Chapter 1: Feeding the Bloom
Steam curled from the giant copper pots in thick, fragrant ropes. Theron’s world was heat and noise, the rhythmic thud of cleavers on marble and the low, gusty laughter of the towering women who worked alongside him. He moved through the kitchen’s perpetual haze, a wiry figure in a landscape of giants.
His eyes, as always, found Brienne.
She was seated at the long prep table, a space built for women who could bench-press a side of beef. Next to the others, she looked almost delicate, though she was six-foot-four and could probably lift him with one hand. To him, she was perfect. The morning sun from the high windows caught the blonde of her braids, turning them to wheat-gold. She was methodically working her way through a stack of honey-laced pastries the size of dinner plates.
“Slow down,” he said, approaching with the pot. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
She looked up, a smudge of flour on her cheek. Her smile was a warm, quiet thing. “They’re too good. Your fault for making the glaze so perfect.”
It was his special recipe, just for her. He tipped the small copper pot, letting a fresh stream of warm, amber honey cascade over the already-glistening tower. He watched it pool and drip, watched her track the movement with a focus that was almost hungry. Not for the pastry. For the sustenance. For what it represented.
He imagined he could see it happening. Not the sudden, shocking growth from the old tales, but the slow, inevitable tide. He fancied he saw the subtle shift of muscle under the soft linen of her tunic, the already-curvaceous line of her hip expanding by a millimeter, the solid width of her shoulders broadening as she absorbed the calories he’d poured his heart into. It was a ridiculous, paranoid fantasy. Growth took months, years. But love played tricks with time.
“Did you read more of the chronicle last night?” he asked, setting the pot down. His voice was casual, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the table’s edge.
Her eyes lit up. “The chapter on the Siege of the Vales. Can you imagine? Lyra of the Ironwood, eight feet tall, they say she used a felled oak as a battering ram.” A wistful sigh escaped her. She looked down at her own hands, capable and strong from gardening, currently sticky with honey. “Just… the scale of them. The assurance.”
The word hung in the steam-thick air. Assurance was something Brienne lacked. She was a ‘bloom,’ still growing, but at twenty-five, most of her peers had plateaued well above her. She was gentle in a world that valorized sheer, unapologetic mass.
“You’re plenty assured,” Theron muttered, using a clean cloth to wipe the flour from her cheek. The gesture was intimate, a habit from childhood. Her skin was warm.
She let him, but her gaze was far away. “I transplanted the old oak sapling yesterday. The one by the eastern wall. It was heavy. Really heavy. But I didn’t need the cart. I just… lifted it.” She said it not with pride, but with a kind of nervous wonder. Like she’d discovered a new, slightly frightening part of herself.
A knot tightened in Theron’s stomach. He loved her strength. He loved the way her body was a living, growing testament to potential. He also dreaded it.
One of the senior bakers, Marta, whose bicep was as wide as Theron’s thigh, ambled past and gave Brienne’s shoulder a friendly shove that nearly knocked her off the bench. “Keep eating, little bloom! You’ll catch up to us crone-mothers yet!” Her laughter boomed through the kitchen.
Brienne’s smile tightened at the edges. She hated that term, ‘little bloom.’ It was affectionate, but it chafed. Theron saw the flash of irritation, of longing, in her eyes before she looked down.
When Marta was gone, Brienne spoke, her voice lower. “Sometimes I walk past the Archives, where the murals of the Amazons are. Their legs are like columns. Their hands could cradle my entire head.” She flexed her fingers. “I want that, Theron. I want to be… monumental.”
He finally sat beside her, the wooden bench groaning under their combined, though disproportionate, weight. The scent of her—sunlight, soil from her morning’s work, and sweet honey—wrapped around him. “Why?” The question was blunt, almost painful. “You’re already… you’re Brienne. You’re kind, and you make things grow. What does getting bigger solve?”
She turned to him, her clear blue eyes searching his. “It’s not about solving anything. It’s about becoming. It’s in my blood, Theron. This slow ache in my bones, this hunger. It’s not just for food.” She gestured vaguely at the cavernous kitchen, at the giants moving through the steam. “It’s to take up space. To be seen as… complete.”
“I see you,” he said, the words escaping before he could stop them, raw and too soft.
She looked at him then, truly looked at him. Saw the anxiety etched beside his eyes, the tension in his jaw. Her expression softened. She reached out, her hand—so much larger than his, already—covering his own on the table. Her palm was calloused, strong, and impossibly gentle.
“I know you do,” she whispered. “That’s different.”
The moment stretched, fragile and warm as the steam around them. He wanted to freeze it. To keep her here, this version of her, whose hand still chose to cover his with deliberate tenderness.
Then the kitchen doors swung open with a crash, letting in a blast of cool air and two city guards, their armor slick with rain. They were both women, both towering, their heads brushing the doorframe. The chatter in the kitchen died.
“We need provisions for the northern patrol road,” the first guard barked, her voice cutting through the humidity. “Landslide. A dozen travelers pinned. The rescue teams are digging, but they need fuel.”
The kitchen erupted into organized chaos. Theron jumped up, his moment with Brienne shattered. As he hurried to pack loaves of journey-bread and wheels of hard cheese into sacks, he watched her.
Brienne didn’t move back to her pastries. She stood and walked over to the sacks of grain, fifty-pound burlap monsters. Marta was hefting two at a time. Brienne eyed one. She bent her knees, wrapped her arms around the coarse fabric, and lifted. It came up, but with a strain that made the tendons in her neck stand out. She settled it onto her shoulder, her face flushed with effort.
She caught Theron watching. Not with pity, but with a fierce, focused determination. This was her practice. This was her prayer.
She carried the sack to the loading area, moving carefully under its weight. To the guards, she was just another strong kitchen hand, maybe a bit on the small side. To Theron, she was a vision of the future, muscular and immense, walking away from him into a world of landslides and giantesses, where a man with a honey pot would be too small to even register in her peripheral vision.
He turned back to his station, his hands mechanically wrapping cheese. The sweet, cloying scent of honey was now suffocating. He could still feel the warm ghost of her hand on his. He loved her. And with every pastry she ate, every sack she lifted, he felt the gulf between them widen, inch by terrifying inch.