Snow ✓

Summer's End

Summer came and went, a rotating wheel of routine; they sparred, climbed trees, raced across the open field of golden grass tall enough to tickle the girl's armpits, worked in the gardens, and instigated the occasional food fight until Gran rushed outside with a head slap for Mat and a lecture for them both.

Mat improved at holding his own with a stick, but the girl still outmatched him almost every time.

He browned in the sun. She kept her alabaster hue.

In the evenings, they waited for the stars to drip into the sky by catching fireflies.

At summer's close, it was on one such evening of catching the stragglers that the girl spotted deer grazing on the hill. She tugged on Mat's sleeve and pointed. A doe, maybe, with two others that were smaller but had long shed their spots.

Mat was debating running to the shed for his bow when the girl said she had never seen a deer.

The fireflies forgotten, they leaned on the fence, watching the deer graze, their silhouettes greying with the setting sun.

The girl sharply inclined her head to the swath of sky beyond the cottage. A question died in his throat as a charge filled the air. The deer raised their heads at the buzzing, then bolted as the airship ascended above the Burnt Forest.

"How does it fly?" the girl asked in her fashion of asking peculiar questions.

"Solar energy?" he said, thinking he had heard that somewhere.

The girl sniffled as it passed overhead, wiping her nose more than once, leaving Mat to marvel at what he was starting to think was no coincidence.

"How do you feel when the airship passes over?"

"Like my head is full of bees."

Just as it crested the hill, something fell from the ship.

The girl stood up rigid.

It plummeted to the ground.

"What was that?" she asked, looking to Mat whose skin was starting to pimple, and it had nothing to do with the balmy night air.

He didn't know what to say.

Her disappointment evident, she turned away, grabbed the fence, catapulted herself over the top rung and took off toward the increasingly small wart on the darkling sky.

Dumbstruck, Mat stood there, watching the distance between them grow before he smartened and tore after her in pursuit.

"Wait. Stop!"

He knew from their summer games the girl was a quick sprinter, but his legs were longer. He grabbed her arm as she reached the hill and she yelped as they both went down.

"Something fell," she said, trying to pull away from him. "Something fell from the ship."

"It could be anything," he panted. "Debris. Trash. That's no reason to run after it."

He felt the reflexive urge to look away as she searched his face.

"Debris is no reason to run after me."

"You were about to run up the hill! Someone could see. We shouldn't have come this far."

"See me, you mean," she said testily.

"Yeah," he said, the duh in his tone.

"You said no one knows who's on that ship. It could be a clue. Aren't you curious?"