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If I put in the effort.
If I worked on it.
On me.
Maybe it was the relief brought on by a comfortable invitation to stay, or the blood loss, or the nearly hour-long self-care routine, or the calming sounds of forest life.
But I finally drifted off to sleep.
And for the first time since this whole nightmare of a situation started, I slept dreamlessly.
For, well, the very short time that I slept, anyway.
Ranger, it seemed, was not exaggerating about being up with the sun.
I barely felt like I got an hour or two before he was slamming around in the house, making me suddenly very aware of the fact that he must have been purposely quiet for my sake over the past several days.
I stayed wrapped up in the warmth of the covers as long as I dared before finally climbing out with no small grumble.
Ready to see what this forest life had to offer me.
Or so I thought.
FIVE
Ranger
She was afraid of chickens.
Fucking chickens.
I mean, to be fair, when she’d followed me to the coops, the rooster had torn out of his enclosure like a bat out of hell… and proceeded to chase a running, shrieking Meadow around the clearing while he pecked viciously at her ankles.
Took her about four laps before she realized I wasn’t about to save her, suddenly doubled back, then grabbed him around the back, pinning his wings to his sides, and giving him a solid talking to before – somewhat gently – throwing him over the paddock where he proceeded to shake his feathers and preen like she had deathly insulted him.
So when it was time to head into the hen house, her ankles nipped and a little bloodied, I guess I understood her hesitance, the way she ducked her body behind mine, only peering out from the side of my arm to listen to instructions while the hens clucked, eyeing her like yet another intruder who might reach their hands under their butts for the eggs.
“Oh, they’re pretty!” she declared as I started piling them all carefully into a basket. “I didn’t think they came in colors,” she added. “Aside from white and brown.”
“Different kinds of chickens produce different color eggs,” I explained. “White, brown, speckled, blue, even a little lavender,” I added, reaching for the last egg, a pale, barely-there purple color, holding it out to her.
“So, this is why you have the chickens? For the eggs? Do you…”
“Cull them?” I asked for her. “No. Not usually. Had a nasty ass other rooster that I culled a while back.”
“You mean they come nastier than that one?”
“Red is pretty tame, all things considered. He’ll get used to you eventually. But, no. I don’t eat the chickens. The eggs are great. And they also keep the bugs away. Once it gets going, I will let them graze in the garden. They’ll get rid of any possible pests. This’ll be your thing in the mornings. Collecting the eggs. I’ll deal with the messy work.”
“The, ah, mucking. That’s what its called, right?”
“No experience with animals, huh?”
“Well, no. I mean I had a dog until I was seven. And…”
“What kind?” I cut in.
“What?”
“What kind of dog?”
“A Shih Tzu.”
“That’s not a dog. It’s a purse gremlin,” I cut in, watching as her brows knitted for a second before a laugh bubbled up and burst out.
“Purse gremlin,” she repeated, smile stretched for one long, glorious moment, lighting up her quickly-healing face, before it fell. Like she suddenly; remembered she wasn’t supposed to be happy, amused.
And a shame, that.
But, I figured, that was normal.
Hell, it was still normal for me at times.
I don’t know if I could claim happy as something I knew. Contentment, sure. I was content here, peaceful, satisfied even. But happy wasn’t quite the right word.
Happy was a feeling I buried along with the old me.
And I was okay with that.
But, somehow, the idea of it not being a reality for Meadow’s future made a knot tie in my stomach. Women like her, they should be happy. The world should get a chance to see a smile like that one.
“I can do the collecting,” she said, making me realize I’d been staring down at her for God-knew how long. But it was long enough to make her shuffle her feet, look uncomfortable. “I can even, ah, make the eggs in the morning,” she volunteered.
“You cook?”
“I’m no Gordon Ramsay, but I can do the basics.”
“We do basics around here. You get breakfast. I’ll take dinner. We can alternate lunches if and when we have it.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“And you can collect the harvest from the greenhouse. Then the garden when it gets to that point.”
“What do you grow in the greenhouse?”
“Show you,” I offered, stopping off at the house to drop off the eggs then grab the makeshift shoes I had made for her – made from a deconstructed pair of my old beat-up boots, using the rubber sole and a long strip of the leather to create a makeshift sandal for her.
