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“Tea’s ready.” the Drifter called out from beside the fire. “You want it before your stick bread, or with it?”
“Yes,” Eris said, not looking up from her book. She held her Ahamkara bone over the pages using both its magic and its light to read. The pre-sunrise sky was brightening rapidly.
“I keep walking into that one.”
“You do,” she smiled and reached for a bookmark, nestling it between the pages, leaving it open on the table, while she reached out and opened another, pulling her orb over to it, cross-referencing something.
“You’ll want to turn your chair around,” his voice was suddenly soft.
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“Oh.”
“Yup.”
“Did this happen yesterday?”
“Nah, it was cloudy. I would’a woke ya if it was like this.”
He pulled the other chair up next to hers, put his arm around her, and handed her the mug of tea. She twitched her fingers and her glowing sphere floated down to rest in the pages of the open book she had on the table behind them.
“It’s not like this on the moon,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Nah. Earthrise can be pretty nice though.”
“I suppose. I’m a bit used to it.”
“Some people get used to sunrises.”
“I did in the city but this is… particularly impressive.”
“Yeah, yeah it is. I was hoping it would do this while we were here so I could share it with you.”
She sipped her tea and rested her head on his shoulder while the sky slowly erupted in a spectacular display of orange, yellow, pink, purple and indigo. She looked up at him and smiled, watching his face.
“This right here,” he whispered, “this is what I wanted when I asked you to come camping. This specific moment. Just like this. My arm around you. You sipping tea. Watching the sunrise. Like… normal people.” He looked down at her, looking back at him.
She reached out to grab his other hand and laced her fingers between his, continuing to watch his face.
“Ah shit. You can’t see the colours.”
“No, but it is still beautiful.”
“Yeah? What's it like?”
“I can see the gradient of light. The way the clouds both look like their edges are on fire and as though they are waves in sand or water. The rays pouring out from behind the clouds look like fingers, splayed, reaching for us. The sun itself is blinding. I cannot look at it directly and cannot see anything too close to it. But I can look around it and see its presence and its absence. I can see the shadows it projects from the trees down upon us like teeth, and I can feel the light on my face. But…” She looked back at him. “...the best part is you.”
“Share a sunrise with ya and all yer doin’ is lookin’ at me.”
“Yes. The expression on your face.”
“Yeah?”
“It touches you, how beautiful you find it. It is precious to you and takes your breath away. Not the sunrise itself, but how it makes you feel. You love it for that.”
“Yeah, it does. Lotta beautiful things ain’t actually beautiful, but a good sunrise… there’s an honesty to that. It’s just inherently like that. That’s just how it is.”
“I’ve seen that expression on your face before.”
“Yeah?”
“When you look at me.”
He gave a short laugh and pulled her closer. “I suppose you would, yeah.”
***
“I just realized somethin’,” he said, crouched down by the fire.
“And what is that?” The soulfire turned the pages green as Eris stared at them, her orb hovering above while she read. She turned the page of the book she had not looked up from.
“Your hot buttery stick bread is pretty greasy and you probably don’t want to be eating it near your books.”
“Hmmm…”
“Of course if you prefer readin’ I can just eat this one and cook you a new one later.”
The book snapped shut. She was beside him moments later. He laughed.
“You know, it’s both pleasant and a little unnerving hangin’ out with someone who moves as quick and quiet as me. It’s been a while since I spent this much time around another person who wasn’t just biding their time until they could try to kill me. It’s nice.”
“Hmmm…” She sat cross-legged, facing the lake, and received the buttery stick bread, one half in each hand.
“Don’t let the colour turn ya off. Blueberries turn everything grey.”
“I am not put off in the slightest. I’ve been smelling it for the past half hour.”
“Yeah… it does smell good.”
“It tastes good too. So good. You are right. The blueberries make it even better. Although they are quite sweet. Yet, it is a sweetness I do not mind.”
“Blueberries are tart and sweet, although the heat brings out the sweet more. But these ones are under ripe so they’re sour too. Hold this for me?”
She held the stick for his stick bread. He poured her a fresh mug of tea and set it down in front of her then positioned himself behind her, one leg on either side of hers. She tilted her head sideways and tensed as he slid his left arm around her waist, ready to drive her elbow deep into him.
“Whoa, Moondust, I ain’t fucking with ya. Promise. I just wanna hold ya right now. Trust.”
She smiled and leaned back against him as he took the stick from her right hand. A mourning dove gave its two-toned five-syllable coo from somewhere behind them while the frogs and crickets vied for choral supremacy from the water and the trees respectively.
The sunlight sparkled on the lake surface and the treetops on the far shore shifted gently in the wind. The air was just cool enough to showcase the steam from the fresh stick bread and the warmth of their bodies where they were touching.
The embers below the split logs on the fire in front of them rippled with heat as the flames lapped at the wood. Every once in a while a loud crack or pop would rupture the cloud of background sounds and a puff of cinders would spray into the air to float in the breeze before turning to ash.
“This is pretty perfect,” he mumbled through a mouth full of bread.
“It is.”
“I could stay like this forever.”
“I’m sure you’d get bored eventually.”
“Not of this. Not of you.” He kissed her neck and took another bite of stick bread. “What about you,” he spoke with his mouth full. “You think you’d get bored?”
She smiled. “I like this. But there is much yet to do. I could not stay here with you like this forever. It is not a matter of boredom. We are needed. Too many depend upon us for survival. It would not be acceptable to me to stay here forever, hiding from the world. But this moment, now, is one to cherish. Something to keep close and hold on to in times of great pain. In future, I will think back to this, sitting here with your arms around me, the bread, the lake, the fire, the air, the stone beneath us, even that awful owl, grateful for them, and for you.”
“So ya will get bored of me.”
“Hmmm… You seek assurance I will not abandon you.”
His chest stopped moving. His muscles did not tense, but she could tell he was holding his breath.
The coals in the fire glittered, the patterns of heat shifting over them, a less dramatic yet far more intense consumption than the flames above.
“You have chosen to call yourself the Drifter in an attempt to embrace an impermanence you deeply fear, an act of empowerment running counter to the deep sorrow of loss which you have felt more keenly, and more often, and in greater volumes, than most. And yet… you have allowed me to call you something else, Gemaine, from a time before your detachment, when you were accepted, adopted, an integral part of a social structure… deeply attached.”
She raised her hand and held it up, her fingers curled, as though she were about to reach in and pluck the embers from the fire. Her fingertips caressed an invisible object in the air, backlit by flames.
“I know what you fear. I make no claims of permanence to you. They would just be empty words. Our lives are simultaneously likely to be both impossibly long and extremely short. We may, even now, be about to cease existing. We fight constantly to stave off the literal end of the world. There is no certainty. I cannot give you that. But…”
She stretched out her hand, her palm facing the fire, as though she were tracing lines of text in the air between them as she spoke.
“You know how I am. You know how I love. You understand the lengths to which I will go, what I am capable of doing, for those I love, even long after they are dead and gone. And you know that I love you.”
She felt him breathe again.
“I am a creature of action,” she continued. “It is not in my nature to be still for long. In this way, we are opposites. You desperately crave safety and I will not be bound by it. There may come a point where that renders us incompatible. But if that point comes, it will be you who will be letting go, not I.”
His arm around her shook. She placed her hand on top of his.
“I ain’t going nowhere, Moondust,” his voice was hoarse in her ear, “No matter how many times you dive face-first straight into hell, I’ll be there for you when ya get to the other side.”
“Every action we take, changes who we are. There may come a day where I am no longer the Moondust you know. And the Rat I love will flee in fear and sorrow.”
“Nah.” He smiled and kissed her neck. “The thing about you, and it’s something I have always admired and been in awe of… is that you’re always you. Consistently. That sense of who you are. It never waivers. You know what you’re about. You don’t lose yourself. Ya never have. I don’t think you ever will.”
He rested his chin on her shoulder.
“And you’re right,” he continued, “Ain’t no such thing as forever. But there is here and now. And here and now is pretty damn fantastic.” He held her close.
“Yes. It is.”