As she did many other nights when there was a particularly loud thunderstorm, Penny squeezed her way in between James and me and lifted my arm so she could drape it over herself after she had laid her head on my chest. Then, she took James’s arm and laid it over her, too.
“You okay, honey?” I heard James murmur to her sleepily.
“Yeah.”
The next morning, I awoke before both of them, before sunrise, as always, thinking seriously about the war. I believed, perhaps naively, that Adam had reached at least a lower level of peace with humans roaming on his land. I would not be modest and say that my relationship with him had nothing to do with that peace. Perhaps if I just asked him to let us make peace with the Old Spirits, we could just forget the war. They could stay in the north, and we could stay in the south. Perhaps one day we would even be able to coexist.
For a very brief moment, I found myself smiling at the thought of it. The weight of impending battle had hung over us for so long that I had stopped noticing the exhaustion it left in my body and mind. The trepidation of another attack, coupled with the memories of not only how many wars there had been in the history of our earth but how long they had continued and how many lives had been lost, left me in a state of at least mild alarm at all times. My heartbeat never slowed. I never stopped trying to sense the arrival of our enemies. I never stopped trying to think of ways we could swiftly take them down.
And on that note, I never stopped debating whether or not taking them all down was right.
Just as I began to envision a world where there was no next battle, no animosity between our camps, where there were only people living their daily lives in complete normalcy and perhaps even in contentment, I remembered how James had said that so many people were itching to fight. Even if I could convince Adam, could I convince our people that it was time to lay down our arms and live in peace?
“You have your pensive face on.” James said quietly, and I startled, not realizing he had been awake.
“I don’t. I was just thinking.”
“Which would make the expression on your face appear to be pensive.” He grinned when I scowled jokingly at him. “What’s on your mind? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am okay.” I replied with a sigh. “Just thinking.”
“You said that.”
“I know. Did you hear that storm last night?”
“I did. Someone must have been really pissed.”
“Do you think?” I asked, my eyes widened slightly at the thought that someone had been so enraged that a thunderstorm so large could be conjured.
“No.” He replied, “It was humid yesterday. Wow, you are really on edge this morning.”
“I know. It is just because I was…”
“…just thinking.” He filled in for me.
“If I tell you what I was contemplating, you will be angry, and now that I have said that, I cannot keep it to myself, so here it goes.” I turned over on my side. “I think we should make peace with the Old Spirits.”
His eyebrows raised and wrinkled slightly in disbelief.
“And the only way that we will be able to do that is if I convince Adam that we should make peace with them.”
I narrowed my eyes, entering his mind right after those words left my mouth because I knew that he would deny any ill feeling about them when we were so newly and blissfully reconciled. All I got were the words registering and the first acknowledgment of the shock he felt at hearing them. Then, he carefully maneuvered around so Penny was lying on his pillow and jumped up.
“I’m going to make some coffee. You want some?”
I followed after him.
“You are going to pretend that I did not just say that?” I asked somewhat irritably.
“Yup.” He replied simply as he set about making a fire to boil water and getting the beans out of the airtight container so he could grind them.
“Would you really keep me from potentially ending this war, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, some, if not most, innocent…”
He was grinding the beans somewhat more forcefully than he normally did.
“Do you feel alright? Are you nauseous at all?” He asked me. “Headache? Dizzy? Anything?”
“James!” I grasped his arm and turned him around. “You are acting like an angry housewife right now.”
He grasped my face and kissed me softly.
“I know I don’t have any right to be jealous or angry after what I did, but Adam is a sore spot for me. You know that. It’s not because I think you’re doing anything. It’s not that I think you would fall for it if he was trying to woo you, or whatever you want to call it. It’s that I know he is going to try.”
“And if you would have let me finish my question, I would have said that your ill feelings towards Adam could potentially get in the way of saving thousands of lives. Plus, I work with him every day. What do you want me to do, compromise our efforts to accomplish things by giving him the cold shoulder?”
“Of course not. I just… I don’t even know what I want.” His hands encircled my waist, and he pulled me closer to him. “Just ignore me, baby.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck.
“You said you trust me. I am slowly starting to trust you again. If I can trust you, you should be able to trust me around him. James, this has to end. There is no point to it. And people won’t agree at first. Goodness knows we all have our issues with wanting to take vengeance into our own hands. But if Adam calls this off, then we can all just live.”
“You’re right.” He told me. “You’re absolutely right.”
He wanted to tell me that Adam would never call it off, but he quickly decided that it would be better for me to see that myself than for him to tell me. I could not trust any cynicism on his part when it came to Adam. I knew that his immense disliking of him was the sole reason for him being able to see my new acquaintance (or friend, or almost lover, whatever he was) in the most unfavorable light possible.
“Just let me try to end this, even if it is only so I can say later that I tried. Okay?”
His hands rested on my face again, and he kissed me quickly.