How Does Your Garden Grow?
Chapter 23: Prelude
In which Tomoe calls and raises.
The sun is low, and dusk is softening the sky, but the air is still balmy, perfumed with the heavy scent of sun-heated pines. Cicadas are buzzing their slow evening song, and shadows from the forest lie long over the rows of cabbage and beans and squash in the yellowing light. Night birds begin tuning up in the trees by the cabin. In the distance, the river's muted roar underpins the afternoon's lazy symphony.
Tomoe picks her way down the last of the slope toward the garden. She's barefoot, her shoes dangling from one hand and the tofu bucket from the other. Her gaze is fixed on the back wall of the cabin.
On the other side of the house, Kenshin sits on the porch, still as a stone. He feels her approach. He rises, and steels himself. He walks to the edge of the porch and watches as she emerges from the brush. Her hair is down, and the breeze catches the ends, blowing them around her in a dancing black cloud. She sees him and stops in her tracks, and then covers the ground between them as though she's stalking him. When she reaches the stepping-stone, he puts out his hand to help her up, but she makes no move to take it.
"Welcome home," he begins, but her silence and stillness make him hesitate, and when he sees her face, the words die on his lips.
Then she takes his hand, and steps up onto the porch. For a moment, she stands very close to him, and their body heat grows in the space between them. Then he loosens his grip on her hand and begins to turn and step away, but she holds him back. His gaze snaps back to hers.
"Tomoe—" Her personal name in his mouth, unadorned by a respectful honorific, catches them both by surprise. "I—" But something in her eyes makes him stop.
She pulls him closer. For the second time, she says it: "Husband."
