Chapter Text
The walk back to the cabin was less arduous than the walk to the store, even with them both carrying bundles of hay and even with the lengthy uphill climb back to the flat parts of the road. The slope had already felt longer than it had ever been before the darkness, particularly on foot, and now was even worse with the exertion from climbing it.
Rohan, after a time, perched herself on Seff's shoulders, complaining of pain in her leg. Seff wished she could have done the same to some third, larger being, but said nothing.
Past the hill, the road was flat and easy, and though Seff still kept her ears perked for unfamiliar sounds in the dark, she felt significantly more prepared than she had in some weeks.
"I'm cold," Rohan eventually announced.
"Me too," Seff replied. "When we get back, I'll light a fire. Are your ears all right?"
"Yeah. Kinda numb, but it's okay."
"Let me know if it gets any worse or starts to hurt."
Rohan nodded.
"Are you good walking now?" Seff asked.
"Give me a few more minutes." Rohan clung to her shoulders.
"Okay."
Rohan didn't move until they reached the cabin, at which point Seff lowered her gradually to the ground and unlocked the door. She rushed inside, and Seff followed.
"Where should I put the hay?"
Seff shrugged. "It's yours. Wherever you want." She walked over to the fireplace and built another fire, gradually building up the logs until it roared.
Rohan set down most of the hay a good distance away from the fireplace, tucked a bit in the bag, just in case, then sat right in front of the fire. Gradually, its warmth percolated through the cabin, and Seff joined Rohan where she was sitting.
“What’s your plan?” Rohan asked. The amber light danced across her face and cast deep shadows over her eyes.
“My plan?” Seff replied. “What do you mean?”
“For my parents. You said you’d find them.” Rohan shifted a bit. “How are you going to do it?”
The fire crackled. Seff leaned away from it.
“I said, how are you going to find them?” Rohan repeated.
“I was going to take a scrap of their clothes and try and track them by smell,” Seff replied.
“But I don’t have one. I said that already.”
“I know.”
“So how are you going to do it?”
Seff stood up, walked to her bed, and sat down, covered by the shadows all across the room. She took off her coat and laid it atop the blanket, then set the bag beside it. After a long while, she spoke.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t have a plan.”
“So make one.”
Seff opened the bag and pulled out a tin of meat. She returned to the fire and put it down in the heat to defrost.
“I mean, they could be anywhere,” she said. “Where do you want me to look?”
“My old house, maybe.”
“You think they went back there?”
“I don’t know,” Rohan replied. “You think I do?”
Seff shook her head. “No. It’s okay. We’ll try there. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll go someplace else. Back to the shopping center, maybe. Then we can look for more people.”
“Write it down.”
“What?” Seff asked.
“Write it down,” Rohan repeated. “That way it’s a real plan. It’s a thing I do. If I had my notebook, I'd do it, but I left it at my house.”
Seff took one of her handwritten guides from a drawer and flipped it over to the blank back page. She took a nubby quadrangular pencil from beside where it had sat and quickly wrote,
TAKE ROHAN TO HER HOUSE
LOOK FOR HER PARENTS
FIND MORE PEOPLE IF THEY ARE NOT THERE
and crudely sketched a little, faintly nervous-looking wolf's head beneath it.
She placed the booklet down again. “Better?”
“Yes,” Rohan replied. “So long as you actually wrote it down, and not a bunch of swear words or rude notes or something like that.”
“I’m not a child,” Seff replied. “I wouldn’t do that.” She lifted the book and showed Rohan. "See? No rude notes."
“Dinosaur,” Rohan replied. She stuck her tongue out. Seff narrowed her eyes.
“I’m not even thirty."
"So?"
"Isn’t there some intermediary? Don’t you have any cousins my age? An aunt?”
Rohan shrugged. “Miles away, maybe. I haven’t seen my extended family since I was a kit. I'm obviously not going to see them now."
Seff returned to the fire, knelt down, and took the tinned meat, now warm to the touch. She opened the can and, not bothering to even tip it onto a plate, finished it off in a matter of seconds.
“Holy crap,” Rohan said. Seff thought for a moment she saw a flash of panic in her eyes, but just as quickly as she noticed it, it was gone.
“What?” Seff asked, a little sheepishly. “I was hungry.”
Rohan shrugged. “Damn. Cool.”
Seff placed the empty tin on the ground and sat beside Rohan. The silence grew again, taking every opportunity it had to encroach back into the room uninvited.
“What were you doing before you lost your parents?” Seff asked haltingly, attempting to interrupt it.
“God. Don’t say it like that. You make it sound like they’re dead,” Rohan replied. “Anyways, same thing I’m doing here, I guess. Maybe less boring. We were all trying our hardest not to be scared out of our minds." She looked down at her paws. "We were working through our frozen food. Canned stuff, later. Lots of hay. We played a lot of board games, I guess, to pass the time. It was sort of like a long vacation, but it was shit, 'cause obviously it wasn't a vacation. We just didn't know anything. I still don't. They probably don't.”
“And?” Seff asked.
“I don’t know. We ran out of food. I guess the car died, or they didn’t want to drive on the ice, or something. They didn’t want me to stay in the house alone, because they were worried about break-ins. Not like I blame them. The first few nights, the street was super loud. A few houses had their windows broken. I think I heard gunshots. It was weird. I guess you didn’t get any of that.”
“No. It was like everything disappeared. Sort of overnight,” Seff replied. "No gunshots. Perks of living in the middle of nowhere, I guess."
"You don't live in the middle of nowhere. Just in a stupid patch." Rohan hesitated. "I don't know where everyone went after that. After all the noise, it was just quiet. Like no one had been there at all. I guess it was safer that way."
"What about you?"
“Well, we went looking for a grocery store or something. We had to walk, ‘cause, like I said, the car wasn’t an option. And they took me with them,” Rohan said. "We probably would have found our way to that store if it wasn't so dark. The flashlight wasn't working, and we didn't have a fire."
Seff nodded. “And?”
“And then they chased me into the woods. Left them behind. Not out of choice, obviously. I never found a store, and I don't know where they are. That's when you caught me. What else do you want me to say?”
Seff turned a log over with the fireplace poker. Another set of sparks flew off the fire and settled in the pile of ashes.
“Nothing, I guess.”
"Does any of that help at all?"
Seff shrugged. "I mean, it's better than nothing, right?"
"I don't know," Rohan replied. "Does it change the plan?"
"No."
They sat in an unbearable silence, bathed in the warm light from the fire, the cold still biting at their backs.
"What were they like?"
"Is this a eulogy or something? God," Rohan replied. "You can't wait until you're sure of it?"
"I was just curious."
"I don't know. I mean, three months ago, maybe I'd have said they were horribly abusive and sent me to be tortured by hot pitchforks every day, 'cause they made me go to school, like, even when Sammy—this girl I used to know—even this one day when Sammy was being a huge bitch, and I kind of had a cold," she said. "But I think that'd be stupid. So, I don't know. I think they try their best. They don't always listen to me, I guess, which is annoying, but I think they're trying."
Seff nodded and rested her head on one paw. Rohan was staring at the fire, squinting to not be blinded by the few stray bits of smoke that didn't reach the chimney.
"They took me to the doctor a bit before all this happened. They wanted to see what was wrong with my fur, that it doesn't change color in winter," she continued. "They wanted to take me when it was relevant. Obviously that didn't work, since by the time they got me there it was, like, July, but they'd been stuck on so many waitlists that was the first appointment they could get. I told them it wasn't bothering me, but they were so concerned I'd be made fun of. So they dragged me there anyway."
"I'm sorry. That sounds annoying."
"Of course, they said there was nothing they could do. They basically just said if anyone ever made fun of me to just ignore them. They offered to put me in therapy, but I said no. I didn't tell them I did get made fun of, not usually for my fur but for other stuff, like the stupid name they gave me. I don't know why I didn't tell them. I guess I was mad. I felt like they wouldn't listen to that, either."
"I don't think your name's stupid," Seff said.
"I got called a lot of different things for it," Rohan replied. "Because it's a boy's name, or just a weird name, maybe. It was dumb. A few people didn't even believe I was a girl. They thought I was faking it. Or they thought I was a lesbian or something."
"Is there something wrong with liking girls?" Seff asked.
"I mean, I guess not," Rohan said. "I know what you mean, and I'm not homophobic, or whatever. It was obvious they just wanted to hurt me, though. Like they didn't even think about it beyond what would maybe make me mad." She sighed. "I don't know. Do I have to like anyone? I think the whole concept's a bit overrated. I mean, some of my classmates have—had—boyfriends, and they were jerks like the rest of them."
"Of course you don't."
"I suppose if I had to pick, I'd choose girls, because at least sometimes they want to be friends with me," she continued, "but both genders are full of assholes. I'd rather throw the whole thing away. Or at least be done with middle school."
"Well, the good news is, I don't think anyone is worried about romance right now. Least of all me," Seff noted. "I don't think anyone's been worried for a few months. Or however long it's been." The silence came back, punctuated only by the occasional snap of the fire and more distant, more regular clicks. The cabin smelled of wood and smoke and faintly, the bite of cold air. "The other good news is, I don't think anyone likes middle school. No one peaks there. No one respectable, at least."
"Oh."
"So, whenever this is over, hopefully your classmates will have matured a bit. And they won't be such jerks."
"Right. Hopefully." Rohan sounded unconvinced. At each pause in the conversation, the silence crept back in, heavy and awkward.
"I married a woman, you know," Seff added.
"Oh."
"So, I mean, there's really nothing wrong with it. Whatever you are. I'm not going to judge you."
"Right. Thanks," Rohan replied.
Another moment of silence.
"I'm sort of curious now, I guess. What was her name?"
"Wynn."
"What was she like?" she asked.
Seff hesitated.
After an eternity, she answered, "How do you describe a summer afternoon when the sun has gone away?"
"I don't know."
"I mean, if someone were born just now, never having seen it once, what would you tell them? What would they know about daylight?"
"They wouldn't know anything," Rohan said.
"Exactly. You'd have to describe it like fire. A great, big, brilliant fire that turned the sky blue instead of red."
Silence again.
The grandfather clock against the far wall, the largest in the room, crept closer to some distant twelve. Carved on the front and inlaid below the face was a wolf and a ewe, built upon four legs, not two. The ewe lay her hooves on the back of the wolf. The wolf's eyes were shut; the ewe's were open pools, as deep and black and liquid as stained wood could be. The wolf lay still, though the curve of her tail suggested movement, as if she were pretending to be asleep. Lines around them implied insects or leaves or snow, though no snowflakes fell and no butterflies showed themselves, and ripples in the wood above them evoked clouds.
The second hand made a full circle, and the clock moved another minute, and there were no clouds or insects or leaves, and there was no ewe and no wolf. There was no motion save for a faint and ancient attempt at animacy, no longer capable of making itself particularly heard, softly ticking along to a number that meant nothing.