66. The Kiss
The Kiss
Word about the Root Crawlers spread through the town.
About half the C-ranked warriors practically threw themselves at the dungeon in an effort to try their steel against it, and the other half turned and left the settlement where it was.
Maggarie did good business patching up the ones that stayed, but Kain knew that it wouldn't deter many people.
Sure, a few of them were getting beaten up, but all the warriors who had just left were going to tell the story of Tillamore throughout the land. A new type of monster, never seen before? It was only going to increase the number of people flooding through the settlement.
He helped out at the Kettle for the next few nights, but as they were given a momentary lull, Sasha encouraged him to spend time back at his own home.
Five days after the dungeon report came through, Kain sat down on his porch and groaned slightly as he relaxed.
Hoofbeats echoed in the evening air, and he sat up as Carol came riding up.
"Hey." She nodded. "Sasha said you were down this way. I'll go check on Roan, and then come up to the house."
Kain nodded. Carol had stopped pretending several weeks earlier that she was coming to the farm just to see Roan, but she still insisted on going to see the horse anyway.
"I'll see about making up some stew," Kain called out to her.
"Don't burn it."
Kain rose, then made his way into the house.
There, he lit a fire in the stove, filled a pot with water, and started cutting up some deer meat from a doe he had shot only a few days earlier.
He chunked it into the pot, added some potatoes and carrots, and then took down Darien's spice box.
After a moment of decision, he added a handful of different spices, a dash of salt, and sat back to wait.
It bubbled and boiled slowly, and as it finished up, Carol came up and inside. Kain took down two bowls and ladled out the soup, and they sat down.
"Is this your first stew you've ever made?" Carol asked.
"For company, yes," Kain nodded. He took up his spoon and took a sip of the broth.
It was. Bad.
He had eaten worse stews. On the road, you sometimes just had to make do with what you could gather, but this wasn't that.
It should have been properly seasoned. Instead, there was too much salt, and far too much pepper.
The other spices he had added were completely wiped out by it, and he choked slightly.
Carol didn't say a word, merely ate a chunk of potato, and nodded.
"Not bad."
As they started to eat, Carol lifted her head.
"So, I heard that there's a new type of root monster in the dungeon. Sam said that there's a cryptobotanist who's coming through in a few days to check it out."
"Yeah, that's what I hear, too," Kain said.
"It's strange. Root monsters." Carol shook her head.
"See, when I was a kid, those big, snarly root systems would always scare me.
They made it look like the tree was trying to bust up out of the ground, but of course they never actually did.
Strange to think there are some roots that actually can, now.
I'm never going to feel safe walking through the forest without a heavily-armed escort, now. "
"Then you'd best make sure I'm there." Kain met her eyes. She returned the look, and they continued to eat. They chatted about a handful of things as they devoured the stew, and the conversation overshadowed the mediocre taste of the dinner.
When they finished eating, Carol rose and did the dishes, while Kain went out on the porch and pulled out a chair. He set them up, then pushed them a little closer together. The air was chilly, just enough to make him pull on his cloak. A moment later, Carol came out, and they sat down.
For a long time, they just sat. The sun was setting, and the wind whistled softly through the trees. The last few cicadas of the year chirped loudly, then fell silent, then chirped again.
Ghost padded up onto the porch and lay down at their feet.
The silence was comfortable, the sort that didn't need filling.
Besides, Kain wasn't sure what he would say, anyway.
They had already discussed all the happenings in town.
They had already talked about their childhoods.
There wasn't much else to say. It was a quiet evening, and he was happy to share it with her.
Share it with her. Carol turned and looked at him.
She didn't say anything. Kain turned and looked at her.
She had the look she got when she'd decided a thing. The festival-table look. The first-year look. The look she had been giving him for a year and a piece, the one he had never once named.
She leaned in.
She kissed him.
It was simple.
It was warm.
It was a long time coming.
She pulled back and looked at him.
"I got tired of you missing all the times you should have done that."
Kain tried to find one.
He couldn't.
The morning at the cold frame, her hand on the other end of the saw. The day at the creek with the catfish bucket between them. The fence rail at her father's gate, the look she had held a beat too long. The basket on the post by the porch. The hand on his arm at the elbow after the toasts.
He went through them one at a time.
The one she meant wasn't on the list. The one she meant was the whole year, all of it at once.
He didn't say it. Anything he said was the wrong thing to say.
Carol took a deep breath and pointed up at the trees.
"Do you see many bats around here? I think I just saw one."
"All the time," Kain nodded.
"Strange. I don't see many of them up my way.
" Carol frowned. "You know, my dad once told me that bats were the souls of the people who hadn't helped their parents with chores when they were children.
That they grew up into horrible mean people, and that they now flew around the world in hideous forms, trying to tell other people not to make the same mistake. "
Kain shook his head. "Sounds persuasive."
"Oh, for six-year-old Carol, it was terrifying," Carol nodded. "That was when I started helping him take care of horses, actually."
They sat and talked an hour. They didn't kiss again. The kiss stayed where it had been put. It wasn't going to come up again that night. It was a thing now. Something started, and a thing once started didn't come undone.
When the evening finally became chilly enough that even a cloak wasn't quite comfortable, Carol stood up.
"I ought to be getting back to the farm.
Father will want to make sure I'm safe with all these warriors and adventurers about, and we have a big day tomorrow.
" She shrugged. "We have to sell our latest batch of piglets, and that's always a chore.
Father likes to start before daybreak. Says the little pigs are calmer if you can move them before sunrise. I think they're just harder to see."
"Have fun." Kain pushed up to his feet. "I'll be up at the Kettle most nights now. Any of those piglets give you trouble, bring it on over and we'll fry it into bacon."
"Only if you pay my father for it. But I suppose if one of them just gets away." Carol let the line trail.
She held his gaze a beat longer, then went down to the fence, swung up onto her horse, and rode away.
Kain watched her go, then went back into his house and brought Ghost's water bowl in from the porch, banked the fire, washed the cake plate, and washed the stew bowls.
The kitchen settled in the lamplight, and Ghost lay down by the hearth, and Kain sat in the chair next to the crackling flames a long while.
A year earlier, he had walked into Tillamore with nothing but a buried flask and a promise to keep.
He hadn't known what kind of life he was building, and he hadn't expected anything to grow from the soil he was breaking.
Now there was the cold frame at the side of the barn, the pumpkin on the third hill, and a woman who had told him she had gotten tired of him missing all the times he should have done that.
He went to bed.