Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Repairs in the Wasteland
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
A harsh wind buffeted him as he emerged from the hut, a squat, stone structure without windows. All around him the wasteland stretched, black rock in sharp ridges pocked with sulfurous pits that steamed and smoked, stretching into the distance, mile after desolate mile. The sun, barely risen, glowered red through the haze.
He set down a clanking leather satchel of tools and set off across the rocks with a pair of old wooden buckets. These he carried across the wasteland for most of an hour to a pit where he filled both with steaming tar. Then he carried them laboriously back to the hut.
At the hut he used worn tools to scrape out sections of the walls that were crumbling and refill them with carefully-fitted stones chipped from a nearby outcropping. Wth brushes long congealed stiff, he plastered tar over new stonework and cracks. He worked methodically, scrutinizing every square inch.
The work went slowly. Twice more he trekked out to the tar pit and hauled back his buckets, heavy and steaming. By the time he was finished, the sun was beginning to set. He was exhausted, dusty, aching with cold, and smeared all over with tar, but the hut was as perfect as he could make it and wouldn’t need his attention again for a month or so. Gratefully, he gathered his tools, lifted his buckets, pried open the door, and ducked back inside.
The interior was larger. A startled shriek of “Daddy!” frightened gem-colored birds out of the bushes. His wife and three children ran to him along the riverbank, made colorful by the purple and orange and golden sunset over the distant hills. The children had been picking fruit, and from over a fire nearby he smelled some kind of forest bird roasting.
His daughter and young sons threw their arms around him when they reached him, ignoring his commands not to get themselves dirty. His wife leaned over them and kissed him on the lips. “How is it?” she said.
“Still pretty solid,” he murmured to her. “It will last for some time yet, I think.” Then he reached down to hug the children, but they were already chasing each other through the trees in some new game.
When Love Goes Wrong
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
“There you are,” Nessa said when Guy walked into the apartment. “I was worried you’d have trouble finding it.” He took off the coat and looked around the place, his eyes skimming over some things, resting perplexedly on others. She hung his coat on the rack and wrapped her arms around him.
“Home,” he said tentatively. Then he kissed her behind the ear and buried his face in her hair. He breathed in deeply and said it again, with more confidence. “Home.”
She took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen, where she had set out scallops and other ingredients. He immediately began to cook, visibly brightening as he did so. There had been very few of Guy who didn’t love to cook. “Is it much different in this universe than the one you’re from?” she said.
He made a face. “Let’s not compare notes again. We always do that. Some things are the same, some things are different. Although I think the government’s better in this one than in mine. It got very dark there by the time I started traveling.”
Despite what he’d said, this launched them into a conversation that carried them all through cooking, dinner, and cleanup, right onto the couch after dinner, where they sat drinking little glasses of sherry, a taste she had developed specifically because it wasn’t natural to her. Guy always seemed to enjoy when she was a little different. She leaned back against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her.
“I love the beginning,” she said.
“As if we ever have anything else,” Guy said, smiling.
“I’ll miss you when you go on to the next me, though.”
“Me too.”
They sipped sherry.
“I hope I never see the first you again, though,” she said. “Three years with that bastard …”
“I know. The first you was awful after a year or so.”
“Somewhere, I bet he’s saying that about me,” Nessa pointed out.
Guy nodded, but neither of them was really unhappy about it. When you love someone, they both felt, you find a way to stay together regardless.