THERE'S NOT A lot of meat on rats. Gaming has become virtually non-existent. Neveah's herbs bring in little income, because people need food more than medicine. Our predicament is clear. Starvation is imminent, unless we find some other means of providing for ourselves. There are few options left to us. Maybe we're in one of those places where you do something because you have to, to survive. Maybe.
This is the dark track my thoughts have taken as I huddle between rain barrels around back. It's too cold to be out here, and it's getting colder every day. Soon, I won't have this place to escape to, but escape is not what drives me here, now. I sit here because I know that Oscar will soon join me.
His footsteps make me feel warmer inside. He sits down without speaking.
I rub my arms and smile at him.
He smiles back.
Already I feel the loss of this moment, like it's drifting away from me on Time's wings. I sense the future, how far away this moment will be, how I'll look back and feel it as something distant and ethereal. All of life's moments are like that— snapshots filed away in a box. If we're lucky enough to grow old, we can look back at them, but we'll never be in them again. Never live them. We're only ever out of the picture, looking back. Struggling to recall the details. The moments we are in, like this one, blow out of our hands as quick as leaves caught by the wind.
Oscar's smile fades. I'm fascinated by the death of it— another small step in the soundless migration of our lives, toward the inevitable. "What's wrong, Eden?" he asks, the corners of his mouth turning into the vaguest hint of a pout.
I shake my head and rekindle my smile for him. "Just stuff," I say. "It doesn't matter. Just... you know. Stuff."
He nods like he does know, though I'm sure he hasn't guessed the half of it. He places his hand over mine. "Don't worry," he says. "We'll figure it out. We always figure it out."
I wonder if his mother used to tell him that, when they were starving on the streets. Or is this his own optimism, grown from youth and inexperience? In that way, maybe I should be optimistic, too. My experience is less than his, at least the part I can remember.
"Yeah," I say, because I'm not willing to destroy it, wherever it comes from. And we will figure it out. For Oscar, at least, I am figuring it out. Reconciling myself to it. A lash of wind whips around us, and it's cold, making me want to pull him to me and hug him, hold onto him. Instead, I pull my legs in closer and rub my arms again. "It was kinda scary on the road," I say. "I'm not sure I would have wanted to keep going."
He looks at me sideways, his smile stretching into a grin. "Yeah," he says. "But it was fun, too."
We laugh together, as children do. When I'm with him, I feel so much younger. I feel like I'm not a hundred years old.