For kelkyag‘s prompt.

The Aunt Family has a landing page here.

“Where, exactly, is it that you are taking me?” Ruan was trying not to be short with Johias. He had really been being a dear lately, helping her weed out a cousin’s estate, working with her on the automatic tarot machine, and helping her with that blasted demon that had been stuck in one of Tansy’s messier pigeonholes (her late Aunt had, if nothing else, developed some impressive pigeonhole technology. They would be studying the science behind that for the rest of their lives, and, likely, their heirs would be doing so, too).

“Somewhere.” Johias was, despite his recent darling behavior, making it very hard to not snap at him. Very, very difficult. “You’ll enjoy it when we get there.”

“Sir, you are acting in a fashion I do not find in the least appealing. Bundling me into your automobile without as much as a hellow-how-are-you, and then refusing to tell me what we are doing, and, I will note, you appear to have finally tuned your aetheric dampers properly and I am very displeased with you right now!”

And now she’d done it. He was going to snap back at her and they’d have a fight, and there’d been a few of those, with the pigeonhole project, and they were awful, especially with both their families hanging on every sign of discontent.

Ruan tensed, but Johias, instead of yelling back at her, laughed. “Ah, Ruan,” he chuckled, “I deserved that. But if you will bear with me just one more minute, I promise it will all be clear.”

“One more minute,” she allowed, attempting not to sulk at him. Sulking was, in the very least, unattractive, undignified, and not at all ladylike.

“And there. Than you, my darling woman.” He stopped the car and got out, offering her a hand out. His other hand, she noted, was carrying a basket. She bit her lip, refusing to ask any more questions.

“It is such a lovely day,” he explained, leading her in the dimming sunlight to the top of the hill, “and we’ve been cooped up inside all spring and into the summer. So, what is it the poet said…? ‘A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou?'” He pulled a blanket from the basket, and lay it out over the grass. “Would you sit with me, Ruan, and watch the sun sink low over the reservist?”

“Oh, Johias,” she began, even as, a twinkle in his eye, he added, “I hear there’s a phenomenon that only occurs at sunset here. I think we’ve enough time to study it over our wine.”

“Oh, Johias!” she repeated, as they both, laughing, sank down onto the blanket to watch the water.

The line is from “From Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Persian Poet‘s verses.

I originally learned it out of context, and use it here, again, out of context.

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