laney.

The night is thick with heat and hush, with summer dark that presses against his skin heavily, a coat he can't shrug off. Crickets sing somewhere out in the hollows, and the distant rustle of crispy, browning grass carries the old hymn of the land, the melody soft and endless.

And Azariah stands just outside the old mill.

A single suitcase rests by his feet, scuffed at the corners, overfilled and trembling at the latch. Inside it is barely anything: some shirts, a silver cross, a photograph from childhood, a book of sermons he marked and wept over before leaving behind his collar. The rest of what he carries is tucked inside him. The years. The ache. The decision.

He’s left a letter on his pillow. It wasn't long. Nor cruel. Just... enough to let them all know he’s gone by choice.

The moon hangs low over the tree line, sallow and watchful, her eye gleaming down at him with the weight of every action she's ever seen him do. Everything around him feels like it’s holding its breath, like the whole damn county knows something is ending. Or beginning.

He presses a hand to the wood of the mill door to steady himself, and when he breathes in, his heart is a fist. In his throat, a prayer is strangled back into a cough that he hides in his arm. And Missy, God, Missy, her name rings through him like a bell struck from bone. He has sworn himself to her, reverent, devoted with undeserving hands that held her face after all those years. He beheld her, right here, fingers trembling with the holy of it.

Alaina will be here soon. He can already feel her near, spectral and sure, the only soul besides Missy who has ever truly known him. The three of them, pulled toward something none of them thought existed for the likes of them. Something none of them thought they'd ever reach.

Taxidermy, with clown paint gracing its features. It stands in a pose, furry arms extended upward, sticking the landing of an acrobatic trick. The rest of the troupe sits in a box instead of their usual perch on her mantlepiece, her belongings pre-packed to make it easier for her father. No, it's not an essential in her already filled-to-the-brim suitcase, but it's...sentimental. A memory of a circus that rolled into Grampleton when she was a little girl, where she swore she saw people with pumpkins for heads bumbling around. More importantly, it's her first memory, wonder and adventure that she thought she would never experience again.

And, for the first time in who knows how many years, that feeling tickles at her skin. She can only hope her father understands. The letter she left for him explains it all, possibly far longer than it needed to be. But...she couldn't just leave him. That's what her mother had done. He had to understand why, had to understand that once she's where she needs to be, he'll know. She'll call, they'll talk every day if he wishes.

That suitcase packed with that little mouse bumps against her thigh with each hurried step, her fingers gripping the handle until her knuckles are bone-white. A gold band, a small, modest diamond inlaid in the center, on her left ring finger glints in the moonlight. It's a beacon, guiding her to her future.

The light reflects up to the mill as she approaches, clear on Azariah's chest. It's quick, the way her arms wrap around her; the roots that trap her to Bleeding Hearts Springs loosen, and start to form around him. "I'm here," she breathes out, as if she had been holding it for all too long. And, perhaps she has been, waiting for this exact moment to finally be able to be with Azariah. But, they're not ready yet. Not until Laney is with them.

She can't leave until the rest of her heart is with them.

Slowly, Missy unfurls herself from Azariah, keeping her free hand curled against his bicep. Solid and warm. Her gaze drifts towards the far away tree line, the moon watching the pair with her all knowing eyes. But, she's not watching back. No, she's simply waiting.

"She's coming."

And, it's said with love.

We’ll be back, scrawled on the opposite side.

“Fuck,” she curses under her breath as she trips over a root, stumbling a step or two like she isn’t treading the very earth she knows better than her own palms. It all feels foreign to her in a calming and worrying way, all-encompassing and hungry.

Her eyes are stinging and her cheeks are wet by the time the Mill rears its head. That damned mill, she thinks, blowing shaky air from her lips. Inside the sack slung around her shoulder, a comb clinks against a glass bottle – filled halfway with Healing Hive Tea Time Honey. A kind reminder that not everything Laney loves has to slip through her grasp.

Like this.

She sees them both at once, together in the way they should be. For some reason, the tears come even quicker as she lays eyes on them. Her guiding stars.

It doesn’t take long for her to cross to the pair and wrap an arm around each of them, Missy first, draped across her shoulders, and then Aza, curled around his back. Some, upon seeing the sight, might’ve left the couple to their devices, but not Laney. She’s holding onto the best parts of her, personified into two magnificent beings.

After a moment, she pulls back just enough to look between the two of them, streaks already beginning to dry on her patchy cheeks. “I won’t stay longer than I’m welcome,” she says with a shake of her head. She never has. And maybe they’ll end up in different places, eventually, but for now – for now they’re bound together, the three of them.

Truth is, even with the size of town and all the opportunities to reconnect, they never knew what to say. When love is fractured, it doesn't just disappear. You're forced to hold onto it, even when you no longer have someone to funnel it into. They've carried it with them for so long now that it feels silly, unable to even place when it stopped feeling like the weight of the world and more like something small— a cool rock, or a locket without a chain. Something they maybe should've gotten rid of by now, but it looks pretty cute on the shelf. A reminder of another time, vastly separate but equally complicated.

"I think I am, too." It had actually been a long morning; Ken had gone over to the house early with the intention of helping out with booth transport and setup, but Dad and Shan had already set off to take care of the hard part. So they'd arrived only to be faced with Mom's usual last-minute, caffeine-fueled chaos, Josie damn near having a panic attack over her outfit ("you sure this doesn't look stupid?" about 45 consecutive times), and Laurie's typical inertia, as infuriating as it is enviable.

Her eyes catch quick glances at their hands, noting how they’re shuffling for a place to put them, fumbling for non-existent pockets. Fleetingly, she hopes she’s not making them uncomfortable – the last thing she’d ever want to do is be an intruder to Ken. No, she decides. They’re just adjusting to each other again, like jumping in a cold pool.

Maybe that’s what love does: leaves the door unlocked for a lifetime, even if not opened.

Gut feeling, they say, and Laney’s smile flickers just a hint, like candlelight in a dark room. Truth is, she knows exactly what’s coming for Ken – or rather, she knows what the outcome will be. Sooner or later, they’ll be happy. Even happier than the two of them were together, huddled under quilts and sleeping bags.

She’s had that feeling too, and not just for them. For her. In a different way, but still strong and thrumming under her skin.

“I don’t think it’s the festival,” she says, voice holding just a hint of amusement threatening to bubble over. Her eyes flick back to theirs, meeting for a few solid breaths. Something twinges in her back briefly, knocking the warmth out of her. Her gaze holds onto Ken’s, a look saying I feel it too, but it’s not because of me.

This one’s all you.

“It’ll be a summer to remember,” she confirms with a soft nod, eyes still studying them, like she’s trying to memorize each and every sunkissed freckle on their face. As if she hasn’t done it a thousand times before, years ago. And why does she feel as though she should reach out, as though this will be the last time they’ll speak like this? It’s not – she knows that. But maybe it is, for awhile. Maybe that’s okay.

His cowardice shrinks beneath her gaze, trembling in the dark hollows of his chest. Afraid of being dragged out into the daylight. Afraid of being named.

His cheek still stung where Missy had struck him. A love tap, if it could be called that, not out of malice, but grief. It rang louder than any sermon, rattled loose the last rotten tooth of his denial. Woke him from a decade-long stupor, where duty was easier to shoulder than desire. Where he’d let everything good slip through his fingers and shatter on the floor.

“What happens after?”

He doesn't lift his eyes to the sky. Doesn’t look toward the trees or the old chapel cross rusting in the distance. The question isn't for God. Not anymore. He watches her instead, because she’s real. And right now, that’s holier than anything he’s ever prayed to.

The wind curls around them, listening, tugging at his collar, lifting the sweat from the hollow of his throat. Still, he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. Just breathes through the ache in his chest and the way the silence seems to creak louder than his voice ever could.

“I keep thinkin’..." he starts, hesitant, afraid to show his fear, afraid to show just how afraid he was. "...if I touch her again, the world’s gonna split wide open.” His shoulders dip, a slow curl forward, the weight of his burden finally pulling him deeper into dirt, forehead bowing to the ground between them. Confession doesn’t come easy, but it spills out like blood all the same.

“I’ll get greedy,” he says, a whisper raw and wrought with a terrifying honesty. “Won’t stop at her hand. I’ll want her laugh next. Then her hands. Her mornings. Her name, like it belongs in my mouth again. Like I didn’t already ruin it.”

The air around them holds still, thick as honey, and he draws in a breath like it might be his last clean one. His grip tightens. Desperate. Not just to hold her hand, but to anchor himself. To not disappear into the hollow he's dug with his own devotion.

He’s so terrified that it almost starts to seep into her, too. Ice cold, shrinking under her gaze, confessing to a woman with nothing to give him except her ears and words. What happens after? he asks, and to Laney, the question is an underhand toss.

“It shifts you,” she says, feeling their wrists, thumbs, palms pulsing against each other. Maybe they’ll sync up eventually; they always seem to. She’s silent for a long moment when he speaks next, a thick exhale leaving her as his head kisses the dirt. It’s holding him, and she’s holding him, and she reaches out a slender hand to rest atop his dark hair. Her fingers barely brush his scalp, a ghost of touch. Still, it’s enough to say I’m here. I’m here, and you’re touching me, and you care for me, and I’m here.

For far too long Laney lived in fear of ruining everything she touched. She sees it reflected in his eyes now, irises shaded deep by the early morning darkness. Passion doesn’t destroy, she wants to say. But she doesn’t say anything. Just squeezes tighter, breathes with him.

The wind catches her hair, sending goosebumps scattering up her neck. A sudden rush of cold isn’t enough to fend off the heat she feels down her spine, in the palm of her hand, still pressed right to Aza’s.

“I won’t let you,” she speaks finally, hand moving from his hair to his shoulder. It rests there gently, fingers pressed against the fabric of his shirt. Laney knows greed – it’s something she can spot a mile away. And Azariah isn’t greedy. He’s desperate.

Desperation, she would say, is just a reflection of love.

“You know I won’t let you be greedy,” she whispers again, thumb rubbing back and forth, back and forth across his hand. Lord, these two hang the stars in Laney’s sky – and she’s been waiting by the kindling all these years, waiting for the fire to reignite. “If it all goes to hell, I’ll have you preach out here, to a new congregation. To me.”

If only they could turn back time a few years, maybe their hearts wouldn’t be so battered. Maybe they would’ve saved a few souls from becoming ghosts. For once, she wishes she knew what was coming – or at least, the fallout. To be able to cradle them both with the steadiness of certainty.

“Oh, sorry! It's not broken, is it?” they ask as the woman bends over to grab it.

As she straightens, Arden's finally able to get an actual look at the person they ran into, and she does look familiar– likely a local. They don't immediately recall her, though. “I'm okay,” they wave her off, “are you, though?” Then, sheepish, “Sorry, I should've been paying more attention.”

"I'm okay." There's a genuine warm smile on her face as she looks at them – partially due to where (or rather, who) she's coming from. Her eyes watch them just a bit longer before her pupils dilate ever so slightly.

"How long have you been back?" she asks suddenly, tilting her head to study her. There's that peculiar fuzzy warmth surrounding them, the one that means they're from Laney's childhood. She's a few years older than her, she thinks – but surely Laney would've run into her more often had she not left town for a bit.

No one deserves to be talked about like that. Especially not Laney. She's dealing with enough. When her father went missing, she felt a silent kinship with her. They both know loss, know what it's like to have to venture into the unknown.

Because when you lose a loved one, you lose a part of yourself, too. You're a little lost, for a while. Which is why Teagan checked on her after that, and now that she thinks about it, she's sure Laney is trying ro do the same in return.

"Do I drink it before bed?" She inquires, softly. "I suppose you don't have to be sleeping badly to want better sleep. Everyone wants the best sleep." A smile creeps Teagan's cheeks up, body relaxing. She's no longer on the defense, the tension in her shoulders easing further at the compliment to her flowers.

"Oh, thank you." Teagan knows that it's true; that the way she talks and sings to her flowers gives them that extra push in their bloom. She smiles fondly at them, shaking her head before turning back to Laney. For a moment, she thinks she's asking to carry the weight of her burdens, but quickly surmises she's being more literal than that. "

No, don't worry. I'll have one of the kids take it. They like going to the fridge anyway." Her hands wave for Laney to follow, and Teagan opens the front door for her company. "Let's have some tea since you came all this way. We'll..." She relents, for the first time since her family lost so many people. Teagan can't talk about what she feels to people who are feeling the same, and if she can offer some sort of respite in her release, all the better. "We'll carry a different kind of load together." A pause, "If that's all right by you."

She nods at Teagan's answer and steps aside to let her pass. Trailing behind the woman for a few steps, she pauses just past the doorway. The house's energy is warm, and makes Laney's shoulders roll back slowly in relaxation.

"It is," she confirms with a nod, hands clasped in front of her. She can't remember a time she was ever in this home before – if she was, it was fleeting, long ago, when they were younger. Her eyes meet the woman's for a long moment, dark into light, and the slightest of smiles threatens her lips.

"I never thanked you," she says, taking a few more steps to join Teagan inside. In a split second, she decides she won't stay long; she can practically feel the business of the season weighing down the air. She would hate to intrude, but she does have to say something to her.

"For the flowers. I saw the arrangements outside at the vigil." It had been an evening affair, townsfolk gathered around the Inn with their candles and their prayers after a long day of searching. Aza even said a few words, and Missy stood just next to her the entire time, her steady rock. She had insisted he would return, and he still hasn't.

“Do my eyes deceive me, or is that Alaina Birchwood in the flesh?” Mom says, and Ken is rubbing the back of their neck, trying their best not to fully turn away as their cheeks start simmering. “It’s so good to see you! Honey, why don’t you take a break?” She says, giving Ken a gentle nudge in the ribs as another customer approaches behind Laney. What Mom lacks in subtlety, at least she makes up for with reading the room. Or, in this case, the square.

Ken slips out of the booth, their steps slowing the closer they get to her, suddenly feeling like a kid in this stupid bee costume they wear every year. They hold out the jar, tension deflating from their shoulders. “On the house.” They tilt their head. Follow me.

Years gone by, and the two of them are still as telepathic as ever. If you spend so much of a short amount of time with anyone, it gets hard to unstick your brains from one another. Laney is as nostalgic of a comfort as the smell of the Summer rain, sure to be looming in the distance soon enough.

There’s no time to remember, because Jane Sutton is speaking her name; she’s saying that it’s good to see her. Pride inflates her shoulders for a breath before she relaxes, steady. “Nice to see you, Missus Sutton. I don’t mean to interrupt,” she replies, feeling Ken slip from the booth and up next to her, offering a jar of the stuff to her.

She takes it in both hands, a smile curling at the corners of her lips. “Next one’s mine,” she says – an old line they’d throw back and forth at each other, back when they knew each other a bit better. It was always coupled with Laney’s hands accepting a sweatshirt, Ken’s fingers narrowly missing the check at Granny’s, either of them landing a surprise gesture of kindness on the other. Of love.

It doesn’t hurt so much to think of that word now.

With a wave over her shoulder to Jane, Laney follows after Ken, sneaking behind them in a half-rusty manner. Like riding a bike.

You look happy. Her nose crinkles just a tad, eyes washing over Ken’s face and down to their feet. “I think you’re right,” she answers with a little shrug. She doesn’t really think about whether or not she’s happy or not these days – much easier just to be.

“Now I am,” she says, lifting the little jar of honey in acknowledgment. “What about you, busy bee?” Her head cocks to the side slightly, turning so she can see back over their shoulders towards the heart of the festivities. There’s a teeny smile on her face as she looks back at them. For a moment, she hates that she knows this is a moment one of them would kiss the other, if they were still together. But she loves that she can be in this moment with them now, still wearing a smile.

Well, fuck the tape. Because now, there’s an achingly familiar voice peeping up behind them, and their red-rimmed eyes are finding her before their brain does. She’s standing there, floral and mousy and tall, playing the role of the customer, and everything seems so normal. And then, accompanying her presence like a slow wave, there’s all the weight behind it, pulling a smile to Ken’s face despite all the reasons it should be otherwise.

There’s a lingering conversation lost to the silence, too far gone by now and both of them know it, and neither of them know what to do now that they’ve been demoted back to strangers. They could never really be strangers, especially not in this town. Not with the way Ken’s parents still ask about her every so often, as if she’s still there just slightly out of reach at any moment. I don’t know would always be Ken’s typical response, chipped thumbnail between teeth.

Her eyes watch Ken, careful and caring, waiting for any sign of discomfort. They’ve barely even spoken a full sentence to each other, but she’d scatter like dust if she thought for a moment that they didn’t want to see her. She swallows, presses her lips together.

For once, Alaina Birchwood is scared. She’s always been honest, and more times than not, it’s pushed people away. When she met Ken, though? They liked her honesty – it brought them together. And in the end, after all was said and done, it drove them apart, too.

But not entirely. That much is clear as they hold the spoon out for her, offer up something she already knows she’ll love, even load the spoon up a little extra as they know she likes. Humming shortly, she reaches a hand out to grab the sample, fingers just briefly brushing against theirs. “Thank you,” she says, voice hushed.

As soon as the honey hits her tongue, her eyes glow in a way that can only be recognized by someone like Ken. Her father would scold her for staring, she knows it. But where else is she supposed to look, if not at someone her gaze lived comfortably with for so long? She pulls the spoon from her mouth, clean, and lets the honey begin to melt on her tongue. Delicious. But she doesn’t need to say it aloud.

Or, rather, they're simply comfortable in each other's presence enough to be quiet. Missy's been told once or twice by her mother before she packed her bags that she romanticized her friendship too much. She never minded much the negative connotation behind her mother's words -- who else was more deserving of her love than her dearest friend?

The acorn is placed back in her hand, gentle, with the same kindness in which Missy had placed it in her friend's. She wouldn't expect anything less from her. Her fingers curl around it, delicately, her eyes falling shut. "Anyone would have done it," she says simply, even if she knows it's not the case. An acorn is an acorn to most, but not to them. It belongs somewhere safe.

And, she hums a low note before her eyes slowly flutter open. Missy leans in just a touch closer to the tree, settling that acorn in a crevice formed between two raised roots. Dried leaves from the previous winter are all but natural confetti surrounding it, a little smile gracing her features. Pretty. A good spot for it rest.

That wall of dark hair covers her cheek as she turns her head to face Laney before she goes to push it behind her ear. "It could have been better," Missy replies, shrugging her shoulder. The night was restless, periodical cicadas taking over the graveyard underneath her window with their over powering hum. She spent the night leaning against her windowsill, cigarette in hand as she listened to their wailing. "But, I'll get a cup of coffee in me later."

“It’s like the lake,” she whispers, eyes still on the acorn. After a moment, her eyes meet Missy’s, not saying anything more, because she knows she doesn’t have to. Knows that she’s conjuring up the same memory, two lanky dark-haired girls knee deep in Swan Lake, returning stones washed too far from the water to their homes. She can still remember it as clear as yesterday, a head taller than Missy, damp locks sticking to the backs of their necks.

“There’s time still to rest,” she points out. The sun still hasn’t peeked above the horizon, and she could certainly steal an hour or so of shuteye before the world woke up. But Laney knows that when Missy is awake, she’s awake – knows from a quick glance that this is the kind of restless she has worn before.

She doesn’t press. Just lets Missy speak, and lets her words wash over her like wind. Even if there’s a sore spot beginning to form on the woman that Laney can see clear as day, she doesn’t touch it. Doesn’t even acknowledge it’s there, just hovers a warm hand over it. She’s got a couple of her own beginning to take shape, after all.

“Warm,” she corrects with the tiniest of smiles, perceptible only by the person sitting across from her. “Stayed at the Inn tonight.” It was something she hadn’t done in awhile – of course, she frequents the building to freshen up and attend family meals, but most nights are spent in the thick of the woods. Especially now that the spring is warming into summer.

But this time is different. This time he's scared. He doesn't want to know. He needs to know but the trouble is he already knows. He knows it deep in his bones and only refuses to acknowledge it. He doesn't want to know. He wishes himself back to when he didn't know. Ignorance is a bliss he misses.

Birds begin to wake. Their soft chirping sounds a signal that wakes up the rest of the world. Trees begin to rustle, leaves brought back to life from the heavy slumber of dawn as a gust of wind blows through them, Aeolus waking them up with their breath. The sky continues to lighten. The deeper parts turn grey, saturation sucked out of the air until it begins to glow, peaking over the far away tops of blue treetops, only a haze off in the distance. It's beautiful and he hates it.

"To meet nevermore," he mutters softly on the next exhale, then drops his head in his hands and crushes his lips together. "No," oxygen swells in his achingly alive lungs, "No, I don't. Not today." He's not ready for today. "Bring me back to yesterday," he sighs, fist against temple and then shakes it all away. "Phew. Ya almost had me," he waggles his finger at her like she's the culprit but it's not to her he's waggling this finger at, it's the world, she just happens to be in it. He claps his hands together and let's that be the end of it.

The birds are stirring, and Laney takes it as a sign to sit up, maneuvering until she's in a little crouch beside Mars. "I used to think the morning was mercy," she says, eyes cast up toward the early sunlight. "But it's not. It wouldn't wait for us even if we wanted it to." She doesn't say the last part she's thinking, because she knows he feels it, too; no matter how much. he said otherwise, the morning was coming. For both of them.

She rests her arms across her knees. There's no judgment in her eyes – there's not much of anything, really. Just something older, a deep kind of knowing that stretches your ribs and sharpens your breath.

Her gaze shifts a bit as she considers his request. Pancakes aren't out of the ordinary for her, though there have been few times where they weren't accompanied by a short and spunky brunette, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in a booth at Granny's, watching the people of the Springs pass in and out. She makes a mental note to seek Missy out later.

"Come on. Don't get me..." A voice interrupts her suddenly, and she yelps as she turns around to find the source. It's Laney. "Laney?" Teagan is still rubbing her eye idly, just about done getting that itch of pain. "H-Hi. You startled me."

Blinking a few times, she's relieved to find that she can see again. She grabs the crate and places it to the side for the moment, tugging off her work gloves and wiping her face with a clean section of her apron. Her brows raise curiously at the jar Laney is offering, a bit confused. Laney said it'd help her sleep, but how on earth did she know that Teagan is having trouble?

"I'm sorry, what?" Teagan closes the distance between the two and takes the jar, examining. It looks normal, nothing out of the ordinary, but this interaction is anything but. Right off the bat, too. "I appreciate the gift, but my sleep is just fine." She's lying, more for her sake than anything. Teagan's family can't afford for her to be anything other than okay.

"What makes you think I need help with sleep?" The bags under her eyes are enough evidence, though Teagan's been willfully oblivious to them.

“Cherry juice,” she repeats as she takes the jar from her hands. It hasn’t dawned on her until this very moment that the jar might seem suspicious – a small part of her considers taking a swig to prove its safety to Teagan. But she just looks at her with all the warmth she can muster, hoping the message comes across.

“I don’t,” she admits – it was more a gut feeling than an actual thought. But besides the slightly bloodshot look to her eyes, Teagan’s defensiveness gives her away easily. Laney won’t press her, though – she’s here to offer a gift, and maybe even a hand. “Everyone sleeps eventually, but not everyone rests.”

She doesn’t mind if Teagan lies to her, or even herself. But once upon a time, when Laney’s dad wandered off into the forest and never surfaced, the woman checked in on her. Even if she didn’t feel a pull, it would only be right to check on her in return.

“Those are beautiful.” Her eyes land on the basket of flowers, lips curling up ever so slightly. Another reason why Laney appreciates Teagan – she’s gentle, sweet towards living things. “You’re very kind to them, that’s why they grow like that,” she adds as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

The band on his finger, once a promise, now a weight, catches against her palm. Shifted one knuckle over, a habit he hasn’t been able to break. He wonders if she feels it. If she feels what it means — the burden of clinging to a thread frayed thin, one that shouldn't hold anymore but refuses to snap.

He wonders what she sees when she looks at him like this.

“I’m scared it’ll drop me,” he murmurs, the words thick in his throat, raw in the quiet. His thumbs move in slow, steady circles against her knuckles, grounding himself in the warmth of her skin, the way her hair stirs against a wind that isn’t there. His mind clings to restless, frantic prayers — protection from storms they can’t name, from the ache of loneliness, from being swallowed whole by a world that spins whether they hold on or not.

He swallows, his voice rough. “I’ve prayed on it. Sought counsel. Every time my father takes us outta the Springs, when he’s busy with… whatever it is, I find the nearest confessional and I sit there till my throat’s raw, beggin’ for somethin’. For peace, for a sign. For somethin’ holy enough to make it make sense.”

His eyes fall shut, cold fingers curling tighter around hers like a man trying to hold his own soul in place.

“And God help me, Laney,” he breathes, a tremor in the words, a shattered devotion, “I’d burn my hand on my own rosary if it meant I could be back at that Mill with her right now.”

Loneliness kisses Laney square on the lips each morning and night – when she sees a honeybee out in the wild, when she walks past the oil painting of her father framed in the inn, cracked and fading like a portrait of a war hero. Loneliness is kind to her. It’s a state of contentment. But she knows that unlike her, it has not been kind to Aza.

He’s scared. She would be, too, if she were him, but she isn’t. Laney knows a love that deep doesn’t await her in this lifetime, the same way she knows the sky is blue and the grass is green. Not something good or bad, just fact. He’s different than her, something that often makes him easy for her to read. Close enough to see the details, but not so close that she can’t see the whole picture.

“It won’t,” she answers him softly, staying still and steady. Laney doesn’t mind the loneliness. Because in this life, she’s more than happy to have Missy and Aza as her deepest connections. They’re here to see her, and she’s here to hear them. “I won’t let it.”

Her hand shifts just a bit to take his tighter, palms pressing together like an oath. There’s something holy about the way he’s so himself before her, dirt in his hair and eyes shut like a prayer. And then he proclaims one out loud, but the forest doesn’t hush. The birds chirp, leaves rustle, and it listens.

“You’re goin’ to see her again,” Laney says, and she’s not entirely sure if he’s already decided or if it’s just an inevitability, a gravitational pull. Maybe a bit of both. “You have to see her,” she whispers, not urging. Just reflecting.

He falls into his own thoughts while she turns her eyes to the sky. His eyes follow it but not to search for his own name, this he already knows. He searches for something else, someone else. He is in every star that winks back at him, in every deep darkness, in the moon and somewhere behind the clouds. Marsden is overwhelmed by the weight of it all that he misses her voice the first time. Turning heads meet each other halfway and his heart flips. "That's right." It should be alarming. A typical person would probably be amazed at the accuracy. Mars is not a common name. It's nothing like Ben or Charles or Mark or John, every other person in the world is named John, so much so that even the nameless dead are given the name John. Mars is not a name one would think of naturally. Clearly, she is not a typical person either.

Rationally there could be a reasonable explanation. There's only so many people in this sleepy town and he sticks out like a sore thumb wearing black eyeliner. But there's an atmosphere about her that tells him she isn't held to typical constraints of humanity. She sees more than that and there's possibility in that.

Mars startles a bit, though not terribly – she can practically hear his heart skip a beat. Understandable. His isn’t a name you stumble into; it’s sharp and particular and sticks in the roof of your mouth. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but Laney doesn’t believe in coincidence. She believes in weight and timing. In the strange, intricate math of the universe, where things don’t always make sense but always mean something. This, Mars, means something.

Then he speaks her name and she can tell he almost regrets it instantly. The way he pulls the words back clumsily, like trying to put spilled water back into a glass. She doesn’t interrupt the struggle. There’s a kind of reverence in letting someone flounder through their truth. His final question lands between them, a soft and easy offering.

What other people might call witchcraft, he’s come to understand as something closer to fluency. She speaks a language he was never taught but has spent his whole life trying to translate. Their friendship’s always lived in the in-between, the liminal, the spaces between sermons and gifts of jelly and rocks and leaves, where no one’s watching too close.

Azariah exhales, the sound low and quiet, and just looks at her for a long moment. Two. Three. The kind of look that settles in his bones, heavy and certain. Like she belongs to this place in a way he never could, and somehow, she lets him near anyway.

Then, without much ceremony, he drops onto his side, stretched out parallel to her in the cool hush of the forest floor. His spine makes a quiet, reluctant protest, but he stays put, feeling the dirt catch against his skin, the earth licking at the edges of propriety. He should be unnerved by it; bugs in the grass, dirt beneath his nails, skin against soil. But somehow, with her, it’s less a trespass and more a ritual. A necessary undoing.

A shiver crawls up his spine. Improper, his father’s voice might’ve said. But God made the dirt too, didn’t He?

He breathes in. He breathes out.

The silence sits thick around them, but it isn’t uncomfortable. Not with her. It never is.

"...I haven’t gone home yet," he murmurs, the words catching in his throat but making their way out. His eyes meet hers, glassy, tired, a little more bare than he meant them to be. Back when he thought he could bluff his way through this. As though she didn’t grow out of the same crooked branch he did. As though she hadn’t been reading him since they were kids, all those years of side-by-side church pews and school desks.

Lord, lend him the strength.

He shifts, leaning in closer, not enough to curl toward her, but enough that it’s deliberate. That it says I’m here. That it means something. There’s a stretch of quiet, and then he speaks, low, careful, the words heavy in his mouth.

"I was up at the Mill tonight," he admits. He watches her face in the dim light, the way it gives nothing and everything away all at once. The slope of her nose, the ghost of a smile that never quite settles, the wildness she carries in her bones like the forest carries its roots. He’s memorized every line of her face the same way you memorize the shape of your own hands.

His left. Her right.

"With Missy," he finishes, the words soft as a confession at an empty altar.

And maybe it is.

He feels the earth beneath him, the hush of the trees overhead, the pulse of something old moving between them. A leaf on a branch. A boy with his offerings.

A nightbird calls out from deeper in the trees, long and low, and she follows the sound with her eyes like it might mean something. Maybe it does. The forest and its creatures have always told her more than people think it can – more than most are willing to hear.

But Azariah is angled toward her, clothes kissing the dirt, and he’s listening. Not to anything special – just her. Both of their fathers would scrunch their noses up at the scene, but neither of them are here now. One isn’t even around at all. His confession hangs thick between them like smoke, lazily curling up above them to places they can’t quite reach.

Her fingers creep forward, not touching him, but just enough to make the space feel a bit fuller. Gently, her fingertips press against the edge of his sleeve, holding it against the cool earth.

She doesn't flinch, doesn't bat an eye. It’s nothing she didn’t see coming. Even years ago, when Aza’s shoulders sank a little more under the weight of what he wouldn’t say, and Missy’s laugh turned hollow at the edges. The thought sits delicate and warm in her mind; they’ve been orbiting each other for years, like stars passing in the night.

And Laney? She’s always been the one who sees.

A little beetle crawls by the edge of her pinkie, and she lets it. “Ever notice how the birds go real quiet just before the rain?” she whispers, so soft it almost disappears into the night. Her eyes move back to him, to his vulnerable frame on the forest floor. Raw and real.

“Not scared. Just waiting.” Her voice is calm and even, eyes unblinking. “That quiet’s not empty. It’s full of knowing.”

He doesn’t have to recount it word for word, or even give her an abridged version. Even if she didn’t know, she would know. At this point, it seems as though she could map him out with her eyes closed.

She looks past him now, at the dirt cradling him and her fingertips on top of the cloth of his shirt. “It’s holding you,” she whispers, and even she isn’t sure if she means the ground, that silent waiting she spoke of earlier, or her own mind.