Chapter 37
How Does This Go?
Brewer’s Reputation: 833.
Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.
I awoke when I felt Abigail stir. She lifted her head off my chest and gazed at me as though her vision were blurry. She brushed her hair from her face.
“Morning,” she said.
“I’ll make breakfast,” I said.
We ate the remainder of our crawfish boil and shared two apples. Then we made ourselves comfortable at the stream. Abigail replenished the Sheltering attribute that kept the insects at bay. She sat between my legs and laid her head back on me. I wrapped my arms around her. Our fingers entwined. The stream softly ran by.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you,” she said.
“There’s not much else to know.”
“We’ve lived entire lives before we met. That’s a lot.”
“For some folks, I suppose,” I said. “I feel like my life didn’t really begin until I came north.”
“Were you born in Lunstad?”
“I was. Near city center.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“Only child. You?”
“Sister. She’s a housing strategist for Salindune.”
“Do you ever miss her?”
A striped frog leapt onto a rock. It licked the air. Then it pivoted.
“When Blurante betrayed me, my sister told me that it was my fault. She blamed me.”
“Blurante was the man?” I said.
“What about your parents?” she said.
Oof. “How do I explain…They gave up on me. We didn’t want the same things. I wanted to work with trees, hence the Lumberjack quest path, and they wanted me to travel with them somewhere east. They gave me an ultimatum when they ran into money and power. Either I work with them and eventually inherit their line of business, or they would throw me out onto the street to fend for myself.”
“Awful.”
“They threw me out onto the streets of Lunstad. I worked at a tree farm for a while. Then I got into lumbering.”
“When did you decide to come here?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“After a few seasons. We would sometimes ride north for hardwoods. The more north we went, the more I fell in love with the northern forests. Lunstad was by the sea and I missed it, so I went northwest until I got here.”
“I love this place.”
“What about your hills? What will you do?”
“Behind me,” she said. “I’m here now.”
“Is it too soon to tell you that we feel right?”
The frog leapt into the water. The stream gurgled. Goldfinches passed over.
“Life is short,” Abigail said. “Sometimes love is shorter.”
“Love?”
Birdsong chimed above us. Wind opened the canopy. Sunlight stepped into the water.
“That’s what this is. Falling in love.”
“I admire how forthright you are.”
“It’s just who I am.”
“Love,” I said.
“Does that intimidate you?”
“How long does it last?”
“Like I said, life is short and love is shorter.”
“Do people really love? I mean really love?”
“They do.”
“But after? After they’re in love? Is it still love?”
“When people drift apart?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Is that what it is?”
“You think we’ll drift apart?”
“When people fall in love, they have the best first year of their life together, but does it last? If we fall in love, really fall in love, I don’t want to forget to…”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “…Forget to what?”
She tilted back. Her eyes were listening. I looked into them.
“If we fall in love, I don’t want to one day forget that we’re in love. I saw people fall in love in Lunstad. They smiled at first. They held hands, but after a year, they didn’t smile anymore. They didn’t hold hands, but they continued together.”
“That’s not fair to say. Love has many faces.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I said.
I blew a breath. The muscles in my jaw flexed. I stared off.
“Say what you want to say,” she said.
“If we fall in love, I want to love you everyday like we’re in love. I don’t want to one day walk beside you, unsmiling, uncaring for your hand in mine.”
“Well that’s up to you, isn’t it? I would be fiercely protective of what we have… if it ever comes to something like love. I think if we both give it time and water and sunlight, like a plant, it will only grow; and we won’t have to ever worry about drifting apart or living life like we had once been in love.”
“Isn’t that what people tell themselves? Why would we be no different?”
“This is really bothering you, isn’t it?”
“I know people, Abigail. That’s why I came out here to live by myself.” I laughed. “To get away from them. People fall in love, but they don’t care for that love as the years go by.”
She sat up. “The way we love nature, the way we stop for flowers, the way we brew, the conversations we have—real and humble conversations, how we give our feelings time and attention to be felt; why would we abandon these things? They make up who we are. If these feelings deepen…If we fall in love…I think that love will only grow everyday.”
“You think so?”
She seemed to turn thoughtful for a moment and gazed at the stream. Wind shuffled the canopy. Dappled sunlight danced across the stream and forest floor. A little snail conquered a blade of grass.
“From my experience,” she said at last; and she said it softly, carefully, “you can’t promise someone you’ll love them forever. You just do it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She turned to me. She seemed about to speak. Private thoughts crossed her eyes.
Then she said, “If you ever want to end things between us, you have to tell me. Just tell me. Just tell me, Hawkin.”
“I can only ask the same of you.”
She reached for me and laid her back on my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She pet my arm. We listened to the sounds of nature: the stream, the birds, the frogs, the crawl of snails, the insects.
Abigail popped open a bottle of beer.