Closer To The Sun [Poly] [Bi]

16 - Rory

Q.O.T.D – Beaches, mountains, or lakes?

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🏔️ . 🌼 . 🏔️

They were set to leave early the next morning, and Rory had offered to let the entire group stay the night at Sundown Ranch.

It had been three days since their meeting at the bus station, and Shea and Rory had spent the previous days planning the trip over text: sending maps and equipment lists back and forth, squabbling over meal preparation, checking and re-checking weather reports. It was clear they both lived for this sort of thing – that the planning was half the fun.

Ever since the trip had started coming together, there had been a constant electricity tingling in Rory's chest. It was the feeling he got when he looked at pictures of faraway places  – distant mountain ranges covered in tropical vegetation, deep pools of turquoise water, melancholy valleys swathed in mist. But this time, where they hoped to go, he had no idea what to expect. Which only made the yearning worse.

So many times, he'd burned to ask Nora about the world beyond the woods, what it looked like, felt like, smelled like, where she thought it was, really was... but when her mother passed, he packed those questions away into a deep, dark box. Now, it felt like the lid was about to blow off.

Nora and Rory stood in the living room of Sundown Ranch, pushing aside furniture to make room for rows of sleeping bags. Grandma Spiers had been helping them at one point, but she had gotten distracted and was now upstairs rearranging Grandma Buchanan's bedroom, who never minded anyone moving her things.

"How many people are staying here tonight?" Nora asked, shoving Grandpa Spiers' heavy leather armchair into a corner. The living room had all of its couches pushed up against the wall, exposing the plush rug beneath. Its fibers were mussed and littered with detritus from Grandma Spiers' arts and crafts: multicolored plasticky glitter, woolen knitting fibers, long-lost puzzle pieces.

"How many. Uh," Rory counted on his fingers. "There's Shea, the grumpy one, the goofy one, the one in the fountain..."

"The one in the what?"

"I think three or four," Rory concluded, clapping purple plastic sequins off of his hands. "Help me move the dining room table?"

The main floor of Sundown Ranch was arranged like a donut, with the stairwell in the center. Living room connected to dining room connected to kitchen connected to living room, serving an uninterrupted carousel of grandparents. Only, the dining room table was still wedged in the arched doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, its legs uselessly suspended in the air.

"Are you sure we can fit everyone?" Nora asked, leaning all of her weight into the table. "That's a lot of teenagers, and we already have four grandparents."

"Slumber party," Rory said, winking. "Wow, uh, it's pretty stuck, isn't it?"

They let go of the table and caught their breath.

"Eh," Nora said, panting from the effort. "It's already kind of out of the way."

"Good enough," Rory agreed. He pushed the fat blue overnight pack – his old one, which he'd packed for Nora – beneath the table wedged in the doorway.

Nora didn't seem to share any of Rory's excitement. She eyed the backpack trepidatiously, as if it might bite her. Rory had equipped her with some of his old hiking gear and helped her select clothes from her closet that would be appropriate for their excursion. He could tell she was skittish. Rory had left her out of the planning as much as possible, partially because she didn't seem interested, but partially because he was still worried she might back out.