Hearth and Harvest
Short
Stories by Julie Cox
Smashwords Edition
*****
Published by Julie Cox on Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by Julie Cox
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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*****
Contents
"Leatherskin"
"Red
Wolf"
"Eggshells"
"Hush Baby Hush"
"Written
in Stone"
"Reaping"
*****
Leatherskin
Juno didn't know when the machine awoke, when "it" became "he," when consciousness stole into its curling yellow springs, its singing hinges and hot, hissing pistons. There was not a singular moment of change, a time that was definitely before, undeniably after. Like any creation, any child, he was not what she had intended to make. Like many creators, she loved him anyway.
It started with the arthritis in her fingers. The cold invaded her bones with its icy tendrils, making them pop and ache. She was a blacksmith, a metalworker, a builder, so she built herself a solution. The machine, when she pronounced it complete, pleased her. The system of pulleys and levers struck with a strength and precision she no longer possessed; as its attachments and settings grew more complex, she came to rely on it for any application of force, and her work was better than it had ever been.
With higher quality work came a greater quantity of work as well. She found herself exhausted from hauling in coal and wood, moving the large raw metal pieces, working the bellows. Her eyesight began to fail, her hands shook, and the tiny details of her work became too difficult. Her solution was, again, to build - to expand the machine. She added a hydraulic system with a miniature, white-hot engine at its heart, shining brass gears with delicate little teeth, contracting and relaxing pulleys and pivoting joints. When it became necessary for the machine to move outdoors, she had to rebuild the door frame, for it was now indeed enormous.
Too enormous. In expanding her creation she made it clunky, inefficient. She miniaturized, combined functions, revised and reworked and rebuilt. Instead of growing, the machine now shrank into itself, becoming dense. There was no wasted space between its dizzyingly complex components. More and more, the machine began to resemble a person. She didn't intend it; the design and purpose demanded it. The multiple refining tools were better arranged into pivoting, flexible digits - fingers; the common joints upon which they worked became hands. She put them on an extending, adjustable length. An arm. She needed two, to keep the machine balanced. Two arms. The machine's mobility was limited on wheels, especially in the rocky countryside. Legs. Four legs would be too difficult to coordinate, to balance. Two legs. A strong, rib-enclosed central torso to house the steam engine, now miniaturized as much as she thought possible, supplying the energy for the brass and copper machine. Function demanded form, and that form was humanoid.
As the machine's shape grew more familiar, its lack of a head became more dissonant with the rest of its shape. Instinctively she looked for a face above its shoulders. Its absence created a void she yearned to fill, but as a being driven by logic she could not reconcile with herself the creation of a head with neither brain nor senses. She couldn't make him see or hear, smell or taste. Why create what in a person was a housing of the senses, when the machine was devoid of sensation? The answer was both simple and impossible - she had to give him a way to experience his world.
The answer came one morning as she bent over the fire, absently watching a few slices of bacon pop and sizzle in the grease. It came all at once, as powerful ideas tend to do, and her breakfast burned over the fire as she rushed to scratch the plan for his eyes and ears with charcoal on the wall. Later, she would never be able to explain how she did what she did. She would call it a moment of divine inspiration, and perhaps it was, for when she fit the head on him and turned it on for the first time, she felt as if a trickle of icy water had run down her back. She was sure when she looked into those artificial eyes, something in there was looking back at her.
Outside her home, beyond her packed-dirt yard, the other humans with whom she lived whispered about her. She noticed but did not mind. She knew why they murmured to each other, and she dismissed them. She didn't need them; she had her machine. He did almost all the work now, and she worked on him. In trying to make her work easier, she had produced her best creation, her life's greatest achievement. But while he was a joy to behold, the brass metal of his body was hard, and either too cold or too hot. So she learned to work leather, just for him, so she could touch him. She tooled the tanned hides with intricate designs, dyed them green and brown and tan, and stitched them with fine, tight sinew. She wrapped the skin around his brass body, and punched holes in the plates of his joints to attach them. She oiled the leather and polished the brass diligently, lovingly, so that the soot and muck of their work slid off him as it did her skin. When winter came, she didn't stoke the fire higher. She laid down next to her machine, her head on the leather padding of his arm, and curled up in the radiant warmth of his engine. The cold could not reach her arthritic bones now. He arched around her like a parent protecting a small child, and he rested too. At least, it seemed that he did.
On the days she took him into town with her, he grew withdrawn. By the next day he would be back to normal, so she didn't think anything of it. Then she left him behind one day, and he was alone. So was she. She did not realize until she was most of the way down the road that she had not been without him for many years. It had seemed so natural to have him with her. That day she was distraught, and hurried through her business distracted and unaware. When she got home, she laid her head with relief against his shoulder, stroked him and told him how she'd missed him.
The machine put a metal hand on hers. In his uncertain steam-voice, a hiss and a shudder of gears, he said, Juno.
It was not long after his first word that Juno found him up before her, packing tools and oil and coal. She asked what he was doing, but she knew. He was leaving. She crossed her arms and tried to stiffen her face, but she began to cry. Here was her whole life, about to walk away from her. He tried to comfort her; worse, he pitied her.
She tore away from him and ran, out of the house, out of the garden, to the edge of the woods, where she crouched in the heather and wept. He found her there, his steam-hissing joints and long morning shadow announcing his presence before his low, soft voice could reach her. He picked her up and rocked her in his leather-clad arms, and he sang.
But he still left. When he finally started down the road, she did not stop him, did not cry. She only ran after him once, to tuck brass polish, leather oil and a soft, clean cloth into his pack. When she turned and went back to her home, she closed the door. She did not even watch him disappear over the hills.
She stayed in her room and for days she neither slept nor ate. Then, she got up. She cleaned herself, dressed, made food. She began to work. Not on another machine; on something else, anything else, even though her long-neglected muscles and joints cried out in pain. It was a long time before she finished. But then, she had the rest of her life, so many long empty days to fill.
Juno was old, so old, and did not work any longer. She went to see the caravans when they came to town, to ask if anyone had seen her machine. They would remember him if they had, but always it was the same - shaking heads, no light of recognition in their foreign eyes. They came in their covered wagons with their splash-colored draft ponies and little wooden toys, spinning tales of far-away places and heathen customs, magic and work beyond wonder, none of which compared with what she had made with her own hands.
This time she did not even go to see them. Instead, she took her staff and walked down to the edge of the forest, where he had held her that last time. It was hard to get there now, both because of her own failing strength and the failing path, which was each season harder to find in the encroaching brush. Each whistle in the leaves and grass around her sounded like his voice, the clank-and-creak sound of his body moving. Today, she heard the hiss of steam stronger than ever before.
No - no, she really heard it this time! She hurried up the path, over the low garden wall. Louder, louder! And there, there was her machine! Her beautiful brass and copper, leather-clad machine with his luminescent eyes and steam-hiss voice! He was different - he had made changes of his own to his body - but he was still the same, still hers. She ran to him, clung to him, not caring if she brushed against a hot wire or a greasy joint. She cried and laughed, and so did he. He could laugh!
When she pulled away to look at him, she noticed something over his shoulder. It was another machine, made much the same as himself, but from a white-metal material and soft, pale blue leather. He motioned to this new machine, and it came forward. Unlike him, there was no hint of a soul in it, no gentle intelligence in its eyes. This creation was not alive; an empty shell. It was for her, he said. She shook her head; she didn’t want another one, a replacement. But he too said no, shaking his head, that head she had created under such consternation, such inspiration. No, he said, this was not for her to use, to do things for her. It was for HER.
Then she understood. He laid her out in the heather under the sun, laid out the blue and white golem. Juno closed her eyes. The wind moved, the sun warmed, and there came a change - a shift. She opened her eyes again, and saw the world in all different ways, not only light but now force, moisture, vector and scent. She saw waves of pollen, tides of insects, the powerful energy of the trees giving and taking from the soil and the sky. She witnessed the life-lights of animals darting through the bright shadows of the forest.
The machine held out his hand and she took it. She closed her white-metal, blue-leather hand upon his, and he helped her to stand. He held her close in her wondrous new form that fit to his because it was made to do so. He would show her the world as she never could have seen it before. For them, there would always be time.
*****
Red Wolf
Down in the hollow, in the deep snagging weeds, lived a girl with a hood as red as a cherry. She drank from the river and slept in the shadows; she ate what her mother had taught her was good. Roots and ripe berries, fresh-caught fish over the fire, nuts and raw honey and hares from the snares; she was a hunter, a fierce wild child, alone in the forest - but not alone enough.
She went to their graves when the moon lit the way, when it was as full as a doe's late spring belly. She left for them there the best things she'd found along the way - flowers and leaves and smooth, pretty stones. Her father, her mother, her dear baby sister, her big brother, his dog, and her Gram. She'd hid when the new valley-men came to take them away; she was silent, and had remained so ever since, except for when she came to the graveyard. She slid round the tombs like a slinky black fox, haunting their gravestones and playing with shadows. She talked with her Gram, like she used to do back then. She told her the season, the weather. She told her what the deer did, the rhythm of the birds, she told her which flowers bloomed and which tree was sick. But never did she speak of the men in the valley, the men who had taken her family away.
She wasn't surprised when her Gram answered back. What did she know of the dead, after all? She was happy to hear from the far side of things, though she didn't think Gram was so rough-spoken. She spoke with the shadows and told them her life, and the shadows responded so kind. When she left, she looked back, and promised the shadows that she would return with the moon. One month passed, then the next and the next, and she lived for her night with the shadows.
One night the shadows seemed thicker than before, and she wondered aloud at their size. The better to love you, they murmured and moved, and she embraced the dark shapes with a laugh. Not her Gram after all, but another wild beast, had been answering her lonely talks. A wolf in the shadows, with fur soft and gray, growled a hearty hello. She sank to his side, breathing in his wolf-musk, and curled her small fingers through his fur. He laid on the ground and barked like a laugh; the rest of the pack came to them. They were wolves - they were human - and then no, wolves again, and they shared their wolf-magic with her. Her new fur was red, as red as her hood. She ran with the wolves, as joyful as dawn, and never again slept alone. On four feet or two, she didn't much care, she knew from the first that she loved him.
She still kept her house, her family's old home, though the time that she spent there grew sparse. She swept out the dust and the cobwebs and mice; there wasn't much left for her there now. As her belly grew round she resolved at long last, she should burn it away to the ground. On the day of the fire, she sat on the hill, watching the smoke fill the sky. At last she was free of her childhood home, a wonderful life that had ended in blood.
She didn't see them as they circled the hill, her ears were so full of dead voices. They rose up like vipers and tied her up fast, the last little witch they had missed. Down they marched with her, down to the town full of men in the valley; they cheered as they lit their own fire.
The lumberjack came with his axe, newly sharpened, and spoke to the crowd around the flames. They wanted to see the horrors within her, no matter the nightmares they'd face that night, and all their lives. Who among them could look away? So swift and so sharp was the lumberjack's axe that at first the young girl thought he'd missed. The blood from her belly flowed down to the fire, and she screamed , and she screamed, and she screamed.
Down from the hills came her beautiful wolf, and the pack crying murder behind him. They tore through the town like a madness, a flood, spilling blood in revenge for the girl. Her wolf leaped over the flames and tore at her bonds, and took her away from the fire. Laid down in his lap, she reached out her hand, and touched their five beautiful pups. Five pups barely breathing, so tiny and mewling, slick with their dying mother's red blood. He gathered them up to take back to the woods; another she-wolf still could nurse them; but his wild Little Red lay still in the dirt.
*****
Eggshells
Kell was out weeding the garden the day she found the strange blue egg. Her mind was far away, her hands doing all the work, when she caught a glimpse of a texture that didn't belong. Shiny, almost smooth, tan and chocolate colored. She took another look. Against the crumbly black soil she could just make out a patch of snake skin. She wasn't frightened or surprised; with forty acres, she came across her share of snakes. On her farm she kept sheep and goats, chickens and a pair of horses, dogs acquired both intentionally and unintentionally, and a steady population of transient cats. The wild creatures stole bits of their feed, and sometimes the larger ones stole the animals themselves. Like the hawks, owls and cats, snakes were unsteady friends; they ate mice and rats, yes, but they also sometimes ate eggs and chicks, if Kell and her husband Mike weren't careful. The constrictors she left alone; the poisonous ones she killed.
She reached behind her for the fireplace tongs she had brought with her for just such an occasion. She maneuvered around to try to see more of the snake and make out what kind it might be, but no luck, it was almost entirely hidden in grass. She grabbed the bit of snake she could see and pulled, expecting perhaps a corn snake or a water snake, what with the stock tank nearby. This was not what she pulled out of the brush. A cottonmouth as thick as her arm struck up the length of the pincers before she even registered the movement. It did not reach her, but she dropped it anyway, yelping with surprise. The dog behind her woke up and began to bark. She grabbed the snake again before it could disappear into the thick grass, and again it struck up at her. She swung it against a rock, to no noticeable effect. She hit it again, and its back half hung limp and useless. The front half continued striking at her. She beat it on the rock, not daring to drop it and get a better grip. Finally it only writhed weakly, still flexing its jaws, still looking for a place to stab its extended fangs. Kell grabbed her iron spade from the gardening basket and stabbed through its neck, down into the dirt. The snake twitched, and was still.
The dog kept barking until Kell tied up the snake's body in a Wal-Mart bag and threw it in the metal trash bin. Sensing the drama was over, the dog returned to its patch of sunlight and went back to sleep. Kell sat in the grass, breathing through the pounding rhythm of the adrenaline rush, until she could move without shaking again. She poked through the grass, looking to make sure it was just one snake, and there wasn't another - its mate, or a nest. All she found was a sky-blue chicken egg.
She picked up the egg and stared, brow furrowed. Blue eggs came from Ameraucana chickens; she had but one Ameraucana, and that was a newly acquired black rooster who ran with her flock of Marans hens. An Ameraucana, she had been told, crossed with the Marans - who laid chocolate brown eggs - would produce chicks who laid olive-colored eggs. Interested enough to give it a try, she had acquired Elvis, the theoretical rooster, for the Marans. Now, it seemed, there were two unlikely possibilities - that Elvis was actually a very manly Elvira, complete with big red comb and a sickle-shaped tail, or there was some other Ameraucana hen sneaking around on her farm, laying blue eggs in her perennial beds. She had mistaken hens for roosters and vice versa before, and she had found wandering chickens before; there were enough farms around her for that. She shrugged and took the blue egg inside.
There was a large incubator in her sunroom, and within the incubator there were 37 eggs the color of a Hershey's chocolate bar. An egg candler sat on top of the incubator. Kell plugged it in and put the blue egg on the candler. The light from the candler lit up the interior of the egg. It was hard to make out through the dark shell, but she could just see the cobweb-fine network of blood vessels that indicated a developing egg. Kell's face screwed up in amazement. Not only had some hen snuck into the garden and laid the egg, it had apparently been brooding in there too. She wondered if the snake had run the mystery chicken off and had eaten all but this last egg.
She opened the incubator and put the little blue Ameraucana egg inside with the Marans eggs. It had come so far against all odds, she felt it would be a shame not to give it a chance, now that it had made it into her care. She shut the door, and for two weeks, she forgot about it.
Hatch days were very exciting. For a whole 24 hours Kell tried to ignore the peeping sounds from the incubator, knowing she could not open the door without changing the humidity, and hatchings were very sensitive to humidity changes. She did all her chores that day, the feeding and the mucking and the grooming of animals, staying busy in body so she could be idle in mind. She spent some time with her mother-in-law, Selma, who had lived with them off and on for the past few years as her health declined. Kell's husband Mike joined her, and though he didn't say as much, she knew he was thinking about the hatch too - more out of concern for the happiness of his wife than for the chicks. A good hatch would thrill her for weeks; a bad one was ... well, bad.
The dogs knew something was up too, and they followed her around the farm. At the end of the day, she went into the sunroom followed by her husband, followed by the dogs. She shooed the dogs out; her husband could stay.
"Mike, could you get that box for me?"
Mike handed her a cardboard box from the top of a clutter-filled shelf. She emptied it - the flotsam contents simply went back onto the shelf - and set it next to her feet as she opened the incubator at last. Two eggs had not hatched, had not even pipped. She pulled out 35 black chicks, some dry and fluffy as chicks were meant to be, hopping clumsily around and over each other, and some still a little damp and quiet, exhausted from their epic struggle out of the egg and into the world. She swept the big bits of eggshell out and peered into the back corners, squinting.
"What color will they be when they feather out?" Mike asked.
"Well, that's the question, isn't it? If Elvis is a rooster, and is the father, the pullets will be black and the cockerels will be cuckoo. If he is not a rooster, then that means that one of the Marans is not a hen, and they will all be cuckoo."
"Cuckoo is that black and white striped color the hens are?" Mike was not a chicken person.
"Yup. Oh, I'm sorry little bit, I didn't see you there. Oh, you're tiny ... " She pulled one last chick out of the incubator. She held him close to her chest, peering at him with knitted brows.
"That one ok?" Mike asked.
"I don't know," Kell answered. "His legs are a different color - oh I bet he's the Ameraucana! He'll be black if he lives, I think. Oh, but he's so small ... "
"He's not standing up like the others. What's with his tail?"
The chick lay curled in Kell's hand, as if it missed the confinement of the egg. His tail was bare of feathers and strangely elongated. His eyes were tightly closed. She would have thought he was dead if she hadn't felt him breathing.
"I don't know. I'll set him up his own brooder."
Mike picked up the box of Marans chicks, who peeped loudly in alarm as their world shifted and tilted, and they slid on unsteady legs into a pile. "Where you want me to put these guys?"
"In the brooder. It's set up in the craft room." She was
already going inside, cradling the one sick chick against her chest,
the 35 healthy ones almost completely dismissed.
The chick lived, but kept threatening to backslide on its progress. While the other chicks hopped around their brooder like bits of fluff on stilts, the black chick from the blue egg sat in the corner under the heat lamp, its eyes resolutely shut tight. Kell kept it in its own brooder, afraid it would be picked on, and checked on it several times a day. After two weeks had passed in this fashion, she stopped being afraid that it would be dead every time she looked into the brooder, and started wondering when it would perk up.
On a particularly bleak day, Kell went into the back room around eleven with a plate of food for Selma, her mother-in-law. She had thought of talking with Selma about the chick, since she was an old farm hand herself, but one look at the woman told her today was not a Good Day. The purr of the respirator machine filled the air with vibrations behind Selma's huffy breath. Kell thought she might be asleep until she sat up and scowled.
"Now you appear," she said.
"I couldn't remember if you liked mayo or mustard, so I brought the bottles," she said, setting the tray down on the cluttered side table. A plastic dish with a pair of earrings was brought too close to the edge and dropped; Kell picked them up and found a new place for them.
"Those are mine!" Selma cried.
"Yes I know, and here they are," Kell said.
"You've lost one!" Selma said, not even looking at the dish. "Henry gave me those and you've lost one of them!"
"They're both here," Kell said, holding up the dish for Selma to look, but she didn't. She just settled grumpily against the pillows.
"You know I don't like mayonnaise," she said. "I've been alone for days in here, starving, and now you bring me mayonnaise."
Kell picked up the bottle of mayonnaise and the tray from breakfast. "I was in a few hours ago at breakfast, Selma," she said. She couldn't resist as she left saying, "Have a nice lunch, sweetheart!" with just a touch of venom. She smirked to herself as Selma cussed at her from behind the door.
By dinner Selma was apologetic. Kell got her in her wheelchair and brought her into the dining room. She parked her at the head of the table, the big oak dining chair set awkwardly in the corner.
"I woke up a little bit ago with the sense that I'd said some awful things to you," she said to Kell, who shrugged.
"I know it's not you when you say stuff like that," she said, patting Selma's hand. Selma stared dejectedly at the green beans and fried chicken. She ate a drumstick and a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. "Have your chicks hatched yet?" she asked at last.
"Yes, they hatched" Kell said. "They're about two weeks old now and feathering out. Some are black, some are barred, so I guess that settles the question of who the father is. Elvis really is a rooster. I can't tell you how relieved I am at that! And the little hens from this clutch will lay olive-colored eggs."
"Should be quite an Easter next year," Selma smiled.
Mike smiled along with them.
"Though it does leave a mystery about that little Ameraucana egg I found in the garden," Kell said.
"What egg?"
Kell recounted the story for the umpteenth time of how she'd killed the snake and found the egg. Selma looked thoughtful.
"What does the chick look like?" she asked.
"Weird little guy. He's always been sickly. I don't know that I've ever seen him with his eyes open; just sits in the corner of the brooder, all puffed up and still. He's got the strangest tail I've ever seen; it's really long and completely naked. He's like a backwards turkey."
Selma laughed, even though Kell had told that joke to her several times. "Can I see him?"
"Sure," Kell said, "I'll bring him in after dinner's over."
Mike cleared the dishes; Selma and Kell watched him from the dining room. Kell smiled at his back. He had a nice back.
"He did a good day's work when he married you," Selma said.
"Thank you," Kell said, as she always did to this nearly-daily statement.
"Best day's work ever. Though his daddy sure didn't think so."
This was new. Kell turned in her seat to look at Selma, to gauge where this was coming from, to try to head off wherever it might go. "Is that so?" she said, even and measured.
Selma nodded. "We knew when we met you that you were smart. Too smart, Henry used to say. He said when a man married up, neither the man nor the woman would ever be happy. He said the man would resent his wife for being more than he was, and the wife would resent her husband because she could never be what she might have been otherwise."
Kell had no response to this. She opened her mouth once or twice, and finally managed to say, "Well ... Mike and I have been very happy."
Selma shrugged. "Oh, sure, sure. As it turned out you weren't as smart as all that after all." She jerked her thumb towards the stack of unframed canvases gathering dust in a dim corner of the living room. "You ought to have stayed in art school."
Kell breathed in and out a couple of times to steady herself. She stood up. "I'm gonna go get that chick," she said, trying to hide emotion with action.
She opened the little brooder in her bedroom and took out the lone chick, still huddled in his corner under the heat lamp, eyes closed. She picked him up. He fluttered a little and cheeped, the high, alien call of a baby bird, then was still. She touched his strange bare tail, which was now beginning to look scaly. Like a snake, her mind tried to fill in, but she squashed that creepy thought. She wondered if she should put some kind of ointment on it. His feathers were starting to come in everywhere else, a deep black that would turn turquoise in the sun, and she thought his legs might be green. She called him "he" because already he had the beginnings of a big, red pea comb. A pity; she really didn't need another rooster, especially a weird, sickly one. Stroking the little bird, she carried him into the dining room.
"What a tiny thing," Selma said.
"Yeah, he's hardly grown at all," Mike said as he came in, drying his hands on a dishtowel.
"He's feathering out though," Kell said. "Maybe his daddy was a bantam."
"More like a hummingbird," Selma said, plucking him up out of Kell's hands. She turned him over, looking at his feet and chest, and the chick cheeped loudly in protest. She examined his tail. "Well if that's not the weirdest looking tail I've ever seen on a chicken!"
"Isn't it just?" Mike laughed.
Selma shook her head. "I'd cull this one if I were you. A weak chick is a weak chicken."
"I'd like to at least give him a chance," Kell said.
"I can see how you'd think that. Oh, what strange eyes he has!"
Kell moved around the table. "Are they open? I don't think I've ever seen his eyes open!"
Selma handed the chick to Kell. "Aaand they're closed again. Ah well. They were strange; all cloudy, they looked almost like rocks. I think he's probably blind."
"Ohhh!" Kell said, holding the little chick to her chest. It snuggled against her and made happy chicken noises. "Poor thing! Well, maybe he'll just have to be an inside bird until he grows up."
"That's the most ridiculous - " Selma stopped. She looked perplexed, as if something were moving in her gut or her mind that she didn't recognize. She took on an alien expression, asymmetrical, and Kell was about to ask what was wrong when she realized what was happening - one half of Selma's face was slack. Her mouth drooped into a half frown, and fear shone through one eye; the other was too heavily lidded. Kell came around the table, dropping the startled chick into a chair, in time to catch Selma as she slumped out of her chair. Mike was already headed for the telephone on the wall, and a moment later was giving Kell instructions relayed from the 911 dispatcher until the ambulance arrived.
The tiny black chick with the naked tail perched in the chair, its feathers fluffed and its head drawn in, and waited to be remembered, returned to his home.
Kell dropped her head into her hands and sniffed loudly. Mike came up behind her and rubbed her back. "Honey, you ready to go up to bed?" he asked softly.
Kell shook her head and looked back at the computer screen. "No, I want to finish this."
"Are you still working on the farm's books? Because I assure you, it'll still be there tomorrow morning. You should get some rest; you've been up late every night since Mom died."