Flame Song was brought abruptly out of her memories by Aidan's voice. "Now it's my turn to ask you. What are you thinking of, Flame?"

"Just thinking that you're back to your usual self again."

His expression sobered a bit. He smiled with a touch of sadness in it. "Yes. It's been a long road, and I think there's still some distance left to travel, but I fell like I'm really living life again. And now I'm glad. Glad to be alive. Or undead, or whatever you want to call it." He grinned. "Sometimes I have trouble with the terminology for all this."

Flame Song laughed. "I'm glad you're alive too." She leaned over his prone form and gave him an affectionate lick with a sandpaper tongue.

"Ack! There's better ways to show your gratitude than slobbering all over me."

"True." A feline grin crossed her face, and then her form seemed to shimmer and twist. When the shimmering stilled a flame-haired human woman was sitting next to Aidan. She leaned over again and gave him a kiss. "Is that better?"

Aidan reached up and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down for another, longer kiss. "Mmmm hmmm."

Flame Song suddenly shivered. "It's freezing out here. Let's go inside."

Hand in hand they descended the snow-covered hill, Aidan wrapping a wing around Flame Song to shield her from the chill. At the base of the hill a dark opening led into the ground. Their northern home was dug into the hillside, providing shelter from the freezing winter wind. They went down the dark passage and opened the door that led into the fire-warmed house. The main room had a low ceiling but it was cozy, with flickering flames illuminating the polished wood floors and the piled cushions that served as the room's main furnishing. Flame Song and Aidan had settled themselves on a pile of cushions in front of the fire and were continuing where they had left off when a soft sound from another room interrupted.

Flame Song sighed, then got up and opened the door to the nursery, where Littlespark had been taking her nightly nap. Their whole family had switched to a nocturnal schedule. Aidan could function during daylight when he needed to, but found it difficult to stay awake the whole day through, so Flame Song and Littlespark had gradually switched over to his schedule. They had taken advantage of Littlespark's nightly nap to do a little romantic stargazing and, spellbound by the unexpected brilliance of the aurora, they had used up their brief moment of quiet.

Littlespark toddled out of the open door. Though only a year and a half old, she had grown fast and was easily the size of a two-year-old human. She could speak in full, if sometimes confusing, sentences and delighted in playing chase games with her parents. She clearly showed her mixed heritage. Though humanoid in appearance, she was covered all over with fine white fur. Her hair too was white, and her face was distinctly feline. She also had a pair of little wings, still covered in baby down. Her wing feathers were starting to come in here and there, and Aidan guessed that she might be flying within a year or so, to which Flame song replied that she hoped not. She was also hoping that if the child was going to be a shape-shifter that it wouldn't show until she was older. A shape-shifting, flying toddler would be a handful and a half.

As it was, Littlespark was still enough to keep them busy. Between entertaining her and dealing with the ordinary day-to-day, or rather night-to-night, tasks of keeping house they occupied the hours until Littlespark's bedtime. This deep into winter the sun was only up for few hours each day, so Littlespark and Flame Song both went to bed well before sunrise. Aidan, however, found that so long as he slept for the entire time the sun shone he would awaken completely rested, even if it was only an hour or two. Even in the deep winter when the sun hardly peeped above the horizon for weeks, he found he needed little sleep. He would sometimes catnap an hour here or there during the long night, but otherwise he didn't sleep at all until the sun returned. He found it left him a lot of time to think, and it was during those long dark hours alone that he had finally come to terms with his undead existence.

But tonight Flame Song didn't retire to the bedroom after tucking Littlespark in. Instead, she joined Aidan by the fire. She picked up a log and added it to the dying blaze, careless of the flames that licked up around her fingers. It still sometimes gave Aidan the creeps, watching her stick her hand into the fire like that, but he knew it couldn't harm her. It was a legacy of her firecat heritage. Though she had lost her fire-starting ability when she came to Mysteria and became a shape-shifter, she had retained her immunity to flames. Aidan too had a touch of the ability, though he could never bring himself to casually stick his hands in the fire the way she did. Several times in the past he had been forced by circumstance to drink Flame Song's blood in order to survive. They later found that he had absorbed some of her fire immunity along with it. On one occasion it had saved his life.