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Ah, fall: Alex’s favorite time of year. As the air chilled and the leaves turned into an artful smear of colors on nature’s palette, the time came to say good riddance to the sweatiness of summer and hello to the season of gridball and amazing food.
Of course, it was a shame to have to bid farewell to bikinis along with it. And now that Alex could admit to himself his similar disappointment in the vanishing of trunks and bare chests without shame violently rearing up to smother the impulse, he supposed it was a shame twice over. Even so, he found himself mourning such losses less and less ever since he and Orsin had started dating. Orsin presenting him with the traditional bouquet of flowers that signaled a romantic commitment had been Alex’s personal autumn: the moment that everything had begun to turn within him from what it used to be into something new, beautiful, and comforting.
As he watched a wisp of a cloud pass between gaps in the canopy overhead, one of Orsin’s truffle hogs trotted over to him and pressed its wet snout into the leg of his jeans. Squatting down, Alex ruffled its ears affectionately.
“Hey little dude. What’s up?” Looking up, he realized that they had fallen behind the other two considerably. Luckily, Orsin was busy inspecting a clump of fungus layered up at the base of an oak tree. Turkey tail, wood ear, or maybe hen of the woods? They were too far away for Alex to tell. “Aww. Were you worried about me?”
The hog stared up at him with wet, beady eyes, then turned and trotted towards its master, as though leading the way.
Alex jogged over to rejoin them. As Orsin looked up at the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, a breeze tousled his short, wavy hair. Alex’s heart fluttered as the farmer smiled like he was seeing him for the first time in months, even though they’d been hanging out all morning.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Must’ve gotten lost in thought.” Glancing down at the small mound of fungus that Orsin had been considering, Alex easily identified it as hen of the woods. Squatting down, he cupped his hands around the edges in preparation to pull it up.
“Do we really want that?” Orsin asked. “Or should we save space in the basket for something better?”
Alex looked up, confused. “But…hen of the woods is delicious.”
“That isn’t hen of the woods; it’s Berkley’s polypore.”
Humbled, Alex stood, brushing his hands off on his jeans. “Oh. Heh. Right.”
As they continued through Cindersnap Forest, leaves fell and danced about them like confetti at a parade. Embarrassed as he was by his foible, the tranquil festivity of the scenery cheered Alex up considerably.
“I’m glad you liked the idea of going foraging together,” Orsin said. The hogs sidled up beside one another, checking in with a round of sniffs and grunts. “I was worried you’d think it boring for a date.”
“No way! You know I love the outdoors. I may not know as much about foraging as you, but I’m always up for a hike.”
Despite saying that, Alex had an ace hidden up his sleeve that he’d prepared explicitly for this date. A week ago, when Orsin had invited him to take the pigs out truffling, he’d gone straight away to the library. With Gunther’s help, he’d found a primer on mushroom foraging and checked it out. He knew Orsin hadn’t fallen for him thanks to his hunting and gathering skills, but part of him still wanted to show off, or at least show up. Even if he’d already overcome the competitive urge to one-up the farmer, Alex had come to like being useful to him.
Plus, he wanted to prove that he hadn’t been slacking on studying. Even though he’d struggled with diving head-first into such an unfamiliar subject, he’d put in the hours, cramming for the entire week leading up to their date. He’d read while eating, memorized fungi photographs while lifting weights, and quizzed himself as he played fetch with Dusty. Come hell or high water, Alex wanted more than anything to live up to his own image of what Orsin deserved.
Looking to the leaves rustling overhead, Alex marvelled at the intricacies of the patchwork tapestry they formed.
“You know,” he said, “I never thought I’d appreciate how quiet Pelican Town is. I always thought of it as podunk and dreamed of making it big. Escaping to the city, getting immersed in the sights and sounds, you know? Being a part of it all. But I mean, just look at all of this!”
Alex raised his arms to the sky, taking in a slow, deep breath. The air was crisp and smelled of wet leaves and the slow decay of wood. As the canopy shifted and the sun peeked through, its rays warmed his face. When he closed his eyes, the rustling of foliage sounded like the lapping of waves.
“I don’t know how I missed all of this beauty right in front of my face for so long.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Orsin comforted. “It’s easy to lose sight of things we see everyday. They blur into the background and become just another voice in the chorus. Our brains are built to make shortcuts that save time and energy, but as they say, you can have too much of a good thing. Mindfulness - that’s being conscious of the present moment, both internally and externally - takes effort. It’s all about balance.”
“Woah. That’s really deep. But it, like, makes sense, too. Whenever Emily talks about that kind of stuff, she makes it sound like crystal mumbo-jumbo. I like the way you explain it way better.”
Orsin blushed, the pink plainly obvious against his ivory skin. He couldn’t find the words to say it in a way that wouldn’t make him sound like a love-drunk idiot, but even more than doubting Orsin’s health or taking the local vistas for granted, Alex was ashamed of having denied his appreciation for the man’s beauty for so long. Just as Orsin said, it was easy to forget to appreciate the things you saw everyday; it took a special kind of idiot to loathe in himself something he took no issue with in others. Alex was still working on that: not making secret rules that only he had to follow. It had gotten a lot easier since he’d learned to look at himself through Orsin’s eyes now and again. Perhaps he could teach himself mindfulness in the same way, now that he knew he lacked it.
“Isn’t it odd, though, that opposites really do attract?” Orsin smiled, his eyes stuck somewhere between guilty and amused. “I took up the farm to get away from all of that, the hustle and bustle of the city. In another life, we might have been but ships passing in the night.”
“Yeah…I remember that day at the beach when you told me all about it.” Alex hesitated. “I still feel bad about that.”
Orsin gave him a funny look.
“You feel bad about getting to know one another better? Or you feel bad about how we agreed to shed our old regrets?”
“No, neither of those! That was…amazing.” Alex rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks flushing as he remembered the way they had each clutched a stone in their hands and tossed their worries into the sea with them together. “No, I mean… I feel bad about idealising something that made you miserable. Or maybe I feel bad that I had something you needed, but I didn’t appreciate it?” Alex ground a leaf into the mud with the toe of his sneaker.
“You know you don’t have to feel bad about those things, right?” Orsin set a hand on Alex’s elbow. “It’s okay to like something another person doesn’t. And to the latter point, we’re all only human. As I said, mindfulness takes effort.”
“I know. Well, I know now that you told me. I guess I’m just still working on getting it to stick.” Watching the hogs dig in the dirt together, he didn’t want to imagine that other world where they had never met. He couldn’t. And not just for lack of imagination. “I guess the grass always does look greener on the other side of the hill, though, huh? Well, whatever your reason for coming here, I’m glad you did. If you’d asked me a year ago if I really thought I would get famous and get out of here, it would have been a ‘yes’ from me, no doubt. But now? I’m not so sure. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing? It doesn’t feel like a lack of confidence so much as I finally started looking at things honestly. But what I am certain of now is that, without you, I never would have realized how vibrant my little hometown really is. Um…what I’m trying to say is: thanks.”
Blushing, Alex gave a dopey smile. Reaching into the wicker basket on his arm, he pulled out a veritable bouquet of freshly picked mushrooms he had gathered along their hike and presented it to Orsin. It may not have been as vibrant as the one Orsin had given him when they’d started dating, but it was the best he could do. The farmer blinked in surprise.
“Oh, wow!” Alex’s heart swelled with pride at the sparkle in Orsin’s eyes as he looked over the bounty, only to plummet down into his stomach as the farmer’s smile faltered and went funny. “Ah…uh oh.”
“‘Uh oh’?”
“Er, some of those are poisonous.” Alex wilted in embarrassment. It was bad enough he’d gotten it so wrong after all of his diligent study, but the fact that he’d presented his own failure with such confidence made it a hundred times worse. He must not have hidden his disappointment well enough, though, as Orsin hurried to comfort him. “Only mildly, though! Still, maybe don’t touch your face without washing your hands first?”
“Ha… This is why I wouldn’t be doing this without you around. I’d be such a hazard to myself on my own, ha ha.”
Orsin pulled a packet of tissues from his pocket and a small, wooden box from their harvest basket. With a tissue, he carefully plucked two toadstools from the bunch and placed them in the box, before sliding its lid closed.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Most of these are edible. And even the poisonous ones have their uses in potions or fertilizers.” Swapping the box for a bottle of hand sanitizer, Orsin set about wiping off Alex’s hands with a fresh tissue. “I’m impressed you found so many so quickly, and all without my noticing! You’re really putting those newly-opened-to-the-local-beauty eyes to work, eh?”
Following as the hogs toddled along ahead of them, noses to the ground, Alex couldn’t help but marvel at how lucky he was. He may not have achieved his dreams, but he could see now just how badly he had misidentified them to begin with. All he’d ever wanted was recognition and acceptance, and he would be forever grateful that Orsin had come along just in time to point them out for him before he’d taken a bite of the toxic look-alikes he’d been chasing his entire life.
“Come on,” Orsin urged. Giving Alex a peck on the cheek, he took him by the hand. “If we look together, I bet we’ll find enough to treat all of Pelican Town to some mushroom soup.”
The two continued on through the forest, Orsin and the hogs leading the way as Alex followed in blissful contentment.
(art by Henry)