“What’s his last name?”

“His stage name is Asher Dillion,” I tell her. You may have heard of him.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she says. I hear her nails tapping on her keyboard. “Oh wow, he’s that guy who played Gregg Allman in The Troubadour Tales limited TV series.”

“Yep,” I sigh, “that’s him.”

“Why is he your ex-friend?” Vivienne asks, her eyes darting back and forth.

I imagine dozens and dozens of images of Rune have come up, just like the last time I got tipsy by myself and Googled him a few years ago. The Internet was full of him and his equally beautiful but even more famous actress, Julia Endo.

“We had a falling out when we met again at Sundance ten years ago,” I tell her.

“I find it fascinating that he’s so different from Jack. He’s so blonde and laid-back looking. And those lips!” Vivienne hums her approval. “What happened? Did he break your heart?”

“No,” I say, lying, “he just crushed my ego.”

“Spill it, girlfriend,” she makes a beckoning gesture with the fingertips of both hands.

"Rune and I spent every August together from when I was nine until I was fourteen," I tell Vivienne, feeling sad remembering as I stare at the window.

"Mmmhmm. I would not have minded those plush lips being my first kiss," Vivienne says approvingly.

"They weren't!" I exclaim, feeling my face heat, "We were just friends."

"Tell me you at least thought about it!" Vivienne asks; she seems to be zooming in on a photo, "I mean he's just too dreamy."

"Of course I did! But I didn't want to wreck our friendship by doing something stupid in case he wasn't interested."

"Yet somehow it got wrecked at Sundance anyway,” Viv nudged.

"Yep. It sure did. We’d stayed in touch by phone and stuff, and then we met up at Sundance when we were promoting that hot indie film we did the marketing materials for at Pamela's."

"That was a fun trip,” Viv chuckles, “when we could get away from Pamela and her drama. Was he the cute guy you disappeared with at that bar? He had a beanie on covering his bright hair."

"You remember?" I say, surprised, "Yeah, he was. We had a wonderful time catching up that first night. Then the next night, he insisted we meet up at one of those private house parties, and he refused to dance with me, saying, and I quote, it wouldn't look good, and he disappeared."

"The cad!” Vivienne exclaims, “And you're such a fantastic dancer!"

Vivienne's the one who's encouraged me to use dance to get back into my body while I've been up here caring for Theo and after dealing with my grief. It's been so helpful.

"Exactly!" I exclaim back, "I wasn't asking to be seen on his arm tooling around Park City, just to dance the way we used to back in my great grandma's empty barn.

**

After I hang up, I sit staring out the window feeling bummed by thinking about the past. The drizzle has cleared up. I should go out and spend time in my vegetable garden. It's growing like weeds. The arugula looks like it's already bolting.

Vivienne's right about Rune and Jack being so different. It was on purpose. After Rune, I was never interested in the most head-turningly handsome boys. In Jr. High I was learning quickly that guys like him starred in the school plays, artsy but ordinary girls like me painted the backdrops.

But sadly he was also, I hate to admit, the friend I clicked with the most ever. That's what hurt most about him ditching me at the film festival. I lost that fantastic, creative friendship.

Oh sure, it had become long-distance by then. Even living in the same region, we could never quite work out connecting in person. Still, I loved knowing I had at least one equally horse-mad friend. A friend who also had crazy vivid dreams and liked the same kinds of fantasy and sci-fi books. We used to have such fun imagining how we'd make them into movies together someday.

I turn slowly in the old-fashioned wooden swivel chair I'm sitting in, taking in the office around me. It's filled with antique office pieces from my great-great grandfather's furniture business. As with the kid's bedroom upstairs, Uncle Theo didn't change anything here. It's like a museum. It has a dark academia vibe. I like it, even if it is a bit somber. It feels like I'm on a movie set or inside a book.

Right behind me sits a big, wide, shoulder-height bookshelf that acts as my backdrop when I’m on calls. Since the bookshelf in my room upstairs is still full of my mother and grandmother’s old books, I keep the handful of favorites I brought with me down here.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

My eyes catch on the spine of Howl's Moving Castle. I need a comfort read tonight, a book to help move me out of this stressful news funk. I slide the well-worn paper back out and gaze at its cover.

Along with drawing coloring pages about famous women and horses during lockdown, I also started reimaging the covers of some of my favorite YA fantasy. It’s still one of my favorite genres. To get myself off the computer I went old school, drawing by hand in a way I hadn’t since High School. I've been dragging my feet on trying to create something for Howl's. It’s been too loaded.

My eyes spark with tears, remembering. It was Rune's mother, Astrid, who introduced us to the book the last summer we were here together. I don't approve of my former friend becoming a globe-trotting heartbreaker, but I understand his taking time off to travel to deal with grief.

Astrid died of breast cancer during the worst part of the pandemic. She must have only been in her early 50s, if that. Far too young. I wipe my wet cheek with the edge of my hood. Maybe it's time to honor her and finally take on Howl’s as a coloring page for my email newsletter.

These days, more people know the beautiful, animated movie by Hayao Miyazaki than the book that inspired it. I love the film, but it's British author Diana Wynne Jones’s book that has such a special place in my heart. I set the novel on top of the bookcase to read tonight and call to Butterscotch to go outside.

**

It's here in the garden that I feel Uncle Reuben, Theo's husband. He was by far the quieter of the two men, but he had a fun, ironic wit. He liked to refer to Theo as the show pony and himself as Bill the Pack Pony, knowing I'd appreciate his reference to the incredibly loyal character in Lord of the Rings.

I meander slowly, inspecting the series of raised wooden beds where most of the vegetables are growing, noticing where I need to catch up on the weeding and more. The air is filled with birdsong, the murmur of bees, and the occasional whirling of a hummingbird darting in to warn that I’m intruding into their territory.

Like so many, my neighbor Marguerite and I (who lives in the third house in our little rural neighborhood here) decided to grow our own vegetables during the pandemic. We revived and expanded what Uncle Reuben had started, and now we proudly raise about 80% of all the vegetables we eat between late-June and October.

This year, our friend Luna has promised to teach us to preserve so we don't waste any of the bounty. None of us are preppers, but the climate crisis is making us nervous enough that we like the idea of at least partial food independence.

As I open the latched gate to the clear roofed enclosure adjacent to the potting shed where I'm growing strawberries, I startle a wild young bunny. Her small, faun brown body freezes with one of my snap pea pods hanging out of her mouth. She’s hoping I haven't seen her. When I move closer, she dashes under a hole in the fence. I don't mind. I'm growing a lot of sugar snap peas this year, and the strawberries are in pots high enough off the ground so that the rabbits can't reach them.

The intoxicatingly scent of honeysuckle surrounds me from a vine that's taken over one side of the outside of the enclosure. It's now making good progress moving inside too, slipping through the gap between the wooden wall and the clear plastic roof overhead. Breathing in the heavenly fragrance I contemplate how to approach drawing a fanart cover for Howl's Moving Castle. The book is named after the second main character, the flamboyantly handsome Wizard Howl (who is fond of wearing floral scent). But the story's main character is a young woman named Sophie Hatter.

Howl and Sophie have the most hysterically funny, snarky relationship throughout the book. I laugh out loud every time I read it. It's an extremely slow-burn blink, and you miss it romance, emphasis on extremely. For much of the story, eighteen-year-old Sophie is under a curse from a witch, making her an old woman. The most marvelous thing about this? She discovers her own power (and her own magic) as an elder because she no longer cares what anyone thinks, including Howl, whom she assumes is evil for a good part of the story.

After I water the strawberries, I take out a kneeling pad, a pair of clippers, and a wicker basket from the potting shed and start cropping back and collecting arugula for dinner tomorrow night. We're so far north here that the long summer days cause quick-growing plants like arugula, lettuce, and spinach to bolt quickly.

Whose face should I use as my model for Wizard Howl? Usually, the characters I draw are composites, a mix of features from people I pull together on the Internet. But what if, instead, I only draw one person for a particular character, like Howl, and make it someone famous? Could that give my social media the lift Trident is looking for? Who could I draw as the vain, generous, lazy but smart, flaxen blond Howl (though he dyes his hair other colors to suit his whims)?

While contemplating this, I'm listening to happy Harry Styles music on my phone. Harry might be good for Howl; he certainly has the charm. My head's full of weighing the pros and cons of each youngish handsome British actor I can think of when a pair of men's brown ankle boots step into my downcast field of vision.

The boots are vintage lace-ups. They’re in excellent condition as if they've recently been polished. They resemble something that Uncle Theo would have carried in one of his shops.

Looking up and pulling out my earbuds, I take in the tall, slender, denim-on-denim-clad form of Rune (Asher Dillion) Borstad glaring down at me. Oh no.

Yikes. Why is Rune glaring at me like that, looking like an avenging angel? I didn't ditch him at a party and never apologize.

No, he doesn't look like an angel. Even in head-to-toe denim, he looks like Wizard Howl when he finally gets angry and goes after the Witch of the Waste for threatening his sister's family.

Rune looks tired, slightly ill, and gut-punch handsome. His light jade-green eyes are bloodshot with what I hope is merely fatigue and not some kind of substance use. They're not the marble green of Howl's eyes, but they are green.

All he needs is an elaborate robe with long fluttering sleeves, and to grow his hair, and he'd be perfect. My fingers itch to draw him. Rune's not pale blond like Howl, but he can wear it well. Starting as a young teen, his bright apricot hair was dyed sun-kissed wheat for his years on T.V. And then, it was dyed bright flax just like Howl's to play Gregg Allman in The Troubadour Tales. Now, it's deepened a little into red gold cut shorter on the sides and longer on top, artfully tousled in a way that takes product, skill, and, I'm sure, a fortune.

"Hey," I say, standing quickly after what feels like an hour of staring up at him (but is probably more like seconds). Even if I wasn't still mad at him, I don't want to be kneeling at his feet. I'm sure he gets enough of that from women, albeit metaphorically.

Dio Mio (My God! As my Italian dad might say). That face. Before I think of how strange it might sound, I blurt out, "You'd make a great Howl."