Chapter Text
Seff woke up, she guessed, a few hours later, though she couldn't place a number to it; she had not seen a need to check the time before falling asleep, and only now glanced at the grandfather clock across the room.
It had long ago stopped chiming above a whisper, and told her now on its face only that it was a little past nine (whether that was in the morning or evening, she was unsure). Seff wondered if the cold had skewed its mechanisms. The fluctuations in temperature could have caused the gears to contract or expand, and ever so slightly, the clock could be faster or slower than intended.
She had tinkered with the smaller clocks she owned, and broke a few, and though she had never been religious she prayed to someone to forgive all the guilt she felt for it, even though it seemed a bit silly. Now the working ones sat on the wall, and she was too afraid to touch them. Their times were not too far off from each other, but had they always been quite so askew? She tried to remember the day before the vanishing, and, when that failed, she tried to remember the day she had inherited them. They had been synchronized, at least at the time; she had paid attention to that, if nothing else.
The fire had not died down too much, and Seff stood to tend it again. She turned the logs over a few times and pried the back door open to grab another.
It had not snowed in weeks, and for the first time in a while Seff looked up at the sky. It was completely clear; she guessed water had stopped moving through its various forms some time previously, and now it no longer rained or snowed or even, really, looked all that cloudy. She wondered if all the oceans had frozen, and assumed they had. The moon was full. She had faintly recalled it being full when the sun had disappeared, and she wondered if she was keeping accurate enough time that she had landed right on when its phases were bound to repeat, or if she had lost her mind, or if it was simply stuck like that and she hadn't been paying enough attention. She wondered how it shone with no sun and no light to itself, and she thought about the motions of water from lake to cloud to rain and snow, and again she lamented that she had never studied enough to know more.
She took a log and re-entered the cabin, and warmed it in her heavy paws and in front of the fire for a few moments before laying it in the heart of the flames. It caught after a minute, and she turned to the figure curled up in front of the fireplace, nearly entirely covered in the blanket she had laid down. Rohan had barely moved in her sleep, and save the half panicked rise and fall of her chest Seff was unsure if she was alive at all.
Seff was not tired, though that was unusual. Waking at all in her sleep was odd for her, and to do so for no apparent reason was even more so, and on the occasions she did she rarely remained awake. She napped, too, once in a while and usually after strenuous work. She wasn't sure of the rabbit's sleep patterns, if they differed from hers at all; all she knew was that Rohan, at least for now, was out like a light.
Out like the sun, she thought, and rolled her eyes.
She sat back on her bed again and took a book from beside it. It was a novel, and not one she had found particularly engaging years prior; a friend had told her about it once while they were out getting lunch, and recommended it somewhat half-heartedly, and so on a whim before returning to her cabin Seff checked out a copy from the local library. It was a romance, though she found the leads rather joyless: a bear and an okapi, from halfway opposite sides of the globe; both were women, both met online over a shared love of a fictional drama show embedded within the book, and both unsuccessfully attempted to make up for a painful lack of chemistry by reciting various uninspired platitudes in their narration.
She found the whole thing frustratingly lacking in self-awareness, and would have settled much more eagerly for something willing to embrace its own cheesiness; either willing to be properly serious or not quite so self-important. She wondered if that was a sign of her own provinciality; she had never done the sort of serious travelling that was probably necessary to appreciate the sort of global worldview presented by such a modern premise. Wynn had, she recalled; she had talked about it quite frequently, and suggested Seff join her at points. They had even nearly made plans together.
She never ended up returning the book, though occasionally she'd get a notice in the mail regarding her exceptional late fees (she figured that was the library's last resort, after trying in vain to reach her by email and telephone). She had always meant to just return it, she supposed. Parting with it shouldn't have been hard. She wondered if she took it as too much of a gesture of good will, and that was what complicated things, or if it was just too much effort to drive to the library. Primarily, she wondered if the friend who had recommended it did so on the basis of its premise; she wondered how many other lesbians he knew, and if he had given the same suggestion to any of them. She guessed that would remain another unknown. It didn't matter anymore.
In fact, none of that mattered now, she noted, though the thought of dropping a mediocre romance novel in the return box of an almost-certainly abandoned library amused her a bit. She flipped through it in the firelight and noted every mention of sunny weather.
One lead described, in between paragraphs where she wrote of her longing and of the privilege to speak to someone so far away at all, the warmest days in her city. She described how she wondered if most of the things she loved, if the family she cared for and the slums she looked down on with shame, were worth leaving for the ostensibly charming woman she'd fallen for, weighing the danger she faced against the banality of the immigration system. The warmth was something she’d surely miss.
The other lead explained in ennui-thick monologues the constant fog plaguing the part of coastal America she attended graduate school in, and remarked with delight each time the sun came out for what Seff guessed was some piece of clumsy symbolism, the meaning of which she was sure she wasn't quite clever enough to ascertain. She faintly recalled the ending, where both met in person and lived happily ever after, free and safe in each others' arms; she didn't recall much focus placed on the sky.
Seff wondered what it was like in both parts of the world now. She guessed they looked similar, though she couldn't have been sure; among the many things she was not was a meteorologist. She guessed there were people still alive around the world, and she was more certain of that now that she had seen Rohan asleep in front of the fire and heard her stories of predators, monsters in the dark. She had grown used, over the past nine weeks, to watching the darkness warily, so it surprised her how unafraid she had been when Rohan told her, as though the reality of the thing was strong enough to mollify it.
Seff thought of Rohan, who she found, somehow, rather difficult to read. Was she reacting properly? Was she an anxious child, or one behaving as anyone would? She eventually concluded that Rohan was too old not to be completely terrified and too young to know how to properly manage it. Twelve had been a difficult age at the best of times, she recalled; she herself had spent it half in a short-lived bid for the affections of her peers and half embroiled in unmemorable reality television. It had been rough and strange; boys had occasionally wanted to kiss her and more frequently lied about it as a joke, and once in a while she acquiesced but refused to let anything come of it. She had, at the time, thought herself despite evidence to the contrary to have been extraordinarily intelligent; she registered about three years later that she had probably been insufferable, and stopped blaming herself for it when she was twenty.
She folded down the corner of the page she was on and placed down the book, then turned to check on Rohan. She had not moved, and Seff felt another, separate twinge of fear. She knelt beside her, just to be certain she really was breathing and it was not just a trick of the strobing firelight; but no, there it was, faintly past the crackle of flames. She counted how many times Rohan breathed in a minute (about thirty) and whether her breaths were regular (they were) and wondered with another brief moment's panic whether the chimney was adequate or if the cabin would fill with smoke and choke out the little rabbit. The fear ebbed as soon as she reminded herself of how often she had lit the fire and how it had never once been an issue before, though she resolved herself to clean the chimney at some point.
A moment later, some amount of shame came upon Seff and she stood. She returned to sit on her bed, not anticipating the onset of sleep, and wondered what it must be like for Rohan; what it would be like when she awoke to see Seff lit up in the deeper shadows of the cabin. She thought of the foxes Rohan had mentioned and turned her head away from the fire to dampen the reflections of her eyes. She slumped over onto the pillow and closed them, still very much awake but with little else to do.
She was only pulled back when a quiet voice came through across the room.
"I'm awake," Rohan said. Seff sat up. "In case you were wondering."
"How long have you been up?"
Rohan, half-lit by the fire, had cast the blanket off herself and onto one of the arms of the chair. She was turned away from Seff, staring at the wall. "About a minute."
Seff stood. "Are you hungry?"
"Yeah."
"You have food in that bag, right?"
"A bit."
Seff knelt down and pulled one of the seaweed packs from the bag. She pierced the plastic around it, filling the room with the faint smell of the ocean, which she hadn't expected to notice as much as she did, and passed the little container to Rohan. "Is that enough for now?"
"For now," Rohan replied. "We should leave soon."
"We?"
"You're not leaving me alone," she said with her mouth half-full. She turned to Seff and narrowed her eyes. "They'll find me here."
"Nobody's found me."
"Nobody wants you dead."
Seff gritted her teeth. "You're injured. I'm not letting you walk for miles with your leg like that."
"It's just a scrape," Rohan replied. "Nothing's broken."
"I can still smell it," Seff said. "What makes you think someone else won't?"
"They'll smell it with me here, too. At least out there you can protect me."
"Then we'll wait until you're better," Seff declared.
"And I'll starve."
The fire spat out one massive spark and licked at the air. Seff turned and pushed over another log, and it calmed a small amount.
"You're awfully stubborn, you know?" Seff replied.
"I'm being logical," Rohan interjected.
"We'll go together," she continued. "I'll carry you if your leg starts to become an issue. If anyone attacks us, I'll resolve the situation. You don't have to worry about that." She turned back to Rohan and looked at the seaweed pack, still half-full. "But finish your food before we do anything. I'll see if I can find any clothes for you. Anything better than that coat."
"I don't think you have anything that'd fit me."
"I don't think so either." She pulled a large plastic bin out from under the bed and sorted through the clothes inside. All of them were smaller than her, but far larger than Rohan, and eventually she gave up and slid the bin back under. "At least keep your ears down. Don't get frostbite."
"I'll try." Rohan placed down the now-empty seaweed container.
"I'm going to change your bandages before we go. It might help disguise the smell of blood, if nothing else." Seff nudged Rohan into a more upright position and pulled out her leg. "Does that hurt?"
"Only a bit, I guess."
"Good." Seff rolled up Rohan's pants and unwrapped the injury. It had tinted the bandages dark brownish-red in the center where they had been in contact with the wound, with a small amount of something clear around the stain, but there were no signs of infection: no yellow or green, no pus, only a little warmth on the leg. The injury itself had largely scabbed over. She again wiped off the wound with antiseptic, taking care not to reopen it, and bandaged it a little more quickly this time. Rohan barely winced as she did so, which Seff considered to be a marked improvement.
"It looks good, all things considered," Seff said. "You're lucky."
"I don't feel very lucky," Rohan replied. "I may potentially be the least lucky girl in all of creation."
"You'd be a lot less lucky if your leg was infected." Seff rolled her pants back down. "So, you know. You're welcome."
Rohan stood up. "Can we go now?"
"Yes," Seff replied. "Watch your paws. Keep your ears down and under your hood. Don't slip, and let me know if your leg starts acting up again." She took Rohan's paw in her own and helped her across the room. "Feel okay?"
"Yeah. Fine."
Seff bent down, slipped on, and laced up her boots; Rohan had not bothered to take off her own. She grabbed the bag she had been carrying before, still unopened, pulled out the lantern, lit it, then pushed open the door. It had frozen to the frame a bit, but she took little notice. She and Rohan stepped out into the cold. Her breath caught a bit in her throat as the sudden cold hit her, then came out as a gentle cloud in the dark.
"You're not going to put out the fire?" Rohan asked. "Won't this place burn down?"
Seff shook her head. "I want it to be warm when we get back. I'm not as concerned with it spreading."
"It won't be very warm if it burns the place down. Plus, it might be dead once we get back."
Seff sighed and darted back inside. She spread out the embers with a poker and shoveled the ashes over what was left of the flames; the room went completely dark, and the cold from outside crept in as soon as the fire died. She locked the door behind her, returned to Rohan's side, and turned to her. "Can I trust you to hold the lantern?"
"Mhm." Rohan reached for the lamp and took it. Seff flinched as the flame, still safely caged in metal and glass, drew closer to Rohan, but then it settled and she hardly seemed to take notice. "Like that?"
" Just hold it out in front of you. Maybe a bit above you. I can take it if you can't."
"I can handle myself," Rohan said. She lifted the lantern above her head and walked a bit in front of Seff. "Don't worry."
"I trust you, then. Try not to slip."
"I won't."
Seff turned right at the end of the dirt path and onto the road, avoiding the fallen tower. She regarded, now, the opportunity she was met with to voice all her thoughts. "Watch out for power lines. I don't know how many have fallen around here."
"I'm not going to trip on a power line," Rohan replied, and Seff realized how inane most of her thoughts were, decided she would no longer be voicing them, and silently thanked Rohan for, she noted, keeping her slightly more sane.
They walked for some time in silence, and passed the bent street sign. Rohan reached out a paw and brushed against it, then, softly, asked, "What was your life like?"
"Before the sun disappeared?"
"Yeah."
"I told you, I was a carpenter."
"Right, but what was that like?"
"Well, I was a contractor, I guess," Seff replied. "I had a lot of expertise in a lot of areas, but I mostly worked with the big stuff. Roofs and cabins. You know all the lake houses out here, where people do their camping and waterskiing?"
Rohan nodded. "Rich people, mostly."
"Right. Rich people. I mostly did roofing for those. Sometimes I'd work on cabins."
"Did you get, like, free jet boat rides?"
"I guess occasionally someone would offer me some lakefront perks, but they were never really to my taste," Seff said. "I was pretty content with what I did, honestly. There was a summer camp that rented some property out for some birdwatching thing, and occasionally they'd call me for repairs. I'd get custom furniture orders from some of the eccentric clients, once in a while. That was always fun."
"I take it that clocks aren't part of carpentry."
"No," Seff replied. "They're not my discipline. I told you I inherited those, didn't I?"
"And broke them."
Seff sighed. "I can't be good at everything," she noted. "I was barely good with furniture. Just look at me." She turned her paws over in front of her, acutely aware of their size.
"Did you build your cabin?" Rohan asked.
"Actually, yeah. I did," Seff replied. "It was the biggest project I had ever done. Still is.” She hesitated. “I only managed to because of my spouse. who gave me a lot of money to take the time off to get it done, and to get everything sorted out with the permits and the other contractors. So, you know, that's the reason it wasn't just a pipedream."
Rohan cocked her head to the side. "You're married? I thought you lived alone?"
"I do," Seff said, and walked a bit ahead, and Rohan didn't say anything else on the subject.
Eventually they came to the slope again. The tracks Seff had made climbing it were still embedded in the snow. She turned to Rohan.
“Can you climb this on your own? You’re pretty light. I can take the lantern for a minute.”
Rohan nodded, handed her the lantern, and, on all fours, scampered uphill and out of view. Between muted bursts of panic, Seff marveled at how easy Rohan made it look, then snapped off another stick, feeling only a little bad about taking it, and made the climb herself. At the top, she breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing Rohan, and offered the lantern back; Rohan took it and returned to holding it as she had been before.
“Good job,” Seff said.
“It’s not like it was hard,” Rohan replied.
Seff wasn’t really sure what sort of reply she was expecting.