“Let us make a house,” she flicked open the inkwell of Aegean Blue. “A small house covered in fog for our days of mourning the catastrophes to come.”

Tenuous and pale, a cottage appeared beneath her pen. A small house with thatch for roof and a shuttered door.

“Give us a fire, luv,” he said, and she drew a chimney puffing smoke.

“Now,” she said, dipping her pen, “let us speckle the ground with flat dry stones so we do not trample the primroses triumphant there after the plague of snow.”

A breeze murmured through the open window. He held the parchment still and her hands leapt across it.

A pond appeared, plumped with frogs and cherubs and Neptune there awaiting the robins’ wings.

“Give us a spot of tea too, luv.” He brushed a strand of hair from off her brow.

She drew two stumps beside a fallen tree. Two branches, curved and cozy, offered up their arms.

“Let us set our teacups here.” She drew two teacups nestled in the dead tree’s limbs.

“And a bite of sweets, darlin’,” he said.

And beside their cups a plate of fruit and ginger snaps sprang up.

“Ah,” she sighed. “And now the scent of orange and ginger will anoint our every deed.”

And “Yes, luv,” he agreed.