Harvest Moon: Kestrel Village

Chapter Four

Rainy

“Ma… Matilda!”

The man with jet-black hair shivered in the unrelenting spring rain. His shabby raincoat did little to protect him from the raindrops whizzing down on his body like transparent bullets from the sky. Squinting his eyes to get a better view of the little girl just ahead, Ed called out to her once more in between hollow, wheezing pants.

“Matilda, come back! Your mama’s gonna kill me if she finds out you’re in there,” Ed whined. 

But to no avail. The lavender-haired girl turned back to the leather-skinned man with a leering smirk and her hand resting upon the thick oak door. 

“Don’t tell her then, stupid,” she answered loftily. Ed groaned at the cheeky handful he was burdened to look after deep down in the goodness of his heart. Like a loyal mutt, he followed. Much to his chagrin, it was useless to argue with someone who had countless points above his own IQ. 

A hardy push was all that was needed to persuade the door to swing open with a groaning protest. Once Ed reluctantly entered after the little girl and shut the door with an icy hand, it muffled out much of the static noise caused by the continuous pounding rain. Swirls of grey dust nonchalantly floated in the old library’s atmosphere, oblivious to the two’s presence. The man wrinkled his nose at the smell of old yellowed paper as he shuffled after the flouncing genius. Each step was followed by a tiny ‘creak’, the floorboards awake from the visitors’ activities. It had been a while since the last time Matilda came here.

“How old do you think this place is? It’s, uh, safe to be here, right? Since Ben sorta fixed it up a couple weeks back,” Ed commented in a bit of awe. “Never knew the ol’ church had a library behind its back door.” The girl found an agreeable spot to sit on the floor and plucked out a book with a cover so covered with dust that you couldn’t tell what color the cover originally was.

Matilda silently rolled her eyes, replying with, “It’s safe enough… Ben doesn’t know how old it is for sure, but it’s definitely part of Kestrel’s history or something. That’s why he didn’t want to have it sitting here, crumbling away.”

“And why he doesn’t want anyone inside here either, messing with the history,” pointedly coughed Ed in a low voice.

“I’m always careful! And I didn’t ask you to follow me around either.”

“You think I’d just let a little kid wander around in an old building by herself? What if you get hurt?”

“I am not a little kid.”

“You’re ten.”

Ed shook out drops of precipitation. “What do I have to do? Drag you out of here myself?” He briefly imagined Matilda having a tantrum. An impossible reality.

“You could always kidnap me and put me into your child predator van. You look the part already,” Matilda coolly retaliated. She didn’t even look up from the book she was now carefully immersed in. Ed stamped his foot impatiently after flushing slightly at her sharp words.

“Don’t say things like that!”

“Don’t follow me around then.”

“Oh my « Harvest Goddess », why are you so-!” The abrupt stop in his speech was a cue for Matilda to glance upwards. His mouth was agape, his eyes were wide with terror, and he was as white as a sheet, staring at a spot just next to her. With a quick bird-like movement, she turned her head and gasped sharply.

A young boy about Matilda’s age sat cross-legged beside her, his eyes riveted at the page in the book in Matilda’s hands. He had a clean cut look about him, with his newsboy cap perched at just the right angle on his slightly tousled hair, his collared shirt crisp, and his narrow knickers ending just past his knees to reveal his socks. If it wasn’t for the fact that his entire figure was pearly white, he would have looked like quite the respectable young man to read an old book with.