H
ere they are: Michael holds out the basket and Moira takes it and it feels strangely final, like something in a machine that clunks unexpectedly into place. She pulls it close to her chest so that it hangs at an angle. Michael smiles at her like it is easy, like he is not all broken glass. Like he has missed her his whole five hundred years of life and just now realized it.It has not even been long since he's seen her. Since he returned Michael spends much of his time trailing Moira, following her to this shop or that, to buy pigment or a new brush or fine fabric. Michael will always ask how she is, and if she's eaten, and Michael will always brush the hair away from her face and touch her cheek with his muzzle and feel more real and present than he has ever quite managed before.
Michael does not say much, but he says enough, and he's there, which is more than he can say for most people. And so, for most of fall, Moira becomes his small little world-- as if she were not, already.
--Which brings us back to the orchard, to the baskets, to the red and gold of their skin and the blush that rises to his cheeks when and nods and walks his way. He thinks he will never tire of seeing her for the first time in a day. He holds his breath for a second, then turns to walk into the trees.
"How have you been?" he asks, "You look well."
And for now that is all. Michael lapses into a surprisingly comfortable silence, during which he is trying to remember how to breathe without gasping, or laughing, or some awful combination of the two, pulling a branch down to pluck a fat, golden apple from the first tree. He follows it with another, then another, then turns back to Moira.
She is much the same as he always remembers her, bright against the gray-green of the swamp, the same color of the next apple he pulls, so gold it's almost orange and so red that in places it looks almost plum-colored. He smiles to himself and hopes she doesn't see.
"What are you going to do with yours?" he asks after a pause, "I'm partial to apples themselves, if I'm honest."
I am soft again.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.
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