Never After

Parish life reclaimed Thomas as though he had never been away and kept him too busy to see much of Micha, who lived in his house so quietly he might as well have been a ghost. Thomas almost suspected his guest was avoiding him, but that would be absurd.

What reason would he have to do that? And Micha had seemed to respond positively to Nettlefield, at least initially.

His face, turned to the star-filled sky, had been about as content as Thomas had ever seen it, and so beautiful, starkly silvered like some pagan etching, that Thomas had barely dared to gaze upon him.

It had been an experience unlike any Thomas had ever known, to stand in the darkness with a man like Micha and speak of the stars.