She snuggled into his side, hugging her knees with her arms. He liked the feeling of her weight leaning against him.
“What shall we dream about?” he asked.
“Just for a moment,” she said, speaking slowly, almost shyly, “let us dream about what might have been.”
“What might have been?” His mind seemed to have stopped working. All he could do was repeat her own words.
“Are you asking what it means, or are you asking what really might have been between us?”
“I know what it means,” he replied, his voice so deep that it was barely more than a rumble. “Tell me what might have been for you?”
“Invigorating conversations,” she responded, her face looking up toward the stars. “Challenging opinions. A shared love of books.”
He hugged her tighter. Those were things he would have appreciated as well. “In a different world, could you... would you have loved me as I was?”
“No.” Her immediate and confident response cut him to the heart.
He stiffened. Perhaps he had read this evening all wrong.
“I didn’t know you as you were then, so how I could I love that person?” Her face had turned to him. “No, I cannot love who you were. I would have wanted to love the person that I know now.” She dropped her head to his shoulder. “What might have been for you?”
“I would have gotten lost every day in a pair of fiery eyes,” he said. “I would have enjoyed someone who constantly rose to the challenge of an energetic discussion. An opinion that was both lighter and more accepting of the world around her while at the same time demanding more.”
“How many petals are on the rose?” she asked, lifting her face once again and twisting to face him. “The real rose?”
“You knew?”
“The stem was too twisted, like our mountain roses. Why did you switch them?”
He looked down at her. “To make the sacrifice for you,” he whispered, “so that you did not have to bear it by yourself.”
“It was my decision to make,” she replied, her voice containing neither anger nor accusation.
“It is your decision, but I still have a strong opinion about it,” he replied.
“Is this what could have been?” she asked. “Differing opinions and moonlit nights?”
“I would have loved every second of it,” he responded.
“I don’t want to leave you tomorrow,” she said, a note of grief in her voice. She was speaking as though tomorrow were the past, as though she had already made the decision to leave.
“I don’t want you to go tomorrow.” He closed his eyes, inhaling her light scent of rosewater and leather and tree sap. “You smell like books and gum paste.”
“I do?” Her voice was concerned.
“It’s the most beautiful smell in the world,” he reassured her, holding her for a moment longer. “There is nothing left for you here. These dreams that we dreamed will never be. They will be gone with the morning light.”
“I know,” she whispered. Stretching her neck out, she placed a light kiss on his cheek.
His long whiskers tickled at the unexpected contact and his eyes watered.
He heard the tiniest sniffle catch her breath as she inhaled. And that one small sound was enough to unleash the tears in his own eyes.
They sat there together, holding each other in sorrow, watching their dreams dissipate as the morning light finally broke over the southern mountains.
Chapter 28
Isa’s head spun as she looked at the canyon below her. The builders had created a rope pulley fastened on either side, and they had constructed a kind of saddle-like harness to ferry across humans and supplies.
