Morning is filled with more pistol practice. I don't want to push your skittishness about the long guns, though, so I let it slide. "I just need a break," you say as evenly as you can. "I like handguns more, anyway."

"Do you?" I ask, with mild surprise. Because you were well on your way to adoration with the long guns before the accident.

"Yes, actually," you reply. "You prefer pistols, right?"

I crack a smile. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean you have to." It's almost like a kid imitating a grownup. But you're not a kid, you're my unrequited love. I'm not your role model, I'm your guardian and roommate and...well, a whole slew of other things. Let's not get confused here: you're a woman.

"I know that," you say, framing your slim hips with your hands. "But they make more sense, for me. I'm little, after all. How did you put it? Portable." As Christmas said, able to make your own decisions. I can't forget that. It's a rather critical factor to getting 'you and me' off the ground. I can't double-guess everything you say.

God, I am such a nutcase. "Can't let that go?" I tease.

"Oh, don't worry, Barney," you say mischieviously, swaying into the hangar. "You'll get yours."

"Promise?" I whisper, so you can't hear. I grab the guns and follow you, sighing. Somehow, the hollowness of the words cause a fullness in my ribcage.

When we start shooting, and you only scare me once.

We've run through every caliber of handgun I have, from .9mill to .375. You sailed through them, happily plinking out sacuer-sized groupings from twenty paces away. After I catch you rubbing your wrists, I adjust my own thumb/wrist guard on your skinny arm. "That thing's blessed me through a shitton of conflicts," I say. "It'll bless you, too."

"That's a word the villagers said my father would use," you say reminiscently. It's stupid that it occurs to me now, close to two months later, that you have lived an entire life beyond the weeks we've spent together. "Why blessing?" you ask, touching the leather.

"Because that word best fits something so great."

Your eyes flit to mine, and hold them. "Then you're my blessing, Barney."

I flounder for a minute, my heart struggling to beat. Damn, I both love and loathe the power you hold over my very body. Your glance turns me weak inside, your laugh warms my blood, your soft, sleeping breath soothes my beastl. It's not fair, really. But what can I expect for my own foolish dropping of guard? Really, I brought this on myself for not turning around and walking out of that hut in Nepal.

I don't regret it, though. Can't find an inkling of the stuff.

"You're..." I clear my throat of the creak. "You're a blessing to me, too." That's the obvious, and utterly true response. But I don't know how to react to this. I've been called so many disgusting things, mostly true, over the course of my life. Never a blessing.

There's only one gun left on the blanket. I've got to navigate us past this, or my facade is going to snap. "This," I flail on. "Is the Desert Eagle 50-caliber."

Your eyes widen comically. "Whoa," you pick it out of my hands. "It's heavy."

"And powerful," I caution. I grin at you challegingly. "You think you can handle it?"

You consider the gun. You always consider your answers thoughtfully, then give them your full steam. I wish I was so deliberate. "I think I can," you say.

I square you up with the target, back off a step, plug my ears, and bark, "Fire when ready!"

You pause one, two, three whole seconds. Then, BOOM!

All I catch is a blur that causes your elbows elbows to bend and the gun to smack you in the nose. Almost in slow motion, your body falls backwards, and you fold and land on your ass. Your momentum carries you down to your back, though. Blood spurts from your nose and mouth, and you find breath to give voice to your cry of pain and shock.

"Shit!" I snarl, kneeling next to you. "Are you okay, Meera? Answer me!" I should have known it was too much for you. Panic not unlike the free clinic trip sets in. You're still building muscle, and I didn't fully think it through, so distracted I was by...

You groan poingnantly with mastered pain, and turn your head to spit out a mouthful of blood. "Owb," you say weakly.

"It's alright," I sigh to myself as much as you, cupping your face with both hands. "Just a nosebleed and busted lip. It's okay." Thank God, my stupidity did not cost you teeth.

"I dow ith ohay, Bahnee," you mutter. A bit of blood must trickle down your throat, and you start to cough.

I realize I'm still holding your face. I help you sit up. "Pinch below the nose bone, like this," I urge.

You wince as you do so, and your eyes tear up harder. "Owb," you mutter again. But I can tell you're okay. So okay, in fact, that you reach a few feet away to pick up the offending Desert Eagle, and flip the safety on. I have a displaced surge of pride. "Thab hurd," you continue, swiping at your eyes.

Catching my concerned look at the motion, you assure, "Jez wader, Bahnee. Naw teers." You spit another mouthful of blood out.

I chuckle with relief. "Just water."

I call an end to the day's practice, coax you inside, and wrap some ice in a plastic bag and a towel. You apply it to your throbbing face with a grimace. "I just got the thing not-broken," you mourn muffledly from the towel's depths. The blood has mostly cleared, so you can talk normally.

I plop down next to you on the couch and crack a beer, handing you a soda can. What a day, and it ain't even afternoon yet. You put down the towel, pop the top, swig, and apply it in place of the ice. "Very naughty gun," you murmur.

I chuckle, and swig my own drink. "You like it?"

You laugh darkly. "Yes, I do."

We're both reading, for once, as dusk falls. I'm on the faster-than-God laptop, doing the monthly email check for job offers, and you're muddling through an edible plant handbook. You sigh forcefully, and let the book fall aside. "Barney?"

"Hm?"

You chew your lip. "I have unfinished business with that gun."

I wind up standing behind you, in a lower Weaver stance than yours so that my arms thread beneath yours supplimentarily. My hands swallow yours, and the gun grip. I am reminded that you're short, but finally getting some meat on your bones, by the way your ribs don't press into my forearms.

"Ready?" I ask into your ear.

You nod, and your hair tickles my nose. "Ready."

"Then aim...and fire."

BOOM! The gun bucks, and so do you, backwards into me. I'm braced, so we don't go anywhere, but the full of you flattens to the front of me. It's strange, in a way. To be so intimately close, but different from our normal motorcycle arrangement, or even the embrace I hold you in when you cry. This time when we touch, my body encompasses yours. It feels somehow more personal, even though we aren't facing. It feels like I could just lean my head over your shoulder, and steal a kiss, or taste your neck...

"Nice!" you declare of your own shot. You brush out of my arms like water and bound over to your target, which now sports a ridiculously big hole. You laugh when you put your hand through it.

"He ain't getting back up from that shot," I opine. The heat seeping from my front feels like a hint of death's slow claiming.

The next day, we run out of MRE's.

"I didn't know there was a bottom to this supply," you say with incredulity, pawing around in the cabinet vainly.

"Looks like we'll be taking a pilgrimage," I say.

Your sense of adventure is piqued, and you cock your head, curious. "How far is this pilgrimage? Wheren to?"

I sip my coffee. "About 200 miles, a little town called Lacoma."

You spoon sugar into your own mug. "Roadtrip?" you ask hopefully.

"I guess you could call it that."

You make a fist pump in the air, nosing into your mug as you spin on your heel towards the front door.

Another thing that's universal: go-go juice.

We meander the truck down the highway, your hand fluttering out the window. I'm at peace: the open road with few cars, the warm sun, the smell of the DOT mowing the shoulders, and a Creedence Clearwater Revival marathon on the radio.

"One of my favorite things about America," you say, watching a Corvette split off to its exit. "Is cars."

"Cars themselves, or riding in them?" I ask.

"Both. Cars are interesting machines, but getting inside them and moving..." you trail off, too content to complete the sentence.

The song ends, and the station flips to commercial, so I turn it off because something has occured to me to ask. "Meera, what's your last name?" I'm getting used to feeling like a moron for simple things, but that is eclipsed by the burning curiousity.

You don't miss a beat. "Ross."

Only my soldier's reflexes keep me from ditching the car. My emotions wage war. Are you stroking my ego, or do you really mean that woman I picked up in Nepal is dead and gone? Are you so sure that you want to lose her? "I mean, your parents' name."

"Khaga," you say reluctantly. "But I am Ross, now."

My fingers tighten on the wheel. This feels so good, it has to be bad. "That name can mean trouble," I warn you hollowly.

"I don't care," you state with nonchalant firmness.

And who am I to argue?

And so it starts. Questions boil up inside me about your last twenty-three years without me.

"Your parents died in a rebel attack, right? So who raised you?"

"My mother's mother," you reply, still fluttering your hand in the truck's slipstream. "Teela. When I was fourteen summers, she got malaria and died. I only just learned what malaria was reading your books."

I wince. That had to be hard, losing all of your family at once. "I'm sorry."

You shrug. "It is life. At age fourteen I was a woman in the eyes of the people, so despite my mixed blood and because of reverence for Teela's wishes, I was allowed to build a hut on the edge of the village."

I think back through the huts I cleared on that fateful mission. The one I found you in was the last one I cleared, nestled back in the trees a bit. It had to be yours.

"Any siblings?"

"No. Teela said mother had trouble with birthing me, and no longer could have children." You smile wryly. "For the best, really. No more mixed-bloods."

"Don't be like that," I say, nudging you. "You're more than your skin, Meera."

You look at me gratefully. "Another thing I love about America," you say with a smile. "I'm not just a woman, to be filled with child after child and tied to a house. I'm a person."

Damn right, you are. You're more than a woman, or even a person: you're practically the sun in my solar system. "What was life like for you, day-to-day?" I ask. Then, with a worried glance I add, "If it's not too painful to remember."

"No, it's okay." You pause and purse your lips. "Just finding food, mostly. Keeping the garden, making clothes, playing with the village children. I was the - what is the word? - babysitter for them. I like children."

I chuckle at the unfamiliarity of the word on your tongue. My mind conjures the image of you in the middle of a pack of half-naked kids, head thrown back with laughter, holding one's hand with a toddler on your hip. It brings a new brand of stutter to my heart to think about you, and kids, and you/me/kids. Wanting kids, making kids, seeing them born. Was the miracle of life this fascinating to me before I met you?

Before I get stuck on the 'making kids' aspect of that train of thought, I say, "What about guys? Any husband?"

You give me a Look. "What?" I ask defensively.

"Do you think I had a husband?" you ask, with a bit of a tease.

Uh, oh. I sense danger. "Um, no?"

"Relax, Barney," you pat my arm. "Nobody's looking for me on that side of the pond, as Christmas would say."

"Good," I say. "I might have to beat them off with a stick." I'm pretty sure I just went pale under my tan. Did those words just leave my mouth?

You cackle at my foot in my mouth, but it's more to hide that you have no viable response to that.

Damn. I just stepped on a landmine. If I move an inch or shift my weight, it'll blow my ass into orbit.

Thankfully, you reinsert the firing pin. "Where are we going?" you ask.

"To the place where army goods come to die," I reply. When it goes over your head, I amend, "The mother of all army stores."

"Is it as big as Walmart?"

I chuckle. "Easily."