The dawn touched her fingers lightly upon the bleak vision the night had left behind, finger-painting it in all the rosy and golden hues of the morning. The sun was an angry orange through the thin clouds, laboring to rise over the horizon to start another day. Doumeki turned his head away from the sight, lips pursed thoughtfully.

The sight of his husband, still snuggled up in bed under covers half turned away, assaulted him and he momentarily stopped in the doorway to take in the cold room, the sunrays slowly creeping in through a slanted window, the leather wallpaper in gold with cream-coloured flowers embossed on it. And Watanuki, all tousled hair and sprawling limbs, awkward beauty folded in on himself as he muttered something in his sleep and then shifted restlessly.

The movement called him back to himself and Doumeki slipped away, not wanting to be caught in that room he didn’t have ready access to.

After consuming a hasty breakfast mostly consisting of piping hot tea (a pot of keemun, his own favourite choice, a mellow, somewhat sweet little number with a subtle, barely-there undertone of smoke) and two well-buttered halves of a scone, Doumeki was fully prepared to flout the rules –as usual- and went out. After so long a period of disuse, his stiff riding boots seemed heavier than usual on his feet as he impatiently strode down the many stairs and to the stables.

Swinging himself up on his horse (the stableboys stared curiously, but wisely decided not to inquire if he had milord’s permission) he breathed in deeply of the crisp morning air and then spurred the horse into action. The lands (formerly Doumeki’s, then the crown’s and now Watanuki’s) were vast and he veered off to the right after a while of riding haplessly over fields, going through the forest on a round that would take him a few hours. Anything, anything that got him out of Watanuki’s presence even if it meant braving the storm later on.

Doumeki was not very good at being hemmed in. You’d think he would be, given the family circumstances, but he simply wasn’t. He chafed under the inactivity forced upon him, the regulations. He resented it under the sheen of silence. Now, though, he shrugged all of those thoughts off and just enjoyed the speed, the chase, the air and the wind.

When he returned, he expected to be met by a hail of abuse and had already calculated what parts of the mansion Watanuki was likely to be in over the next hours. But as he tried to enter the study (he wasn’t one to postpone a confrontation) he was turned away impatiently by a page who pompously informed him that the master wasn’t available to see him just now.

So in the end Doumeki had to slink away and think of some other employment for the afternoon rather than Watanuki-baiting.

Watanuki, meanwhile, was having a somewhat worse than usual day. He’d slept well enough and foregone breakfast in favour of making a dint on the paperwork that was again beginning to pile up on his desk. From there he ran the estates, orders and information flowing to and from in an endless stream of words and he sat at the centre, a spider with all the threads of the web in his hands. So what that stubborn and wilful man that he’d been saddled with was up to wasn’t really any of Watanuki’s top concerns as long as he kept out of the way.

Lunch time came and went, as did afternoon tea and dinner and at last, just as the sun was setting and the candles were being lit before the servants finally sat down for their own meals, the lord of the mansion called it quits and emerged from his seclusion. Only to find that, outside of his study’s door, a small, grey figure about the height of Watanuki’s index finger stood waiting. He stopped, barely in time, and just about avoided stepping on the small creature that didn’t move. In the unwavering shadows that were beginning to settle themselves in the hallway it should by rights have been near invisible. But Watanuki, with that strange sight superimposed upon his normal one, could see him clearly. So he kneeled down on the carpet and lowered his voice so as to not startle the little man – after all, as he knew by experience, when speaking to one of the little people, it was best to be considerate.

The conversation was lengthy and afterwards, the wight disappeared within the wink of an eye as his people was wont to do. Watanuki remained thoughtfully on his knees, considering what it said about the times that the small guardian spirits of this home had chosen to reveal themselves to him. For despite their size, the gardvord were immensely powerful and they went under many names. They could do a man a good turn or a very bad one, they could devote themselves to mischief-making or labour hard all their lives to help a human prosper.

They had been guarding the Doumekis for centuries – and now they were worried. They had heard things, seen, felt – just as rats they lived close to the earth and in the dark nooks and corners and when bad things were afoot, they knew. They read the signs.

Watanuki spent the rest of the evening immersed in the library, reading every book he could find on the tomte, the domovoi, the vetter, the brownie – all different names for the creature he had received earlier.

Doumeki spent the rest of the evening immersed in considering a problem, turning it over and over, poking and prodding it from all directions. For earlier, standing in the shadows, he had seen his husband speak to thin air as if there was something else there, something that only he could see. That narrowed the possibilities down to three things; his husband liked to indulge in fantasy games, which was unlikely the way Doumeki saw it although he didn’t know Watanuki intimately enough to fully disregard the idea. His husband was mad which, he supposed, was fully possible and probably the solution that most other people would have pinned down as most plausible. Or there was actually something there, something that was hidden from the eyes of others but visible as if in plain daylight to Watanuki.

For the first time in his life, Doumeki felt the stirrings of being intrigued by an entity beyond himself, and he vowed to get to the bottom of this.