Ellie did a good job of avoiding Matt for the next several weeks. Somehow, it had just become too awkward, and she argued with herself whether she was making a bigger deal of this than she ought, or whether she was doing the right thing.
"I'm starting to feel like that girl in that stupid diary," she mumbled to herself one morning, lying in bed, feeling a lack of interest in everything, even moving. "I need to go and shoot something with Joel. Or talk with Anna." With that thought in her head, she launched up and got dressed.
The sun was shining brightly but there was a nip in the air, a reminder that winter was never far away in Wyoming, and Ellie zipped her jacket up to her chin, her quiver slung over her back, bow in hand.
"Morning, Buckley," she said, scratching the hound behind the ears and letting his lazy tongue lick her face. "So much slobber," she complained with a quiet laugh, wiping her face on her sleeve. "What's your deal?"
With a final pat, Ellie straightened, and walked on, feeling like grinning for the first time in a long while, and she even went so far as to nod at the few that she sighted on their way home after the night shift on the walls. Making her way through the gate, across the dam, and down the rise into the woods, Ellie inhaled the fresh air around her and felt the heaviness in her limbs slowly begin to dispel.
The pinch behind her stomach made her regret her decision to forgo breakfast, but Ellie ignored it as she took up her post in a good stand of trees, determined to bring something good home for lunch. They'd been subsisting on canned food and MRE's brought by the Oklahomans for some time now, and she was famished for real meat. Even in the warm weather, there was hardly any game about.
"Not like a deer's gonna wander by here," Ellie murmured to herself, just as a rustling was heard in the branches to her right. She tensed, and notched an arrow, her eyes quickly scanning the underbrush. She waited a long moment, her eye narrowed, until, with a noisy scuffling sound, a pair of skunks burst through, untangling themselves and ambling aimlessly across the clearing.
Ellie cursed under her breath, and eased her bowstring back down, glaring at the striped creatures as they disappeared into the scrub once again.
"Yeah, yeah..." she muttered. "Not going to shoot you, stinky things. Made that mistake once and I'm never doing that again."
"Never doing what again?"
Gasping, Ellie spun and trained her arrow on the figure standing behind her, who slowly lifted his hands.
"I come in peace?" he said, raising his eyebrows, and Ellie rolled her eyes.
"What kind of moron sneaks up on someone when they're hunting!"
"I didn't sneak!" Matt exclaimed, his eyes wide. "I just wanted to talk to you. It's.. been a while." He shuffled his feet, and shrugged. "And, well, you were talking to the skunks, and I heard your voice, so I came on over."
"There's no way you heard that," Ellie grumbled, climbing from her spot hidden in the bushes and slinging her bow over her back, realizing that she wasn't going to bring home anything good today unless it be her friend the bookworm, and she didn't feel like joking about cannibalism quite yet, to be honest.
"That's better." Matt let out an audible breath. "For someone so small, you sure know how to intimidate something much bigger than you."
"What are you doing out here?" Ellie's voice was low. "There could be bandits. Or infected."
"I was reading. There's a good spot close to the creek."
Ellie blinked. Reading. "Reading what?"
"Fenelon." Matt shrugged. "It's good to go back over the parts I've skimmed in the past. I always learn something new. It's like catching up with an old friend." His eyes shone, and the girl looked at the ground. "I've missed you, Ellie. How are you?" It seemed an innocent question, but suddenly laden with more. Since...
Ellie met his eyes at last. "Fine. You?"
"Fine. Though needing my repayment for teaching you to swim."
"Oh! That." Ellie cracked a small smile. "I seriously just forgot."
"Have some time now?"
"I guess. We'd better head back."
They returned to the settlement in silence: a silence which neither could decide was awkward or companionable. Matt waited for her on the porch of Tommy and Maria's house, and took a seat when she returned. Squinting, Ellie descended to the steps beside him, turning her head this way and that, examining the angle of Matt's face. He strove to hide his smile.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to figure out where to cut first."
"Don't make it real short. I don't want to look like a gladiator."
"What's that?" Ellie was beginning to sound like herself again. She wrinkled her nose. "Sounds like a big machine that's supposed to make people happy. You know – glad."
Matt laughed outright. "You're so weird."
"Well, what is it?"
"A gladiator's a trained fighter. They used to have big staged battles in Ancient Rome in this arena, and the fighters were called gladiators. They fought to the death. The last one standing went home with fame and glory and the privilege of knowing he'd killed everyone else in order to have his own life spared by the crown." Matt's face was sober. "It was a brutal age."
Ellie exhaled. "No kidding. Did this have a point?"
Matt shook his head. "Entertainment."
"That sucks," Ellie said. "No, we don't want you to look like a gladiator."
Matt's hair was thick and lay in errant waves around his ears and down the back of his neck. His entire forehead was obscured by his overgrown forelock, and Ellie started there, picking a piece, and trimming it with the shears. Slowly, a view of Matt's eyebrows could be seen, but not much more, and then she began to reveal his ears, and finally, the back of his neck.
Coming back around to the front, Ellie tussled his hair, the act sending a sensation through the young man to the very tips of his toes, and examined the locks again.
"Your eyes are so big when you're concentrating," Matt murmured with a smile, and Ellie simply blinked, and continued to examine him, reaching up and snipping a final piece of hair. She was so close that she could smell his scent; he smelled of engine oil and the outdoors, and she turned away.
"You're done."
"Great."Matt stood, a bit stiffly, and brushed the stray bits of hair from his shirt and jeans. "Brush off the back?" he asked, coming down a step and turning as Ellie mounted the stairs behind him and spanked his shoulders off more vigorously than was probably necessary.
"Easy," he breathed, turning, and meeting her eyes. "Everything alright?"
Ellie nodded, her shoulders drooping. "I've been thinking a lot. Too much, probably."
Matt inhaled slowly. "I understand."
"It sucks to grow up and have to start thinking about things." She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and bent, setting the shears down on the porch. "I shouldn't hold sharp things when I'm mad," she said in a flat tone.
"Come here," Matt murmured, and for some strange reason, she did so, as he enfolded her in a hug. Ellie's cheek pressed against his chest, feeling the toned muscles there, and the gentle strain of the sinews in his arm against her back. At first it was comforting, but the increasing pressure made her fight the urge to squirm.
He released her at last. "Sit." He patted the top step, and she brushed the hair clippings aside, taking a seat beside him as he pulled at tiny book from his pocket. "Fenelon?"
She shrugged.
"This is something I'm constantly reminding myself," Matt murmured, opening the worn binding. "'Do not trust to your good intentions if they are barren and without result. Labor bravely to become gentle and humble of heart. If something is done amiss which only affects you personally, and what is due to yourself, hear it without saying anything.'" He nodded to himself, as if enjoying the absorption of his self-administered proverbs. "'If any hasty word has escaped you, after inward humiliation for it, make amends by speaking kindly, and doing some little act of kindness, if possible, to those whom you have treated rudely. Never forget how God has dealt –'"
Matt stopped short as Ellie got up and dashed within the house, shutting the door behind her.