"Everyone wants chocolate," she counters. "It's basically a universal constant. Besides, you fed me yesterday. Fair's fair."
"That was so you wouldn't die on my mountain. Not an invitation for friendship."
"Your mountain?" She raises an eyebrow. "That's a little presumptuous. I'm pretty sure the national forest belongs to everyone."
"We're not in the national forest. We're on private land."
"Your private land?"
I don't answer. It's complicated. The land belongs to someone, probably, but they haven't been here in decades. I've been squatting for five years and no one's complained. As far as I'm concerned, it's mine by right of occupation.
She waits for me to elaborate. When I don't, she just shrugs.
"Well, either way, consider this a thank you. I really do appreciate you making sure I got somewhere safe. A lot of people wouldn't have bothered."
"Most people also wouldn't have shown up uninvited the next day."
"I'm not most people."
"Clearly."
We stare at each other. Her expression is open, friendly, completely undeserved given how I've treated her. There's no angle I can see, no ulterior motive. She genuinely seems to just want to thank me.
It's been so long since someone was kind to me that I've forgotten how to respond. She shifts her weight, glancing past me at the forge again.
"How long have you been doing this?" she asks. "The blacksmithing?"
"Why do you care?"
"Because it's interesting. Because you're interesting."
"I'm not."
"You're a hermit blacksmith living alone on a mountain. That's literally the definition of interesting."
"I'm dangerous," I say. "I'm not friendly. I don't want company. You should leave and not come back. Again."
"Are you going to hurt me?" she asks, and there's no fear in the question. Just curiosity.
"No," I say immediately. Then, because I need her to understand: "But I could. Easily. You don't know me. You don't know what I've done."
"You're right," she agrees. "I don't know you. But I know you made sure I had food yesterday. And directions. And you're working out here in a garage you built yourself, making beautiful things. People who make beautiful things aren't the ones I'm scared of."
She's wrong. So catastrophically wrong. I've made plenty of beautiful things with these hands, and I've also used them to kill. To tear apart. To destroy everything I ever cared about.
But I can't tell her that. Can't explain what I am, what I've done.
"The chocolate has sea salt in it," she says, apparently taking my silence as acceptance. "The dark kind, not milk. And the apples are Honeycrisp, best ones at the market. The oranges are just oranges, but they're organic or whatever."
She's babbling now, nervous despite her bravado. Good. She should be nervous, and I should scare her away. Say something cruel. Threaten her. Make her understand that I'm serious about being left alone.
Instead, I hear myself say: "Two years."
She blinks. "What?"
"Blacksmithing. I've been doing it for two years."
Why did I tell her that? What is wrong with me?
