“I did not realize they had married me to an old man,” she teases, lying beneath him in the clear light of early morning, fingers playing through the thatch of his beard, giving the rare silver hairs buried among the dark a tug. “Soon you will be a greybeard as wise and venerable as your dear father.”

And he laughs - oh, how she loves his laugh, warm and throaty, vibrating through his throat beneath her fingers - feigning inspection of her own rich mane of hair, promising, “Not until your hair turns silver as the Scamander, my love-”

(-in another life, Andromache grasps the dull grey of her hair, shearing it away until its length is too short to pull before her eyes and prove him a liar).

Oh no, I made myself sad.