"I need to do something." I announce this to Wolfe's back. He's at the counter, doing something with a knife and a piece of wood that I think might be whittling. "My brain is going to eat itself if I just sit here."
He doesn't turn around. "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know. Something useful. I feel like a lump."
"You're recovering from hypothermia."
"I recovered from hypothermia yesterday. Today I'm just bored."
He sets down the knife and turns to face me. Those gray eyes scan me like he's assessing a tactical situation.
"Can you stand?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"I don't know. A while? Why?"
He crosses to the fireplace and gestures at the stack of wood beside it. "This needs to be reorganized. Bigger logs on the bottom, kindling on top, arranged by size so I can grab what I need without looking."
I stare at the woodpile. "You want me to organize your wood?"
"You said you wanted something useful."
"I meant like... I don't know. Helping with lunch or folding laundry or something normal."
"Firewood is normal. It's also important. If the fire dies in the middle of the night and I have to waste time sorting through logs, we lose heat." He shrugs. "But if you'd rather just sit there."
He's challenging me. I can see it in the slight lift of his eyebrow, the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"Fine." I throw off the quilt and limp over to the woodpile. "I'll organize your firewood. But I'm doing it my way."
"There's a wrong way to stack wood?"
"There's a Sadie way to stack wood. It involves color coordination and aesthetic principles."
He makes that grunt-sound that I'm starting to realize is his version of a laugh. "I'll make lunch."
We work in parallel for the next hour. Me sorting logs by size and then rearranging them into what I consider a visuallypleasing gradient, him doing something with canned goods and dried herbs that smells incredible. The silence between us is comfortable. Easy. I don't feel the need to fill it with chatter, which is weird because I always feel that need.
"Done." I step back to admire my handiwork. The woodpile now flows from large dark logs at the bottom to pale kindling at the top, with the medium pieces arranged in a neat diagonal pattern in the middle. "It's a work of art."
Wolfe appears beside me, two steaming bowls in his hands. He studies the woodpile for a long moment.
"It's... different."
"It's beautiful. Admit it. You've never seen such an attractive woodpile in your life."
"I've never thought about whether a woodpile was attractive."
"That's because you have no appreciation for aesthetics." I take one of the bowls from him. Some kind of stew, thick with vegetables and meat. "But that's okay. I have enough appreciation for both of us."
We settle on the couch to eat. The stew is incredible, rich and warming, and I make a sound that's probably inappropriate.
"God, this is good. Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"Taught myself. MREs get old after a few years."
