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Thursday; Spring 18, 19XX
Before we go anywhere, you have to understand why it is that all Leah had to say was Thanks, I like this. She is not used to visitors – especially in the middle of the month, especially if that month is not winter. Spring 18th is not a day in which Leah is particularly relevant.
It is somewhat rare for her to even step into town. On Mondays, she stops by Pierre’s to collect her groceries. On Fridays, she and Elliott have dinner together in the quietest corner of the Saloon. On those nights, they sit behind Pam, who is nice enough but never fails to smell like tequila. Leah would sooner share a meal on the grass outside of her home, under the stars, but Elliott insists that the sociable ventures are good for them both. Leah is not quite sure if that can be considered ‘sociable’, considering how their conversation is largely kept internal between the two of them, but Elliott seems to view this as irrelevant. Occasionally, they re-enact this argument over the salad on the table, but it always ends the same way: most recently, Leah had told him that if they stayed much longer, they may as well ask Gus for a quote on rent. Elliott was not impressed, and they ended up staying the rest of the night.
It is Pam’s birthday today. Today it is wise for Leah to stay clear of the Saloon. Not that anybody would miss her anyway – which is a silly concern to have, given how it’s not her birthday. So it’s a good job that she’s not bothered.
It is, however, a contribution as to why she’s not expecting the visit from the Farmer.
Leah’s cottage is not what you’d think of as a place of gathering. In the three years she’s spent in the valley, only half the town or so had ever made the effort to seek her out; even fewer had ever taken a step inside. Lewis had helped her move in, Leah had babysat Jas once and Marnie had come to collect her, Abigail had fallen into the river outside the cottage and Alex had helped carry her to Leah so she could be patched up, and Robin had come to fix her roof when it had once rained so hard the roof started to collapse. Otherwise, Elliott is the only truly familiar face. He is solitary too, and Leah has heard that he deals with the same kind of comfortably crowded loneliness. That is to say, that Leah’s isolation is of her own design: it is sooner that she chooses this than someone chooses it for her.
The Farmer isn’t really known for visiting anyone outside of the main body of the town in general. She is sure that when she asks Elliott tomorrow evening over dinner, he will confirm that she had not made the effort to drop in on him either. That ‘either’ referring to Elliott himself and the Leah of five minutes ago, of course, before she knew what blonde braids looked like, swinging in the wind as she walks away. Leah wonders what had changed, as she glances down at the gift, still in hand.
If she had to order the things that shocked her, from most shocking to least, the visit itself would be at the top and the gift-giving at the bottom. The actual item making up the gift would be in the middle. The reason for that second fact is probably that Leah, too, is a gift-giver. She loves as she speaks: in presents. Elliott’s shelves are lined with strange little clay faces, all left in their natural carrot brown – book ends to his many journals of poetry. Hers are largely the same, but painted in blues and pinks and purples, to offset the russet of the notebooks he thought important enough to leave with her. Like her, he chooses to give – but his true gift is in words, spoken in his syrup voice. To compensate, she must match his tongue with her hands.
Her hands are marred with clay stains when the Farmer arrives, blue eyes bright, staring cheerfully up into the creases of Leah’s expression. She holds out her gift and – Elliott had once told her that it’s social conditioning to take what is offered without thought – Leah takes it. Thanks, I like this. She doesn’t so much as glance down. Blue irises sparkle like the sun on water.
They had spoken only once leading up to this. Nearly 19 days ago – Leah, perusing the many shelves of Pierre’s store, turning with an eager tap on her shoulder. Hi, you must be Leah, she says with pretty pink lips, I’m Imogen. Leah, distracted with the thought that this woman smiles like daffodils, murmurs something unintelligible about the weather. Imogen laughs, and leaves without goodbye.
The shock must show on her face this time too, because Imogen laughs again, tipping her head far enough back that the straw hat nearly slips from her brow. Instinctively, Leah reaches out to steady the hat again, patting it down a little harder onto Imogen’s head, who brings a hand up to hold it on herself.
“Thank you,” she says as Leah pulls her hand away, too distracted by the smear of grey her clay hands have left on the rim of the hat to pay much attention to the warming of her cheeks. Imogen must notice the line of her sight because she pulls the straw hat off with a hum, turning it in careful fingers to inspect the mark. Leah awkwardly avoids her eye, flushing further.
“Sorry-“ she begins, but her voice is quickly lost in another hum, this time of indifference, as Imogen shrugs and pats the hat back down onto her head.
“It gives it character,” she says, her voice ringing like bluebells, and before Leah can say anything else she turns on her heels, strolling off towards the town, which leaves Leah here.
She finally glances down, and in her hand, pinched between thumb and middle finger, is a slightly damp branch of wood. This is what is odd: in every moment that Leah has seen Imogen rushing about town, she has been gifting. Daffodils here, parsnips there. Never has Leah seen her give actual trash.
This may sound ungrateful to most but it’s actually rather difficult to simultaneously be both ungrateful and confused to this extent. Leah supposes she can kind of see where Imogen was coming from; it’s not as though she’s really a flowers kind of person, and although whatever vegetables are surely delicious, she’s Leah. Artist Leah. Sculptor Leah. Maybe Imogen didn’t realise what the driftwood actually was. Maybe she didn’t think Leah would figure it out. Maybe she was okay with the simple honesty of a gift still wet from where it was procured.
(“What pond did you dig this out of?” Kay would say. Artist Leah sometimes hated being Artist Leah).
She blinks, and notes how one arm is reeled back, prepared to throw the stick back into the river it surely came from. The pressure on the joint releases, slower than you’d expect, as she brings the hand with the wood back down to her chest, cradling it there like something precious. Her thumb brushes over the stamps of her fingerprints, grey inlaid into the wood.
A thought bounces about her skull like a ping pong ball smashed against the halls of a museum, always at risk of hitting, knocking. She files the idea away, slipping the wood into the pocket of her already-stained dungarees, listening to the echo of the ball as she returns to the activities of her day, relishing in the irritation of the itch it provides.
2.
Sunday; Summer 7, 19XX
“-Yes,” Elliott interrupts, reaching out to steal a tomato from her plate, “But have you considered that painting is just so much easier?”
Leah huffs in frustration, “Easy isn’t always best, Elliott. I’d expect you of all people to recognise that- and the dye is, you know. Symbolic.”
He quirks a brow at her, and she stabs her aggressive fork into a chunk of cucumber, which is then flung at him. He chokes on the tomato, fumbling to even stay on the stool as he tries to dodge, and she just can’t help but laugh, “Sorry.”
Elliott makes a show of glancing around the Saloon in case they’d disturbed anyone, “My dear Leah, you are lucky no-one was walking around, lest they slip on your wayward cucumber.”
She rolls her eyes in time with the swing of the Saloon door, “You’d best go and pick it up then.”
“Me?! It’s your cucumber!”
“You’re the one with the strange notion that someone might injure themselves on it. And I was giving it to you – it’s not my fault you dropped it.”
His responding look is one of skepticism, and when she does little more than shrug, he sighs, swiveling around on the stool – though his neck corkscrews to keep his eyes on her, “You shouldn’t treat the hazard so lightly, my darling. Do you not recall when Sam slipped on a cucumber and broke his wrist?”
“That was a Sea Cucumber, Eli, that is not the same thing- and that was Sam’s fault for not looking where he was going-“
The end of the sentence is punctuated with a light crusch. Elliott finally turns fully, and Leah cranes to see over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” says Imogen, her straw hat in one hand as she scratches her temple with the other, “Was that yours?”
In the end it is Leah that has to pick up the cucumber – by which I mean she wipes it up with a paper towel she collected from Emily behind the bar. With a light grimace upon her features, she deposits the mess into the trash can beneath the register, earning her a thankful smile from Gus, then she turns back to Elliott. He is not watching her; she follows his gaze to Imogen on the other side of the room, who offers Shane a cheerful greeting and seems entirely undeterred by his less-than-enthusiastic response. She quickly and efficiently makes her way around the rest of the Saloon’s occupants as Leah slowly returns to her seat, distracted just as her best friend is with this venture of the impatient.
This is not an irregular occurrence – in fact, Imogen appears to have made it a bit of a habit. She does it more commonly on a Friday or a Saturday, which she surely recognizes by now as the most sociable days of the week, but Leah’s sure she does it on other days as well. There’s something bizarrely captivating about it every time: this strange pit stop-like way of interaction, as if Imogen can’t bear to slow for more than a sentence of conversation. The closest thing Leah can think to compare it to is that it’s as if Imogen is at a festival every day, stopping at each stall only long enough for something newer and shinier to pull her away again. And if you’re lucky, she’ll see something she wants to buy.
Imogen reaches Elliott’s stall: “Hello! Good evening, lovely night isn’t it? Yes, I know, lovely and warm; I’m so glad it’s Summer, aren’t you?”
His mouth falls open in deserted response as she leaves his stall and quickly moves along to Leah’s. She don’t get a greeting, only something dropped to draw a neat click from the contact with the table.
All three of them stare down at the piece of wood.
“…Thanks,” says Leah, “-I mean, thank you.”
Imogen just smiles at her so brightly her eyes close, and then Leah blinks and she’s moved on, pulling cheerful greetings from Emily and Gus. Leah glances back at Elliott, who is still staring at the driftwood. Then he raises his head to watch Imogen as she leaves the door swinging on her way out.
“How odd,” he remarks.
Leah shrugs, “It is a little strange; I thought the first time was a one-off, but. Apparently not.” For a moment, she considers the stick, “I suppose I don’t mind it.”
Elliott reaches out to daintily pick it up, bringing it up to his eyes, and Leah feels the strange urge to take it back off him.
“Occasionally,” he muses, “Imogen will pass by me on the beach, or the bridge into town, and she’ll hand me a clam or something similar – something I could pluck from the sand myself.”
“I think she gets the driftwood from the river,” Leah tells him, and he places it back down on the tabletop next to her salad.
“I wonder why it is she does it,” Elliott poses the question framed as a statement, this time watching Leah’s face carefully. It conjures all sorts of images: her, dressed in white with a wreath in her hair; Imogen, an extended hand, an invitation.
She considers this answer unusually carefully, “… I don’t suppose that farming pays much better than struggling artist or poet – especially with Pierre’s prices.” She props her chin up in a palm, stirring the lettuce leaves with her fork, “Perhaps she just likes to give.”
Sunday; Summer 28, 19XX
If you were to ask most of the townsfolk what Leah’s favourite festival was, you’d be unlikely to get a satisfactory answer. Most of them will think Fall, because she, too, is soft oranges and greens and greys and plumes of smoke rising from healthy wood fires, bathed in the flickering glow of contained human sunlight. The discord in this is that the events lying within reach of this temporary firelight are neither much suited to her preferences: the Fair too transactional, Spirit’s Eve too manufactured and gaudy.
The mistake is in imagining orange or red rather than the blue shining up into her face tonight.
If you were to ask Elliott what Leah’s favourite festival was, he’d tell you that it’s the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies, dyed in the taste of Winter, forsaking the hot months and welcoming cold in arms riddled with frostbite, woolen jumpers and hot cocoa. A waiter, indicating peacefully to the sign that reads closing and leaving with a few precious minutes to prepare to emerge out into the cold night. The jellies bob, celebrating the death of old and the time before new, and Leah, swaying gently to the whistle of the birds and the song of the crickets on the breeze, dances with them.
Leah has thought of painting them more than once; Willy and Elliott have turned off their lights, so there is no light pollution outside of the Mayor’s lantern. But it feels dishonest to immortalise them in forever when they are meant for now. To freeze them in canvas, tear them from the dance, and force them to exist simply as a pretty example of nature and nothing more. She elects to leave the easel at home.
To compensate for the ghost of a moment she won’t let herself keep, Leah spends every second with them that they’ll allow. She’d get in the water if they weren’t still jellyfish and therefore harmful in contact, but sitting on the edge of the pier on the eastmost beach is pretty close to the experience, she imagines. Last year, she had taken off her boots and her socks and dipped her toes in the water, reeling back only when the jellies became distinct to her naked eye. This year, she waits a little longer.
Others have had similar ideas: some stand on the edge of the other pier, and others mill on the beach somewhere behind her – but if they’re moving at all, the sand is swallowing the sound, and so Leah is left in her façade of silence.
That is, until she realises that the rhythmic click click click on wood is that of boots on the pier rather than the tap of her blunt fingernails on the dock post she leans against. The sound doesn’t permeate or shatter the illusion, instead adding percussion into the orchestra that plays the jellies’ encore. Leah doesn’t even bother looking up, instead just plucking her boots from where they sit next to her and drawing them into her lap with strange recognition.
She is warmth against Leah’s side, where she sits a little closer than is necessary. Leah is not the tactile type. She doesn’t bother moving.
Many things emerge on nights like this.
“Look at the green one,” she says softly, raising an arm to point. Leah leans over, dropping cheek to shoulder to follow the arch of her muscle, despite having seen the green one minutes ago. She hears the steady breaths as they wash with heat over the top of her scalp, too loud to emerge from a mouth perpendicular to her ear.
Leah blinks, and reels back a little as her eyes refocus on the hand, too dark a silhouette to match the bare skin she feels encasing the back of her own hand. Imogen must notice her move, because she pulls her arm back in too, to show Leah what’s in hand. It’s dark but she recognises the conventions of the shape. In an odd moment of decision-making that she probably should have anticipated, Imogen drops the driftwood into the boot closest to her. Leah stares at it because that’s easier than searching for explanation in the eyes of the woman herself.
For a moment they both sit there, in perfectly fragile quiet. Leah watches the light slowly rescind from the toes of her boots, pointed outwards as if they’d walk right into the surf and never turn around.
“Are you okay?” Imogen asks eventually.
“Just… paying respects to a bygone summer.”
Another simple pause of understanding. And then, “Goodnight,” whispered against the wisps of hair framing her temple. Then the warmth is gone.
Leah lets herself glance over her shoulder to watch Imogen leave. Imogen, who doesn’t look back. She passes Demetrius and Robin; the latter smiles at her, and Leah sees her mouth move with words she’s not privy to, and then Robin’s eyes snap to hers. Leah blinks. Robin stares like she knows something. Then she winks, and turns back to her husband as if nothing happened. It evokes a feeling akin to being manipulated into implicating herself, only the secret isn’t one she’s privy to.
Elliott wrote a poem about the Midnight Jellies once. A hint of a glimpse of a spark of an idea, on the closest horizon.
She looks down at the driftwood; thinks of how it’ll look, sitting pretty and useless on a shelf with the other two. She frowns, and Imogen’s voice echoes in her head, do you not like it?
A question she’s never needed to ask.
Leah pulls the driftwood from her boot, and hurriedly pulls her boots back on. On her way back to her cottage, she pointedly avoids Robin’s eye.
4.
Saturday; Fall 13, 19XX
In the cottage in the woods, there is a woman, humming cheerfully in time with the beat of rain on the roof. Some happy summery ditty, ironically chosen for the current condition of the weather. If you could get her attention long enough to ask, she’d say that she’s ‘in the zone’, comfortable enough to fall almost into the painting on the easel in front of her.
Leah rests the end of the paintbrush’s handle thoughtfully against the seam of her lips, smearing the green paint on her fingertips all up her cheeks. It doesn’t look right. It’s been so long since they were cut down that she doesn’t quite remember how the heads of those pine trees overlapped over the farmhouse anymore. Maybe a darker shade will help…?
She’s looking for her tube of Evergreen when her humming is thrown off by a new rhythm tapped into her front door. It’s distinct and familiar, enough to rewrite her humming as she goes to answer it after dropping the paintbrush in the easel’s well. With her hand on the doorknob, though, she falters, glancing over her shoulder at the project in the corner of the room. Tall enough to be hard to miss; Leah doesn’t have a tarp to hand. She throws a blanket over it instead, forcing herself not to think of the green she just smudged into the navy blue fluff.
Behind the door is Imogen, her hat held high above her head as it fails to actually protect her from the downpour, blonde hair dyed dark by the rain and plastered to her forehead. She pants through the water sloping down her features, and grins, “Hi. Can I come in?”
Wordlessly, Leah steps aside to let the farmer by, closing the door after her and hardly noticing the wet prints pressed into her floorboards. Imogen shakes herself off a little, splattering Leah with droplets, before wiping her brow off with the back of her hand, “-Sorry for, you know. Tracking water in. I, uh, I brought you something.”
She digs around in the pocket of her dungarees – the woman didn’t even bring a coat? – and procures a stick of driftwood, this one with an odd ring burrowed into the centre. It’s surprisingly dry, for something out in that rain, but she supposes that Imogen has probably soaked up most of the onslaught. She certainly looks the part. Leah pulls a towel from a nearby cupboard and hands it to her in trade for the stick; she takes it gratefully and immediately wraps it around her shoulders, “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Leah replies, turning the stick in her fingers, “Thank you for this, too,” before finding the thought to go and deposit the stick onto the bare shelf.
“Yeah,” says Imogen, “Um, I realise I’ve never actually asked: are those at all useful? I kind of assumed they would be?”
Leah smiles slightly, her back still turned, “I’ve found a use for them, yes. Thank you.”
“… Oh,” she hears Imogen shift her weight, “Of course. You’re welcome. So… I should get going.”
She clears her throat, “You don’t have to leave. If you don’t want to- I mean. It’s raining pretty heavily, so, you can wait until it’s calmed down. If you like.”
There’s a moment of silence in which Leah feels her cheeks colour a little: ever thankful for the fact that she’s still making an unnecessary task of positioning this stick perfectly on the shelf. If she closes her eyes tightly enough, maybe she’ll see some spots, and then she can imagine how Imogen’s face flushes too.
She hears Imogen clear her throat too, “I- thank you. I just might do that.” Then there’s some rustling and Leah turns to find her pulling the towel over her hair, the straw hat discarded on the floor. Leah swipes in to fetch it quickly, placing it up on that same shelf to dry off as Imogen starts vigorously scrubbing at her head.
At the same time, the paintbrush clatters down onto the floor from where Leah had balanced it rather precariously, smearing splatters of Fresh Cut Grass across the wood. She just stares at it, despairing.
Eventually, Imogen whips the towel from her head, and grimaces at the sight, “Ah. Do you have paper towels anywhere?”
Leah sighs, dropping her head as she crosses the cabin – this is just perfect.
She returns with the towels to Imogen, who is now crouched on the floor next to the mess, having taken a few seconds to comb her hair back with her fingers as she now fusses with the paint. Leah hands her some towels and she presses them to the mess as Leah picks up the paintbrush, this time making sure it stays where she wants it on the easel.
When she looks down, the paint has soaked almost entirely through the towel, and Imogen lifts her hands to stare at them, bewildered. She holds the stained pads of her thumbs out to Leah, and manages to smile, “Look! Green thumbs.”
Tuesday; Winter 23, 19XX
“She always seems to slow down ‘round you, you know,” says Abigail. She tosses her head quickly from side to side like a labrador, shaking the snow free – now as droplets of freezing water. Leah has to lean backwards in endeared irritation, bringing her arms up to shield her face from the barrage. Abby just has to laugh, “Sorry.”
“Uh huh,” Leah grumbles under her breath, stepping away to find her usual table as Abigail follows, wringing out her still-damp hair.
This is not an unusual occurrence. Abigail tends to get here a good ten minutes before the boys each Friday, and she’ll sit opposite Leah – sometimes with Elliott also – until they arrive. Leah thinks Abby just enjoys bothering her.
Abigail slips into Elliott’s seat opposite her, leaning forward expectantly as Leah shifts, a little uncomfortable with the scrutiny. She just shrugs, unsure of what Abby’s waiting for.
Abby rolls her eyes, reaching out to poke Leah in the arm, “Leah. Come on, you have to have noticed.” At the questioning look she gets in return, she groans dramatically, “Imogen. She barely even says good morning to me. What’s the dealy-o?”
She’s crossed her arms, laying her chin on the overlap as she waits gleefully for her gossip. Leah stares back into her eyes, unimpressed, “You sound like Haley.”
Abby draws back, affronted, “You say that like it’s a bad thing. She kind of has the right idea- you know how boring the boys are? They never wanna talk about anythin’!”
“I don’t really know what you want, Abby.”
She scoffs, “The details, dude. Tell me about the intricacies of your personal lifeeee,” the e dragging out as she spins all the way around on the stool.
Leah sighs, “I would’ve at least appreciated a hello before the interrogation-“
“-Hello. And happy birthday-“
“-But there’s not really anything to tell. We’re friends, I guess. Probably more in thanks to proximity than anything else- outliers, you know.”
Abigail’s smile freezes into static on her face, “Are you kidding? I don’t see her getting all buddy-buddy with Marnie, or Shane for that matter. You’re speciallll.”
Leah has to reel away from the insistent poking again.
In that moment the Saloon doors open again, revealing first Imogen followed by Elliott, both tucked under his umbrella. He lets it down, having spared himself from the snow, but Imogen appears to have caught the full brunt of it on the way down from the farm. Strange that they should run into each other on the way. Both of them glance over at Leah (and Abigail) before Imogen heads for Gus, and Elliott comes to pull up another seat.
“Good evening,” he says pleasantly, and Leah hums some version of the same greeting – then Abby grabs his wrist to pull him into the tight conversation.
“-Elliott, don’t you think Imogen’s weird about Leah?” Her voice lowers to a murmur, now that they’re in the presence of the centre of the discussion.
He yelps at the sudden movement, before clearing his throat in search of composure, “You may have to elaborate.”
She shifts a little to better catch his eye, having to confirm that he’s even serious, “Elliott! Not you too! She’s like a steam train until it comes to-“ she purses her lips to cut herself off, jabbing a sharp, almost-accusatory finger towards Leah.
Elliott’s face blooms in an expression of understanding, “Ah. No, I have noticed that.”
“What?” Leah starts, the sound drowned out in the exclamation of Abigail’s triumph. In part because the statement takes her off-guard, and in credit towards the distraction of Imogen finally offering Gus a cheery goodbye and turning to approach.
“Hi,” she says with a grin, resting her elbows on the table, “Happy Birthday, Lee.” Onto the table she slides her cargo: a fresh garden salad, followed by an unsurprising stick of driftwood. Where one of these things has become almost anticipated, the other is new; Leah glances up at her, touched. Imogen stares back down at her, bright eyes and warm smile, not even bothering to find a stool despite how she doesn’t seem too eager to leave. Out of the corner of her eye she catches Abby’s knowing look.
“-Thank you,” she finds the words, “This is… really sweet of you.”
“I aim to please. You didn’t happen to bring a towel with you today, did you?”
Leah laughs, “I’m afraid not. I’ll remember next time, I promise.” She picks up a tomato from the plate, slipping it into her mouth.
Abby chooses this moment to loudly clear her throat, “I’m going to get a drink.”
“I’ll come with you,” Elliott replies pleasantly. He doesn’t wait for permission before following, and Abby doesn’t seem as though she expects to give it. Not that either of these details seem particularly notable to Leah.
Imogen takes one of the now-empty seats as Leah starts on her salad properly, drizzling some dressing in zig-zags over the leaves, “Thank you for the salad, Imogen. Gus truly does it best.”
She pulls a face, playfully offended, “Wow. So if I was to, say, start growing some plants and things myself when spring rolls around, you wouldn’t be impressed?” Leah has to fight not to choke on the chunk of cucumber she’d just forked into her mouth. Slightly alarmed by the questionable sound drawn from her throat, Imogen pours her a glass of water, reaching out to rub over her back gently as she chugs it down.
Leah’s eyes bore into the china of the plate, watering slightly as she fights to clear her throat – but that doesn’t change even as her airway unclogs. They sit in silence for a moment, with Leah very focused on the still-present weight of Imogen’s comfort. Minutes pass; this is probably the most time they’ve spent in quiet since those first few meagre weeks. She and Elliott get along so well because they can be quiet together: parallel play, where she’ll draw and he’ll write, or just enjoying the view. Conversation has always felt like compensation. And even among the chattiest of her infrequent friends, her view on this has never much shifted. Suddenly she’s realising that she doesn’t actually know that much about Imogen.
“Do you like art?”
Imogen had apparently zoned out as well, because she blinks, and has to pull her gaze over to meet Leah’s, “-What?”
“Art. Do you like it?”
“… I like your art.”
“Have you even seen my art?”
“I’ve been in your house.”
Leah has to concede at that; it’s technically true. “Do you paint?”
“What, on a canvas, or on the floor?”
Leah quirks a brow, and Imogen grins, “You showed me how.” She sighs, and Imogen laughs lightly, “Sorry, sorry. Um, not really. There isn’t much time for… artistry. What’s with all the questions?”
She feels herself flush, suddenly self-conscious, “Am I probing too much?”
Imogen shrugs, “Not really. I like knowing things about you, too, Leah.”
“Abby says you don’t talk to her very much.”
She considers this for a moment, weighing the idea in cocks of her head, “I suppose that’s true.”
“You always seem so social.”
“So do you.”
“I’m social with the right people; there just aren’t many of them.” Leah shifts a little, and finally Imogen seems to notice the unrelenting placement of her hand as it falls away.
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly, crossing her arms over her chest instead. Leah returns to her salad, and Imogen avoids looking at her, “I think we’re quite alike in that regard, though.”
Leah stabs a leaf of lettuce onto her fork, “Farm life seems to really suit you.”
“It’s… a little more isolated than I’d like, really. But the neighbours are top-notch,” she finds Lah and winks. Leah stares at her, a little stunned.
“-Why do you always give me driftwood?”
“Do you not like it?”
“I do. It’s just, I always see you hand others flowers and things… daffodils, you know? I just wondered, I suppose.”
“Do you like flowers?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll plant you some in spring. To go with the salad.”
“Thank you.”
+1
Thursday; Spring 18, 19XX
Despite her vainest hopes, Leah has to recruit help to haul it up the hill towards the farmhouse. In her ideal world, nobody would have seen it before Imogen did, but first Elliott had burst in without a knock while she was working on its final touches, and then Leah needed help. Because she is strong but she is not strong enough to haul a chunk of wood up a hill. She first asked him to help lift it but he declined (“Darling, have you seen my arms?”) and now, Leah’s starting to question his judgement on the next-best option.
“So, like, why didn’t you just ask her to come down and collect it herself?” Alex asks her, shifting the weight of the statue in his arms as they pass up by Marnie’s ranch, and Leah internalises her sigh. This question is, at least, a good one – the first among the many that have been asked of her since they left the cottage, just minutes earlier. The issue is in that Leah doesn’t really know how to answer it? Or if she wants to. Something about all the times Imogen has come to her….
Alex doesn’t see it because he’s still watching Leah but over his shoulder, she sees Elliott raise a poised eyebrow. She sighs, “Isn’t making the distance kind of part of the whole ‘giving’ aspect? If you think about it?” He seems to contemplate this for a moment, offering her leave with a few moments of quiet so she can, naturally, overthink herself into illness.
As if he knows, Elliott loops around Alex’s back and then her own, so she’s in the middle, and so he can bump her playfully with his elbow, “Stop worrying. She’ll love it.”
The ‘it’ in question is not something easily loveable, she thinks. But it makes sense to her; she gets the feeling that Imogen will understand it too. Perhaps not in the same way that Leah does – as the reincarnation of a tree lost to waves, painstakingly knitted back together with the sinew of their joint hands – but that’s kind of the point. Except for the fact that the thought of Imogen misunderstanding this, missing this point, makes her want to pull the project back into the cocoon of her ribcage to keep pressed against her tender heart forever. Only it was getting too big and too all-consuming to keep there for much longer. And frankly, in what is almost an uncomfortable train of thought, it’s not just hers to. Raise. This amalgamation of everything pulled down from that shelf, pulled into a shape it fought against her for, an awkward eyesore loop with an unnecessary hole in the middle, not unlike a paper ring, dexterously twisted between her fingers to fit someone else’s hand.
In a perfect fit to the metaphor, that paper, the wood, would have some kind of poem written out on it – but Leah still half-thinks words are a little bit overrated. She agonised over the statue’s name for hours, originally searching for some kind of witty play on Imogen’s name, but she’s not Elliott, so she instead chose honesty. Forgoing the name, along with all the restrictions it brings. Leah still half-thinks distance is just a little bit romantic.
How I Feel About You.
“So,” Alex grunts, hefting the statue up the porch stairs, “Why didn’t you paint it or nothin’? You don’t got paint? I coulda gone to get some for you.”
“I was going to,” she hums, thinking back to Green Thumbs! “But I kind of figure she deserves to see what we became.” Alex places the statue down, and Leah clears her throat, “Um, thank you, Alex. You can leave now.”
He laughs a little, apparently taking no offence, “No problem, Leah. See you later, Elliott.” She doesn’t bother watching to be sure that he leaves, even as she hears Elliott’s distant goodbye, what with how he retreats to the bottom of the farm – leaving them in the relative privacy he had promised earlier. Whatever. She’s too busy holding her breath, poising a fist to knock.
Then the door swings open in the shadow of her hand, and she flinches back so violently that it thankfully keeps her from accidentally swatting Imogen in the face.
“Hi, Leah,” she says, before glancing over, “What’s this?” Leah’s fingers curl into the grain of the wood.
“-It’s for you.”
Imogen blinks, “Oh,” and Leah can see in her eyes that she doesn’t get it. Her response chooses of its own accord to be some mish-mashed ramble of every thought she’s had over the last few months – her eyes roaming the farm all the while, keeping her from even a pause triggered by the inevitable grimace on Imogen’s face. Vegetables on trellises, the patch of flowers affectionately dubbed ‘Leah’s Corner’. Leah has been said to mean a few different things: delicacy in Hebrew, and the Irish notion of light sunshine she was named after. She has never felt sunny before; she has never been interchangeable with the bluebells. She dwells a little on the beehouse in the centre – (a jar of honey pushed into her hands only a few days previous).
It turns out there are ways to fall quiet that extend outside of your own embarrassment or self-control: Imogen is hugging her. And, like, when did that happen. Her voice vanishes on her (but her stupid little mouse brain gets louder – wow. Imogen smells like the tulips).
Her first instinct, as she regains a modicum of autonomy, is to laugh it off. But then she pulls away to do so and Imogen’s eyes are still that bright warm shade of roasted almonds, dyed in the rays of the sun, and the sound is strangled to death in her throat. Imogen either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind; calloused hands land on her biceps, squeezing slightly as they run down her eyes to clasp her hands, and she leans back to lift their linked hands between them.
“Thank you,” says Imogen, and Leah is once again reminded of the intimacy in distance.
“You’re welcome,” Leah responds, “I, uh, wanted to give you something. For once.”
Imogen’s lips, peony pink, blossom into her familiar smile, “That’s super sweet of you. It’s very us,” she drops one of Leah’s hands – Leah immediately misses the contact – to run delicate fingers over the height of the statue’s arch.
Leah’s about to correct her – it’s not us, it’s you – but looking at it now, Imogen’s right. It’s them. Always them, twisting and misshapen and odd and hollow and home. Leah notices for the first time that Imogen’s hair is down today.
They share very little else into the space between them, for fear of it being overheard, to be kept by someone else when it’s for them. Imogen is caressing the back of her hand with a gentle thumb, before she clears her throat and pulls away, placing her other hand on the statue as well.
“Do you want to come around for dinner later? I have a killer recipe for pumpkin pie I’ve been dying to share.”
Leah just nods, because what, “-Sure. Say, 7?”
Imogen grins at her, “Sounds perfect. I have a few things to do until then, but I will see you tonight. Come hungry!” She takes a step away, stumbling a little on the step down – Imogen darts out to catch her arm, and once steady, Leah pats her hand meekly, which earns her a laugh, “Lucky your cottage doesn’t have any stairs.”
The look she offers in response is one of feigned irritation, before it cracks into a smile to match Imogen’s, “Don’t you start. I’ll see you later.”
“Alright,” Imogen squeezes her arm fondly, before turning back to the statue and picking up the whole thing, just, by herself. She then sends a gauging look towards Leah, and honest-to-god winks, “Later,” before kicking the door closed behind her.
Relieved that Imogen agrees on the statue being something for just them, Leah briefly wonders how accurately she could guess the shade of her cheeks. She manages to descend the stairs without nearly falling down again, and glances down the hill towards Elliott. He’s calm as ever in demeanour but unfortunately his shit-eating grin is rather telling.
“Shut up,” she grumbles once she’s within earshot, right over his stupid remark, (“I saw that hug,” accompanied by an eyebrow wiggle). He holds up his thumb, obnoxiously close to her face; she pushes it away.
They begin the walk back to her cabin – quiet, what with being sans Alex.
“… Hey, Elliott?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think I’d be any good at poetry?”
He considers this for a moment, “I think you already have your poetry.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You just don't create it like I do.”