And the darkness felt thick in Dwindle. The sun took care to burn away the mist, but it always came back at night. My windows would fog up, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something pressed against the glass, desperate to come in. Hesper assured me that Edge would alert her should anythingbein the shadows. My magic churned in my chest each evening, the sensation somewhere in between heartburn and heart nausea. But when the sun rose, the feeling would dissipate, and I began to believe I must be making more of the mist than I should.
And to be honest, the feeling of impending doom was not why I was up at all hours of the night.
It was Hesper.Of courseit was Hesper.
We spent every day together, and as much as I tried to fight my heart every day from growing toward her, I was losing miserably. I couldn’t even build a brittle fence around the thing anymore. But we had already discussed what would happen next. She had to return, and I… well, I would go home.
Still, I couldn’t stop dreaming of her. I would do anything to taste her body like she’d tasted mine. But instead of throwing my wits to the wind and knocking on her door in themiddle of the night, inquiring something along the lines of “Art thou awake?” I opted for the natural next best thing.
One million middle-of-the-night projects.
I purchased robin’s-egg-blue paint and painted the day and night into the floorboards. For then, in this cottage at least, the sun could be by her moon always. From there, I moved on to painting the kitchen cabinets butter yellow, and then I took to the cottage walls themselves. Each beam had simple floral designs now running across it. Bundles of lavender, bunches of tulips, a few roses. Everywhere a person looked, there was a small nook of whimsy hidden away. The hearth was entirely pink now, with small sprigs of hyacinths painted here and there. And suns and moons, of course. Because Hesper haunted my every waking thought.
No matter how much I painted her moonbeam soul, she never left my system.
I didn’t dare try to write. Hesper would be every line, every word, every stroke of my quill, every place I touched myself at night as I thought of her.
So, naturally, I tried toscrubthe thought of her out instead. Babette offered some cleaning supplies—lemons, sugar, and a soapy mixture to dissolve the stickiness of the sugar but keep the sweet scent. When I asked her if she had anything other than lemons, she looked at me in surprise. I couldn’t tell her that I needed another scent because Hesper smelled like lemons and spice, and if my cottage smelled like her than how would I ever escape the need for her?
I took the lemons.
Now, my cottage was covered in fractals of Hesper moons and her scent. A daily torture.
With each project came a lovely little chestnut from Hesper, like:
“Clara, it smells great in here!” She smiled, sniffing happily at the air.
“You illustrated Edge and Warty going on adventures on the hearth? Fantastic!”
“Oh my Goddess, I LOVE THE COLOR OF THE CABINETS!” she genuinely screamed.
And I love—
Don’t! Don’t you dare!I yelled at my heart.
“Do you?” I asked with a sardonic smile. “Well, isn’t that just great?” Then I broke whatever I was holding in my hand like an uncontrollable monster.
DWINDLE’SFARMERSMARKET
RETURNSINTWENTY FOURTEENNINE DAYS
I was quickly spiraling into an abyss of emotions. Canonically, this was not a good thing for me.
I wasn’t anxious. I wasn’t despondent. I wasn’t hopeless.
I was insomethingwith Hesper and didn’t know what was to be done about it. Because every morning when she woke me to train, she made me coffee just the way I liked it. Then, she would go into town and fetch me pastries before spending her entire day instructing me on magic that she’d told me I had all along, and I’d fought her tooth and nail until the last possible second. She remained steadfastly jovial and unendinglykind, and—most disconcertingly—I was starting to memorize her smiles.
There was the smile she wore first thing in the morning, when sleep still clung to her.
There was the side-tug smile when I exasperated her.
There was the wide-mouthed smile when she ate something particularly delicious.
And then, there was the smile that sometimes played on her face when I caught her looking at me. It was those smiles that made my heart wonder…What if?
I’d never dealt inwhat ifs. Those were for people who were braver than me.What ifs meant good things could come, sure. But the flip side of awhat ifwas usually painful. I liked to live inI know.
With Hesper, though, thewhat ifwas harder to run away from.
