“Now?”
I checked the position of the sun in the sky. The light was still good for at least an hour. “Now.”
Her boots were off before I finished the word.
Sammy
The water was chilly. The bright, clear, startling cold of water that had come down from a high ridge and had not yet had time to forget it. It hit me mid-chest, and I made a sound that was mostly a shriek, partly a laugh, and came out as something in between.
“Cold,” I reported.
“The melt,” Guruk said, wading in behind me with the composed expression of an orc who ran hotter than a human. The water reached his waist. “You adjust.”
“You adjust,” I muttered, and ducked under.
He was right, annoying. The shock of it settled into something bracing and then into something wonderful. It was a chill that made every nerve ending stand on end at once. I surfaced, pushed my hair off my face, and floated on my back, looking up at the falls.
From here, their crashing break was enormous. It filled everything, pressing into the spaces between thoughts, and making the usual low hum of worry go quiet. Just the falls, the cold water, the sky above, my orc, the florin, and me.
Berry had found a rock at the pool’s rim. It was the driest, most elevated rock, as far from the water as it was possible to get. They were watching us with an air of great dignity.
“Berry doesn't like swimming?” I called.
“Berry,” Guruk said, from somewhere to my left, “has opinions about wet fur.”
“Strong ones,” I agreed, watching the florin tuck their tails more firmly around themselves.
I righted myself and swam a slow circuit of the pool, taking in the basin walls, the purple moss that grew thick on the northern face, the way the falls’ spray created a constant drift of mist that caught the light in varying degrees, depending on where you stood.
Guruk was watching me from where he stood, water to his waist, arms crossed over his chest. He had that expression again, that deep observing of his that made me feel like the most known person in any world.
“What?” I said with a knowing grin.
“Nothing.” He held out a hand.
I swam to him and took it. He pulled me in until I could stand, chest-deep, looking up at him.
“Tell me about this place,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. “You’ve been here before.”
“Once.” Something moved in his face. A quiet shift, like light changing. “A long time ago.”
“You mentioned.” I waited.
He looked at the falls for a heartbeat. “I came in the third year on the farm. Everything was settled. The fields tilled, the animals settled, the house built.” He paused. “It was very quiet.”
I thought about what he had told me the night before, about the house and what it would sound like with people in it. I squeezed him. “Too quiet.”
“I did not know that yet.” The corner of his mouth moved, his right tusk rising. “I thought I was simply tired from the year’s work. I walked east because I needed, well, I’m not sure whatI needed. To be somewhere that was not my own four walls, I supposed” His body stilled. “I stayed two days.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.” He confirmed it without self-pity, which made it somehow more affecting. “I sat here and was present with the feeling, which is the orc way of handling things that do not have immediate answers.” A pause. “I did not find the answer. I went home. I farmed for three more years before you fell out of the sky.”
I laughed, which was probably not the intended response, but he smiled too.
“And now?” I said.
He cupped my face. The falls roared behind us, and the mist caught in my hair. “Now,” he said, “I know what the quiet meant. And it does not feel quiet anymore.”
