beg for him. He was lost between her legs, drinking the salty sticky juice and pressing his tongue in for more, then nibbling again at that precious pebble. She cried with bliss, her legs pinning him to her, and when she finished shaking he kissed her more until the tremors started all over again. Eventually she stammered, ‘Now – now – it’s almost dawn – you need to be inside me, now!’

Outside, the sky grew pale, and the queen’s subjects gathered around the hall. Still sleepy in their wedding finery, they yawned and rubbed their faces, waiting for the sorceress. Inside the castle, guards were scurrying back and forth at her shrieked commands, hunting for the errant groom while the maidservants arranged the bride’s black gown.

Ecstatic, he pressed his tip against her and nudged it forwards. Always, after a long absence, she was tightly sealed and he had to strain to enter her. His fingers had done nothing to ease his passage, and as he wiggled deeper she screamed low and loud – but she screamed ‘yes’, and he knew to take her at her word. With each inch of penetration, she moaned blissfully, spurring him on. Her slippery well hugged him tightly, and he succumbed. A final heave, and their thighs met, his cock plunged deep inside; she held him entirely, both sobbing each other’s name.

The queen was proceeding to the hall, angry and anxious, but sure her lustful knight would follow where her body led. And if he savaged her at dawn as was his way, even before the ceremony and in public, so much the better – her fury made her hot. Then all the unquenchable lust of that perfect body would be hers forever.

As they bucked, he seemed to be waking from a dream, seeing dawn light instead of darkness – but, if it were a dream, it was a good one and was continuing, because Lily’s nipple still filled his mouth and his cock still filled her pussy, and the rising bliss still rose. He thought he knew where he was now: in a castle, not in the village at all – not even, he realised, as sleep fell away, in his own kingdom. But he was too consumed with lust-rage for his true love to care about any of that.

He heard the massive doors creaking and a babble of people, but it was too late for anything: she was already frozen in a parabola against him, completely still but for the secret muscles that drank and grabbed him greedily. His sap was rising inexorably, spilling over into her, and then jetting in burst after burst as if he had waited months for this. As they came, their eyes met, and he knew again she was his one true love, and he could never love or want another. So the dream met the reality, and no spell could withstand the cataclysm of that moment.

He was kissing her deeply when he heard a familiar scream of rage behind him. Leaping naked to his feet, he spun to see the sorceress in her bridal clothes, her face contorted with ugly wrath. The girl’s mother stepped forwards, and passed the Black Knight his bow and arrows. The queen had a few final moments to observe his perfection: his long hair stuck to his brow with sweat and sweeping below his shoulders, his strong slender legs akimbo, his tool still thick and glistening with love, his biceps swollen as he pulled the string taut, his eyes shining with truth. Then his arrow found its home with keener aim than the first, and she was dead.

The Black Knight and his Lady Lily were married shortly after, in the king’s castle, free at last to spend their every night together. In recognition of their brave deeds, they were given the sorceress’s lands as a duchy. They ruled wisely and well, and in time the forests, the farms and the people recovered from her cruel reign. And, judging by the clouds of frightened birds in summer, and the plumes of steam in winter, they lived happily ever after.