The summer drew to a close all too quickly. Weeks slipped away without notice, perhaps some trick that the mountains played on those who lived upon them. Riza, who had lived on the slopes of the Hamaker Mountains all her life, had never noticed it before.
It was three weeks before Roy was to leave and return to the city and they still hadn't spoken of it since the night he'd arrived. It had become a barrier between them, one neither of them wanted to breach.
Morning found the two of them rising before the sun had risen over the peaks, in the pale half-light of dawn. The world was grey as they made their way further into the mountains, a faint flush of rose on the bare peaks above the timberline. The air was fresh and crisp, feeling clean and sharp in their lungs.
Behind them the old house sat, empty and lonely, its windows dark, beds vacant and sheets cold. With their departure it seems to have lost what little life and vibrancy it had gained since Roy's arrival. The peeling paint was bone white in the darkness and the exposed wood beneath seemed blue and lifeless.
"How on earth did you convince me to get up this early?" Roy grumbled, jacket buttoned against the morning chill.
Riza laughed, and it echoed off the rocks around them, bubbling with life, loud amid the stillness. The morning air swallowed the sound.
Without looking back at him she replied, "If I recall, it was you who convinced me."
He didn't dignify that with a response, just adjusted the bag slung over his shoulders and climbed on.
The climb was longer than he remembered, perhaps because his body was no longer accustomed to it. The stillness of the morning seemed to demand silence of the world – there were no birds to be heard, no voices, no sound but the harshness of their breathing and the steady rush of water.
The trees were thick and the further they went, the more they shifted from deciduous to sharp needled coniferous. To their right the Maert River babbled, gathering momentum and volume as it made its way downhill toward Horsetail Falls where it plunged several hundred feet to the head of the valley. In the spring it was a violent river, turbulent and wild, fed from the melting snows. Now, at the tail end of summer, verging on autumn, it was placid and cheerful, a fraction of its borrowed strength, leaving the river several meters below the path.
The stiffness of the morning eased as they climbed, muscles stretching and falling into a steady rhythm. They paused for water after an hour or two – with the sun just peeking over the peaks above it was difficult to tell.
He sat on a large boulder overhanging the river, the sides worn smooth where it would be underwater come spring again.
Riza pulled off her sweater and joined him. Her face was flushed from the exertion of climbing, but there was a smile on her face that diminished his longing for another few hours of sleep.
Behind them, the river tumbled and the trees stretched high above. The rocky ground they had spent the past hours climbing canted sharply away. Her house was no longer visible, but he realized that they had not gone nearly as far as he had thought.
"It's even prettier in the fall," she said, looking back the way they came.
"I remember," he said. She glanced at him sharply, something akin to surprise in her face. She had forgotten in that moment that he had lived here once, thinking that this was the way things had always been, with him so far away.
That moment of forgetfulness was terrifying.
They reached the vista in late morning, both shedding jackets in the sunlight as they emerged from the trees and onto the outcropping.
It had been more than two years since Roy had seen it, and the sight took his breath away.
Out before them spread the entire Siede Valley, the Maert River a shining ribbon that stretched from Marrot, the town at the base of Horsetail Falls and the head of the valley, all the way to Faer where it clung to the coastline in the shadow of the mountains. The mountains themselves were majestic, the peaks white and the slopes still lush and green, glowing in the sunlight. The sky itself was clear and cloudless, a pale blue stretching on forever.
They ate lunch with the world spread out before them, plastic-wrapped sandwiches and a thermos of soup that Riza produced from her bag. They ate in silence, absorbed in what was around them - birds calling and in the distance, the river.
They finished eating and Roy stretched out in the grass, resting his head on his arms and soaking up the sunlight as it fell across his face. Riza watched him, the rise and fall of his chest with each breath, the way his throat jumped each time he swallowed. Only weeks ago he would have chafed at sitting still for so long, something that living in the city had instilled in him and something that she had slowly drawn out of him.
He'd commented on it once, and she'd jokingly said he'd give her a heart attack if he kept fidgeting and running around so much.
Gradually he faded into sleep and she stretched out beside him, blades of grass tickling the bare skin of her arms, the sun warming her chest, the smell of the earth in her nose. It was comforting to have him there, she realized, something she had been afraid she wouldn't be able to feel again.
After a while he rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows so he could see her. As though she could sense him looking at her she smiled.
Though it had been only two years he had been gone, she'd changed so much in that time that it might have been decades. The quiet young woman who had met him at the train station had been a stranger, as though someone else had stolen her body and wore it differently.
He'd expected the girl he'd left behind.
Now, he was surprised to realize, he preferred the girl who had taken her place.
"What are you staring at?" she asked jokingly.
He smiled and didn't answer.
She sat up, brushing grass from her arms and folded them around her knees. She looked down at the valley below them and he looked at her.
"I came up here every day last summer," she said, "to watch the trains coming in."
He wanted to ask why, but didn't.
"I hoped that you'd come back on one of them," she said at last. "Or that maybe they would take me away."
She turned to look at him, something soft in her expression, but didn't say anything more.
"I wish I didn't have to leave so soon," he said, but mostly he wished he didn't have to leave at all.
It was on the growing list of things they'd avoided talking about all summer. He had arrived at the station in May, suitcase in hand, certain that he had made a mistake in coming and had wanted to turn around and leave. Now, he didn't dare raise the topic because the thought of leaving made his chest ache.
It was Riza who broke the barrier first.
"When exactly do you leave?" she asked, both craving and dreading the answer.
"The twenty-third," he said gently, and she cursed under her breath. She didn't say anything else, but there was nothing else to say.
He looked at her, eyes following the line of her profile, the smooth line of her brow, the arc of her cheek, the tilt of her nose, the soft curve of her lips, the stubborn set of her jaw.
Then, since the barrier had been broken at last, he reached out and took her hand in his.
The hike back down seemed to pass quickly. The morning had required silence of them, but now they talked freely and it made him smile to realize how much easier things had grown between them. The first weeks of summer had been awkward, both of them creeping about without anything to say.
Ahead of them, over the valley, black clouds were gathering like a swarm.
"I could really use something to eat right now," Roy said, following Riza as the trail narrowed and the incline deepened. She turned to say something to him over her shoulder.
At that moment, a rock beneath his foot turned and he lost his balance, stumbling several feet forward. He grasped wildly out to either side of him, but it was Riza, braced for the impact, that stopped him. He found himself on the ground at her feet.
"Keep your mind off your stomach," she said, struggling to contain a laugh, "or you won't make it back in one piece."
It wasn't much farther before she held out her arm to stop him.
Below them, visible in a gap in the trees, the house stood, the back door propped open and the windows and shutters flung open. The storm was still in the distance and sunlight poured down onto it from behind them.
"Dad's home," Riza said after a long moment of silence.
The house, which had been a pale, deathly pallor when they left that morning, was now a rich creamy white, almost yellow with life, some trick of the sun. The glass windows sparkled as the sun struck them and the gardens, once carefully tended by Riza's mother and now overgrown, were bright with flowers.
For a brief moment Roy saw the house he'd arrived at what felt like so many weeks before. It had been a stranger's home then, the cracks and faded paint eerie and unfamiliar. He'd thought that maybe they had moved, that the house had been abandoned.
Now, it looked like home.
Riza started down the last incline to the house, not realizing she'd left him behind. Her dad would be in the kitchen, reading the newspaper with a cup of black coffee. The cat would be curled up in the window asleep. It felt good to know that some things would be the same, even after he was gone.
She reached the bottom and turned to look back up at him.
"Are you coming?" she shouted, shading her eyes to see.
He smiled, and in the distance, thunder started to roll.