Daniel pulled up to the front gates of Orville's farm. The midday solstice sun, inviting as it was, never made for good driving weather, and he was glad to be out of the van again. Beside him, his daughter Haruka had been falling in and out of sleep ever since they'd picked up the flour from Aunt Jo's Gristmill. She'd tried to stay awake, but when you've stayed up past midnight playing video games, it's hard to do much in the mornings. And he'd know - they were his games! But it was the Solstice Festival today, and all of Lucky Cove was going to be there. Waffles needed to be made.

Still, she'd made a good effort (and the Chimera he'd snuck in to her orange juice helped). The McMurphys had run this waffle truck for years now, and a few bags of flour weren't going to be an issue for his daughter. They had enough flour back there to feed the cove for a week, and leave enough for the Crab Witch, too. "Though if I had to guess," said Aunt Jo, when Daniel used that joke on her, "I think she prefers my organics."

Peeling himself off the driver's seat, Daniel stepped out of the van, as Haruka got out from the shotgun seat. He reached for the bottle of water he kept in the glove box. With it feeling a little light, he took a closer look. Half gone already. Haruka had taken most of that after they got to the gristmill. They'd pass out on the drive there, at this rate. Even with the windows down, the sun was unbearable. Orville's farm was cooler than his own neighbourhood, thanks to being built right beside the mountain range, but Daniel's neighbourhood wasn't exactly ground level, and none of Lucky Cove had ever been cold, exactly.

"Need something to drink?" came a shout from the side of the farmhouse. Daniel, being currently distracted by his now-low water supply, was a little startled, and quite a bit embarrassed once he realised he'd been hunkered down, eye level with the bottle on its side. He looked up, and saw Orville moseying over to the van, with a quart bottle in his hand. Daniel stood up, and, feeling a bit itchy, realised he'd gotten a little burned. "You've been there a couple minutes. Wouldn't have even known you were here if I didn't see Haruka bullying my chickens." Orville stretched out his arm to offer the bottle, as Daniel, realising Haruka wasn't in the truck anymore, went looked over to the chicken run to the left of the farmhouse and saw her running across the fields, knowing full well that her dad wouldn't be leaving for a while. She might be able to sneak off for a bit, and find a tree nearer the mountains to nap under.

Absentmindedly Orville flicked a flake of dried mud off the bottle, and tapped it on Daniel's shoulder. "You're not gonna get to the festival at all if you don't get out of the heat." Daniel sheepishly took the bottle from him, thankful for something to clear his head.

"Sorry, Orville." said Daniel, as Orville guided him inside. "Haruka was up all last night playing one of my old carts. The one where you're the bee lady, and you have to fight the bears."

"Honey Bun? I was never fast enough to get the Diamond Gown."

"That's what I said! I woke up, heard her screaming, thought someone broke in downstairs, so I grab a broom and creep downstairs, and there's Haruka, awake as the sun. She'd been playing for two hours after her bedtime. I thought she'd by out cold today, but I'm the one finding it hard to stay awake."

"We're just old, is all." said Orville, looking out the window, mountainside, to check Haruka hadn't tried to tip one of his cows. "I never stay up much past my animals anymore. With Shelley gone to Lordston, there's nobody here but me now."

Daniel knew the feeling. His wife, Chizue, had died a couple of years after Haruka had been born. She never got to know her mother very well, so Daniel ended up doing the grieving for both of them. "Hard not to have another adult in the house, isn't it."

"Well, I wouldn't call Shelley an adult."

"Hey, that's not fair. She just wants to see the Plane, learn how to save a life. We could use a doctor up here. Besides, I'm 35, and I wouldn't call me an adult."

"I wouldn't call you one either."

Daniel said nothing, and took a long sip of water.

Haruka, starting to burn herself, was glad to be under the shade again. The forest was never her first choice for a place to spend her time, but for now she was there to sleep through some of that time, for as long as she could. As she listened to the summer breeze moving through the trees, and the birds moving above them and through them, she could already feel herself drifting off to sleep.

Orville had guessed where she was going, when he saw her running towards the back of his land, and listening to Daniel he could guess why she ran off without even taking the time to say "Hey, Orville!" or "No time to talk, we'll be late." She was probably past the chicken run already, he thought, looking for something to be bored with.

"Hey Daniel," Orville said, still half in his thoughts, "you remember the time I got stuck in my dad's run?"

"Hm?" Daniel hummed, still hydrating himself. "Oh yeah. Back when he had that huge fence. You were helping him with the feed one morning, and he forgot you were in there."

Orville chuckled. "Yeah. I'd gone in the coop to feed Angelica. She'd been brooding, so there was no hope of getting her out to feed. I thought she'd be lonely, so I went in with a handful of the stuff and talked to her for a while. When I came back out, the door was bolted."

"I'd come over to get my history book back from you, and when I saw your front door was open I thought you must be out. I was gonna go when I saw your dad coming back. He said you must have gone ahead, so help you keep an eye on the house while he drove out for milk."

"I thought I heard you round the front! Always wondered how you knew where I was."

"Hard to ignore a friend when his nose is sticking out from chicken wire three times his size." Daniel took another sip, and left the bottle resting on the kitchen table. "Anyway, if you weren't doing homework, you were talking to the chickens, and you weren't in your room."

"I must've been there for almost an hour before you called around to the house."

"It was a couple of minutes!"

"Felt like longer." Orville took the opportunity to have some water himself; even in his work, he never got used to the solstice sun.

"So there I am," Daniel mused, waving his arms around him, "in this kitchen, looking at you from the window, and I don't know what to do. I panic and run out to you, with no idea how to get you out."

"I've never heard you scream so loud before. You got me clawed by a couple of chickens."

"I got you out, though, didn't I?"

"All you had to do was open the door." Orville remembers, barely trying to hide playful frustration. "You see me on the other side of that fence, and without even looking at the door, you run to the tool shed and grab the wire cutters, and start cutting a hole for me to crawl through!"

Again, Daniel says nothing, while he tries not to blush.

Orville snorts. "My dad was so mad. All he talked about for weeks was the hole in the run. He grounded me, he wouldn't you near the place. Had to tear down the whole fence, 'cause you couldn't get the hole right the first time."

"But you've never a fence past your knees since then." Daniel jokes. "Think how much money that day's saved you."

Orville looks Daniel in the eyes. "You are so much like your daughter."

Time to Choose:

Childhood Romance
(Go to Chapter 2)

Best Friends
(Go to Chapter 3)