They stepped down from the sidewalk.At first their pace was normal, but as they approached the third row of parking spaces, Rosemary slowed.
“Are you all right?”Corinthia asked.
“Yes,” Rosemary said, although she was noticeably breathing harder, and her face had taken on a look of determination.
Corinthia squeezed her hand, and they walked on.
They passed the third row.
“It’s very hard now,” Rosemary admitted.
“We don’t have to go on—”
“One more row.”
Corinthia could tell that Rosemary was pushing herself the extra distance, and respected her all the more for it.
They reached the fourth row.
Rosemary exhaled.“I think this is as far as I can go today,” she said.She looked down at the ground.“I feel silly.I should be able to go anywhere, and here I am taking two steps in a parking lot.”
The embarrassment in Rosemary’s voice melted Corinthia like chocolate on a s’more.“You didgreat,” she said.“You can’t help your nature.”
“And now you have to walk all the way back to your place, too—”
“I could use the exercise,” Corinthia said, firmly.She would not let this woman berate herself; not a chance.
They held hands all the way back to the winding path that traced the exterior of the Outdoor Amphitheater, and only let go when they descended into the Refuge.
As the bright spotlights faded behind them, the haunting call of an owl floated through the darkness.Corinthia noticed things she had never seen before, like a gopher burrow dug out of the sand, and the glittery eyes of spiders hidden in the scrub.Nothing was perfectly safe, but everything was beautiful in its own way.
At the top of a rise they stopped to watch the orange moon burn its way above the horizon.
“I’ve never seen it like this,” Corinthia said.
“You never spent enough time in the forest,” Rosemary replied.She chuckled.“And I’ve never spent enough time out of it.”
“We are a pair, aren’t we.”The words left Corinthia’s lips before she could second-guess them into extinction.
Rosemary didn’t seem to mind the implication.“We are,” she said.
Overhead a chain of lights twinkled past the planet Jupiter.Though Corinthia knew the lights were only a line of low-orbit satellites, it was more fun to imagine them as spaceships piloted by lovelorn aliens.
Back on earth, the fireflies glowed on and off.
Corinthia and Rosemary continued through the twisting pathways, Corinthia following the beacon of her home as she sensed it on the southern edge of the Refuge.They walked companionably in peaceful silence, which the night overlaid with its own harmonies.
To feel Rosemary moving through the trees; to track the alighting of her gaze on one thing or another; this was better than chocolate, Corinthia concluded.
When they reached her backyard, Corinthia offered her hand for Rosemary to step up to the unintended deck made by the wooden fence.
They stepped down to the sandy soil again on the other side.
The backyard was plain as it had ever been, with only sand, patchy grass, and the one lone grapefruit tree, planted when the house was built and hanging on as best it could.Corinthia loved the fruit tree but grieved that the whole lot had been cleared just to leave empty sand and boring grass in its place.“Do you think,” Corinthia said, “that we could regrow the forest here?”
“We could,” Rosemary replied.“If that’s what you want.”
“I do.I have to put the fence back, for practical reasons—”
