Homesick

Nostalgia

Welcome to Starbucks, one angst venti, 3 shots of homesickness and a dash of lowkey cottage-core Alaska, indirect order for Kathyc94 ?

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Alaska isn't part of the lower 48 and he makes sure everyone knows it. He takes pride in it, I mean why wouldn't he?

He's his own thing, given space to himself by the buffer that is Canada.
He gets to be as free as he wants, have as little urbanization as he wants, leave as much land as he wants untouched, he's The Last Frontier and damnit if he doesn't do his best to live up to that title.

The others have their cities, highways, and cars. He has his towns, mountains, and float planes. It's nice, he likes it a lot.
Loves it, even.

When they move into the statehouse it's in the lower 48 because of course it is, where else would it be? and that's... fine. He understands, it's okay.

For the first 2 months that is.

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They moved into the house in October and it's December now, there should be snow, ice, and lights in the sky.

...Instead there are still leaves everywhere. To his disappointment the weather hasn't yet dropped past the 70s which is weird enough in and of itself but snow isn't even expected utill the last week of the month, maybe not even before January.

It's just so,,, different.

Usually it's him who would fall into that category but here in the garage of a big house in some random lower 48 state with wonky weather and not enough trees, where the sun doesn't even set at the right time... he feels oddly sad.

The warm weather is making him nostalgic over all the past summers.
How it would be just warm enough to not be uncomfortable, the sun heating your skin while the wind keeps you cool. There's a big, soft, mossy rock next to a brook in the woods near one of his houses. He could lounge in the patch of sunlight there for hours, listening to the water and the birds.

Conflicting with this, the lack of a real winter was making him miss the colder months.
He misses how stepping out into the cold could knock the air out of your lungs, the puff looking like you're breathing smoke. He misses the way light reflected off the snow and frost, little rainbows cast through the ice.
He misses falling asleep in front of the fireplace when it's too cold in the rest of the house to do so.

He misses a lot of things.

He feels like he could go on thinking about home forever, feelings churning with something he can't quite identify.

Thinking about home he feels like he could cry but he can't bring himself to stop thinking about it, remembering things that are familiar is comforting in a way, even if it's mixing with some sort of bitter-not-so-sweet that he can't actually be there right now. There's a few other things he doesn't have the energy to pick apart, some things he can't even recognize yet manage to make the pit in his stomach heavier anyways.

Instead, he grabs Ursa, his stuffed bear, and goes to sleep, hoping all of this will be gone by tomorrow.