First, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed. I'm sorry, I will get around to doing individual replies very soon. But I just want you all to know, until then, how deeply I appreciate your words and how happy I am that you are reading this story.
My update schedule has been derailed massively, but oddly enough I still hope to have everything done by November 5th at the latest. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.
Mina Mi and Kellen - Half of a Whole
"Oh, yes. We never lose the people who love us."
Mina Mi only stopped by the schoolhouse for a moment, then emerged without her basket of clothes. Kellen was still making his way up the path when he saw her blue-clad figure walk back out the door and turn down the path to, oddly enough, his farm.
"You're being so creepy," he told himself as he turned to follow her there "You should have never followed her in the first place. What's she going to do when she sees you? Fool." And yet his feet drew him in her wake, sped up to catch sight of her next move as she rounded the farmhouse.
She disappeared into the orchard and he halted. Unbidden, two trains of thought sprang to his mind. He could let this go now, walk into his house and forget it ever happened. He could tell the girls he'd wandered off for some other reason, when they found him there. He could keep Mina's secret. The second was simply images: Mina and Hao dancing at the festivals, silver hair flying, matching grins. Mina hugging Hao goodbye each year. The schoolhouse door shut and locked the fateful day the town had received notice of Hao's passing. The wild, devastated look in her eyes before she'd bolted from the village entrance.
He walked into the orchard, ducking beneath a low hanging branch, heavy with autumn apples. Immediately his eyes adjusted to the dimness, and there she was. Her back was to him, she was leaning into a tree, head and shoulders bowed. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound. Kellen froze. He hadn't thought this far ahead. Should he say something? Go to her? Put his arms around her?
Perhaps he stepped on a twig. Perhaps he breathed too loudly. Perhaps she heard his suddenly thudding heart, beating hard against his ribcage. Either way, she turned, tear stained eyes looking at him accusingly.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her low voice thick with unshed tears. He took a step closer, and when she did not grow defensive, another. She looked around, then gave a wet chuckle and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Sorry. Your orchard. I'm the one trespassing."
"Oh, no, darlin'," he said, taking the last step. He could reach out and touch her, yet he didn't. What if she took offense? "More like the village's orchard."
For a moment they both stood there awkwardly, she looking at him and he carefully directing his gaze to the ripening apples above and around them. At last, she said, "I'm sorry," dropping her gaze to his feet. "I'd better go."
As she moved to step around him, Kellen reached out and touched her at last. It was just his hand lightly reaching for hers, but Mina looked at him as if he'd cast thunder on her. He released her instantly.
"Sorry," he said, looking away. "Sorry, Mina. You can go, if you want to."
A twig snapped, and when he opened his eyes, she was even closer, somehow. Her eyes and nose were reddened, her smile a little half-hearted. "You know," she said, "I think you're the first person to say my name in three months."
"Mina?" he said, asked, some sort of tone that he couldn't quite register because she was so close, and he was suddenly very reminded of how long it had been since he'd been in close contact with an eligible woman of any kind. Angrily he pushed the thought away, this was no time for that. Mina was a friend, she wouldn't be happy to know he had thought such things about her.
Her lips were moving. Oh gods, those lips could make a man weak. He swallowed. "Kell," she said, and that sad look was back in her eyes. All those shameful thoughts instantly vanished. "Nobody sees me anymore."
She took his hand, examining the calluses, the lines of his palm. Her own palm was callused, though differently from his. The hands of people who'd spent their lives working were easily identifiable. "They only see her. Hell, sometimes I only see her."
"Mina, " he said again, and she stepped closer, their bodies touching chest to chest. He at last lifted his arms, put them around her, pulled her close.
She neither leaned nor collapsed into him, no, she was too strong for that. Like the willow, she would not break, only bend. Her hands fisted in his shirt and her face pressed to his collarbone. "I just don't want to think about her anymore," she whispered. "I feel like half of me died with her. And every time I start to forget, something reminds me of her. Of everything." He stroked her long hair back, leaned his cheek on her temple.
Once again her shoulders shook, but he felt no warm tears soak through his shirt. Instead she merely stood in his embrace, as if she could somehow draw an invisible strength from this temporary refuge.
I see you, Mina Mi. Just you, he wanted to tell her. Only you, he wanted to say. But how could he battle such grief? How could he ever make her smile? Instead he kept quiet, and the two of them stood like that for quite some time, a silent bastion of comfort.