Meggie watched dragonflies flit around her head in the night as her back sank deeper into the long, cool grass. Her man was somewhere around here. She could hear him digging his rough hands into the soil, turning it through his fingers and pulling out weeds as he sometimes did on cool tailend nights like these. She reached out to catch a dragonfly but it slipped away from her fingertips at just the last second. A cold wind spent itself across her face, moving all the grass around for miles in a westerly direction, brushing its stalks and stems over her denim shorts summers old with patches and holes. Far away on the highway she heard a car shift across the asphalt and away into the distance, insensible of all she heard and saw and felt, however dimly, lying there in the grass, as its passengers rolled mile over mile in its metal shell. A marten ran up the hill to where she lay prone on the ground, and she welcomed it onto her stomach, holding it for a fleeting moment before it ran into the distance.
Dustfinger looked up the hill and saw the dark, small shape of a girl lying in the grass by the hammock. After all the trouble they'd spent putting it up between two young trees, she lay on the grass like she always had. He saw Gwin search her figure for some kind of pocket with hidden food and, finding none, run into the woods skirting their home. He looked up and, seeing no stars, had an idea.
Meggie was nearly blinded as a curtain of blazing fire swept just a few feet above her face and body. If it had come from any other source she would have been scared to death, and although alarmed, she trusted the man and his fire. She turned her head towards the source of the distraction, a little further down the gently sloping hill, and spotted his silhouette in the darkness. She smiled quietly and said under her voice,
"You could warn me next time." And then, "Was that really necessary?"
Dustfinger laughed softly and said, "No. But this is."
He ran past her, behind her head, and lay down beside her, higher up on the hill. Wasting no time, he took her face and kissed Meggie, leaning over her. Bodies bumping awkwardly, her back lost its grip on the earth and, he falling onto her at the first, they rolled at top speed down the hill, all elbows and knees and ridiculous laughs, shouts as they immediately gave up any attempt at kissing and gave in to the thick, fast, heavy gravity of falling down, suddenly nothing but two little kids for all it mattered just then. To them or the world.
As they fell into the garden bordering the house, their wild career came to its end and they lay in the dirt laughing like sopping drunks.
They slept this way until half into the next afternoon, waking to hot sun and shocking light ameliorated somewhat by the eaves of the roof he'd built above their heads. Sore limbs all over and at least two roughed-up herb sprouts were that much dust in the wind. They didn't move until four o'clock.
"Let's go eat the pig," said Meggie. Her belly laugh rocked the side of Dustfinger that leant into her. His laugh was smaller than hers but it was small change as he added, "Burnt or charred?"