They sat there and ate in companionable silence, and she thought to herself what she would be adding to her pack when she got back home.
“It’s cloudy,” she said, looking up at the sky and seeing nothing but the impression of the moon against the clouds.
“We’ll have to take a rain check on our astronomy lesson,” he said. “I’ll buy you a new fanny pack. That was pretty clever, you tearing the lining out.”
“I don’t need a new fanny pack.”
“Sure you do. Because you need that whole liner. Now you know it’s a good resource.”
“True. That is true. I’m also going to have to bring tinfoil and a fishhook.”
“Fishing like that might be a little bit more of an acquired skill.”
“Maybe you could help me acquire it.”
They looked at each other, the flames from the fire rising up between them, orange glimmering inhis gaze.
No. This was it. They were about done. She knew that. This couldn’t go on forever. There was no way. But she wanted it too. That was the problem. She found that she really, really wanted it to.
“You can get your space blanket out,” he said.
“Okay.”
She had no idea what she was expecting a space blanket to be, but this looked like the tinfoil they had cooked the fish in. Except it was thinner.
“How is this going to keep me warm?”
“It does. Promise. That’s its entire feature. That it’s capable of being this compact, but also warm.”
She felt a little bit grim when she climbed into the lean-to that they made, not because it wasn’t a good shelter, it was. But she was cosplaying survival, and she was kind of ready to take the costume off.
They didn’t need to be out here, and so when she had to wrap herself like a baked potato and slip inside that shelter, with no pillow for her head, she felt a little bit tragic.
She decided to use her fanny pack to keep her head off the dirt and then tried to figure out what she could bring in the future to make it so that she never had to do it quite like this again.
She could hear him moving around outside the lean-to.
“Are you going to… Sleep out there?”
She shivered just slightly. It was a pretty warm blanket, but it was very thin, and she was directly on that cold ground.
“I was going to,” he said.
“I’m cold,” she said.
Slowly, very slowly, she saw his head come around the corner and look into the shelter. “Is that an invitation?”
He regarded her for a long moment, and she had a feeling there was another question he was asking.
She nodded very slowly.
He nodded back.
Then he disappeared again, and a moment later, he was crawling into the lean-to alongside her, his own blanket around his shoulders.
“Turn over,” he said.
His breath mingled with hers, and her lungs almost gave out.
