In the crisp early morning, it seemed that only birds and crickets were awake to keep Trent company as he made his way south over the dew-slicked cobblestones of town – and even they sounded sleepy. The sky had a cool clearness to it as the sun peeked over the treetops, and the air was almost sharp in its freshness.
He was relieved of his illusion of solitude when he passed Rick in his chicken yard, calling to his hens as he spread feed. May, Stu's little friend, waved to him from the window of her farmhouse as he walked by. Her grandfather Barley must already be in the barns.
Trent followed the path south to the wood. Here, the hush was almost tangible in the rustling of the trees and the swish of the tall grass as he walked through it. His dew-dampened pants quickly began sticking to his shins. A squirrel dashed up a tree and out of sight, startling away a sparrow. Tiny violet wildflowers blossomed at the base of nearly every tree. He knelt in the grass to snap a shot, soaking through the knee of his left pant leg.
"Mornin'," grunted Gotz, the carpenter Trent had hired to build the raised garden bed. He had stepped out of his cabin and was turning to lock the front door.
"Good morning," Trent returned as Gotz too began trudging through the tall grass. The two men shared a companionable silence as they moved west, passing by the hot spring spa and up the mountain.
A tranquil turquoise lake dotted with trees opened up before them, and he was struck by the scent of evergreen. Wildflowers – blue and white and purple and pink – grew in profusion around the lake and along the dirt path leading north. Sidetracked, Trent couldn't help but steal several more snapshots, and he didn't notice where Gotz wandered away to.
He continued up along the path as it grew steep. The wildflowers seemed to cluster together with greater density in the higher altitude, and the coniferous scent was replaced by their heady perfume.
Finally, the path gave way to a plateau overlooking Mineral Town to the east and the magnificent forest between Mineral Town and Forget-Me-Not Valley to the west. The view was dizzying with the colours of spring and summer and alive with the playful dancing of the breeze. So this was Mother's Hill. Closing his eyes to the sun's warmth on his face, Trent wondered how any single photo of the scene could possibly do it justice.
He lingered in that pensive place too long, starting when he realized how much time had passed. He should have noticed that the wet patches on his pants had nearly dried! The doctor packed away his camera and made his way briskly down the path. Passing Gotz's cabin, a familiar voice called out to him.
"Good morning, Doctor!"
The spry blonde woman made her way jauntily through the grass toward him. Trent paused, not wishing to avoid a conversation with Mrs. Kelley but uncomfortably aware of the time.
"Good morning, Mrs. Kelley. How are you?"
"Please, call me Claire!" she beamed. "I won't keep you, Doctor. I'm sure you're in a hurry. I just wondered if you happened to run into Ella at all this week?"
"I did. Elli and I actually have been helping her with her weeding," he answered. "Her choke-weeding, that is. We've struck a bargain. I think we will reliably be seeing her every week."
"Wonderful," the farmer breathed, beaming up at him, drinking in every detail. "Oh, that pesky chokeweed. What a hassle. I do hope it's of some use to someone somewhere. And she best have started on her harvest, though I hope she was smarter than me and didn't plant onions – goodness knows they take some elbow grease to unearth. That's what I'll be up to today. Well, anyhow, I said I'd not keep you, and I mean to honour that. Have a great day, Doctor." She turned to leave with a wave and a bright smile.
Trent watched her for a moment, his farewell frozen on his lips. Something here didn't seem right. He recalled Ella's crate of crops, teeming with cucumbers and onions. He remembered his conversation with Ella in her house during the thunderstorm, where it seemed as though she had agreed she needed to talk to her mom more often, as they both expressed such deep concerns about each other. How could her mother, another farmer whom she was close with, of all people, not be aware of the crops Ella was growing? Weren't they talking at all?
"She did grow onions," he said slowly, debating on how rude it would be to comment any further. Confusion and curiosity won out, and he added lightly, "I'm surprised Ella hasn't mentioned that. She also grew cucumbers. Looked to be a successful harvest, in my eyes."
Mrs. Kelley tensed and turned to look at him with wide, worried eyes, as though she were lost for words. Trent immediately felt he had overstepped. "I apologize," he said before she could respond, unsure what exactly he was apologizing for. He cleared his throat and proceeded to tangle his tongue. "Well, ah, I won't keep you from your harvest. Best of luck. Ah, if you need a hand after clinic hours, I would be happy to lend one, ma'am. Farming has, ah, made an impression on me of late. Well, good morning, Mrs. Kelley, ma'am." And with that, he hastily made his retreat, kicking himself all the while for his massacre of a farewell when a "You, too" would have sufficed.
The typical morning at the clinic unfolded into a typical afternoon. Trent finally felt confident enough to diagnose Jeff, the owner of the supermarket next door, with a generalized anxiety disorder, and several hours later, Jeff's wife Sasha requested a quick appointment to discuss the diagnosis. Barley had a check-up and treatment for an old slow-healing wound on his leg. Thomas dropped in with hot teas for both Trent and Elli, and Ann from the Inn popped by to introduce herself. Trent spent some time mixing and packaging medication to be picked up the following week and did some reading on local flora from a book borrowed from Carter.
On his lunch break, he scrambled eggs onto toast with hot sauce (an underrated hot plate recipe) and sat outside. Manna and Sasha, out and about on errands, greeted him as they passed. Karen, Sasha's daughter, sat with him and chatted until her friend Rick appeared, and they disappeared together. Trent grinned as May and Stu galloped by, shrieking and giggling, on their way to the church. They screamed "HI DOCTOR" as they passed.
Thomas's son Harris, the local postman, delivered a letter to Elli from Joe. She came outside and sat beside Trent to read it and gush.
"He wants to come visit this summer," she said dreamily.
"You should tell him about the fireworks festival," Trent said, recalling something Ann had mentioned. "Maybe he can make it in time and you can enjoy it together."
"There's a fireworks festival?" the nurse cried. "Oh my Goddess! I need to find out all about it! That's a wonderful idea, Trent!" She jumped up and hurried down the path towards the supermarket, where she was likely to find a townsperson in the know.
Trent returned inside the clinic, where he found his eyes kept sliding towards the clock. 5:00 represented a range of emotions for him – he had made the offer to Mrs. Kelley to help with her onion harvest, and whether she expected him to (or remembered that he'd even said it) or not, he was going to show up.
He wasn't even completely sure why those words had come out of his mouth. He hadn't planned on harvesting onions today. He had only been flirting with the idea of dipping his toes casually into agriculture, and surely the garden box was a more beginner-friendly start than volunteering during a harvest. Would Mrs. Kelley even want his help, or would she be uncomfortable with his offer?
Well, he had already made it.
The dreaded hour came. Elli packed up her desk and bid Trent a cheerful good evening, and Trent went upstairs to change out of his button-down into something more… something… something different.
That's when he realized he owned almost nothing but collared shirts, creased slacks, and the T-shirts and flannel pants that he slept in. He felt the urge to roll his eyes.
But wait. He dug around in the back of his loungewear drawer. There – a pale blue T-shirt with a bright golden star emblem. A memento from a place he had once traveled before he had committed to med school. Finally, he even dug up a pair of old faded jeans from his freshman year.
Trent barely recognized the man staring back at him from his bedroom mirror in those jeans and the blue shirt. But it wasn't a man: it was a boy, barely 18, who refused to be a doctor and chose to run away from it all. And so he ran all over the world until he ended up coming right back to what he had fled.
Maybe Trent had let himself fall more into the job than he realized – just what he always wanted to avoid. The lack of variety in his wardrobe attested to that. Something something, nature or nurture? Sighing, he grabbed the large canteen he brought on his weekly trek to the Valley, filled it with water, and stepped out the door.
Claire Kelley was resting in the shade of her apple tree, sipping on a lemonade Doug had brought her. Her shipping crate was crammed to the brim with cucumbers, onions, and potatoes, and a good portion of the field lay heavy with produce. She tipped her large straw hat down over her eyes and wondered if she should nap.
"Mrs. Kelley?"
Claire sat up and turned. "Young man," she smiled, "please, do call me Claire. If you've come to help on my farm, that makes us friends, and my friends don't call me Mrs. Kelley."
Trent smiled nervously. "Then call me Trent." He paused. "I wasn't convinced that you'd want a rookie's help."
"Oh, come now. I'll take all the help I can get. This is my first harvest without my daughter, you know. And she went and planted onions!" Claire exclaimed in exasperation.
"She learned from the best," Trent remarked, looking out over the rows of onions growing stubbornly in Claire's field.
The farmer chuckled. "Yes, I'm no better. They just keep so well," she lamented. "They wait so nicely and patiently while you get everything else out of the way. Well then, let's get our hands dirty. Am I correct in thinking you've already helped Ella with her onions and that's why you're so eager?"
"Would I be eager if I had ever done this before?" Trent retorted with a laugh. "I'm starting to think I ought to rethink my offer."
"Oh no, you don't. You're here and you're able-bodied and you're not going anywhere. Here, follow me and I'll show you how it's done. And if you do well, you'll get a great supper for your trouble."
˙·٠•● Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ●•٠·˙
A wash of lush viridian dotted with sage and flaked with mint crept across the canvas. Ella dipped her brush into a mixture of earthy brown and grey and added a touch of texture to the aged wooden fencing around the pasture before raising a few quick flecks of grass and clover clinging to the bases of the fence posts. Dapples of violet and yellow in the fields recalled the tender new blossoms of sprouting crops, and a slight blonde figure knelt in the midground of the field, her back turned to the viewer. The sky was a clear, deep blue but for three wispy clouds trailing lazily overhead. In the background stood a tidy log farmhouse.
It is difficult to know when a painting is truly done. Ella felt she could have lingered with that painting much longer into the night, breathing wildflowers into her mother's painterly pasture. The world seemed to quiet around her as she was transported home in that early summer breeze.
Her aching back reminded her that she had been hunched over the painting too long. She raised her head and straightened her back, which cracked in either protest or relief. The bright camp light on her dresser was terrible to paint by anyway – nothing compared to sunlight.
Ella took her camp light and went on a short tour of her farmstead by night. The cows, Faye and Marcy, slept soundly, and the farmer imagined how the new lamb might fit in when she arrived. She still had to think of a name. About a hundred metres away from the barn were the foundations of a coop that Gotz would finish sometime next week.
Oakley rustled in his stall. Ella ducked inside and sat with him for a short time. He nosed her all over, searching her pockets for treats, and settled down when he found none. Ella left shortly after, but she didn't want to go to bed.
Instead she wandered off her property into town. The crescent moon hung, large and luminous, in the sky, the streetlights gave off a tranquil warm glow, and the air was warm with the coming summer. She walked past the Blue Bar and overheard the quiet strains of Griffin's guitar and the burble of conversation within.
Why not? she thought, turning and pushing open the door.
The late-night crowd was subdued and sleepy: Griffin plucked thoughtfully on his guitar, a half-empty tumbler of whiskey on the counter and one cowboy-booted foot resting on a barstool. Marlin sat with his elbows on the counters and his chin resting on his hand, watching Muffy, who was chatting with Cody, the reserved sculptor Ella had only met in passing. They looked up as the farmer came in.
"Land sakes!" said Muffy in surprise. "Aren't you up a little late, farm girl?"
"Couldn't sleep," Ella shrugged, sliding onto a stool. "Sounded like you were having some fun in here."
"Fun is what we do," Muffy agreed. "Can I getcha something? Warm milk?"
Ella made a face. "I have never met anyone who has ever liked warm milk."
"It's not about liking it. It's about drinking it anyway to get some shut-eye," Marlin grumbled.
"Well I doubt that works, too," the farmer returned with a shrug.
"Placebos can be a hell of a drug," Griffin murmured. The company nodded in agreement, each thinking of their own vices.
"Speaking of, farm boy," Muffy said, turning to Marlin, "Shouldn't you be getting some of that there shut-eye yourself?"
"I don't need much sleep to function."
"Uh huh," Muffy said, raising a perfect eyebrow.
Griffin strummed a forlorn, quiet chord and began to hum. His gravelly voice came to life, and he sang about a lonely man who had lost his only daughter. Ella listened with her eyes closed.
She awoke with a start at the end of the song as Cody stood, pushed his empty glass toward the bartender, and counted out some coins.
"Thanks. Night," he said shortly before disappearing.
"Bout time I should be going, too." Marlin sighed and pulled out his wallet. "Night, all."
"Be well," Griffin said, nodding to his departing patron.
Muffy pocketed her tips and sorted the money into the register. "Sure I can't get ya anything before we close up the bar, doll? I think you ought to get to bed, anyhow. Griffy's lullaby seemed to help you a bit there."
Ella shook her head. She felt so warm and safe and felt a strong urge to linger, but it was time to go. "Thanks. I should probably try to get some sleep. Wish me luck." She stood. "Thanks for the great company."
"Anytime, doll."
"Night," called Griffin.
The night seemed a little colder now that even the town's night owls had turned in. Ella walked slowly back to her farm, taking in the blue tranquility of the night before she had to face her bed again.
River rolled over in bed when she walked back through the door. Her head and limbs heavy with fatigue, Ella slipped into an old tank top and shorts and crawled under the light sheet. At once, her heart began pumping and her dozy mind came alive with adrenaline and fear.
Ella's dreams had been tormented by the Goddess since the incident at the pond a few days back, and each night, Ella barely slept for fear she would return. When would she get some rest?