Page 37 of A Wolfe in the Woods

“Guess you didn’t bring everything.” He was crouching on the blanket, peering up at me carefully, his eyes shrouded with worry. “Come here. Sit down. Get centered.”

I lowered myself, slow, still recovering. “Are you making fun of my emergency kit again?” I tried to joke. “I was being practical.”

“Says the woman who almost launched herself off a cliff.”

I let out a shaky laugh, spreading my hands on the softness of the blanket. It smelled like laundry detergent, the kind they used at the Hollow.

He mused, “Would have gotten you a nice headstone though.Here lies Blanchette, a willing sprite. In the end her flight failed, tried as she might.”

“That’s not funny,” I said.

He blinked, raising a brow. “It’s not?”

I blinked.

Then I burst out laughing. Sharp, loud, and completely unexpected.

Even I was surprised by the sound of it. And once I started, I found I couldn’t stop.

“Oh, my gods,” I gasped between laughs. “That issostupid, it mightactuallybe funny.”

Jonathan dryly added, “It’s the delivery.”

“No! It’s the fact thatyousaid it.” I shook my head, giggling. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you make a joke…and of course it involves my untimely death.”

He shrugged, apologetic. “Yeah, sorry. Death isn’t funny.”

That just made it worse.

I tried to smother the next laugh, but it escaped, like air let out of a balloon. And within seconds we were both laughing. Not polite chuckles but deep, hysterical laughter that we couldn’t stop.

We tried to quiet down…but every time our eyes met, it only made it worse.

Eventually it faded…and I felt so much better.

“Thanks,” I said after a while, wiping the last of the tears from my eyes. “I think I needed that.”

Jonathan sat, his arms circling around his drawn up knees. “I think I did too,” he replied.

The brief stretch of silence was oddly comfortable. For a while, we just sat. I leaned further back on my hands and looked up. The air up here felt different. The last of the sunset had faded, and with it, the world had expanded. The sky above us was like a velvet cloak, heavy and dusted with diamonds.

It was startling, how clear the stars were. Not faint or buried behind smog like in Graymore…but sharp, vivid. Theyburned. They shimmered with sharp, ancient clarity.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe without asking for permission. And that was sad, wasn’t it? I hadn’t realized how caged I’d felt all the time until I’d been released from it.

I realized something else too.

“Hmm, my allergies,” I said softly to myself. “I thought they’d be worse out here, but…they’re gone.”

I tilted my head back, eyes tracing the sky. “It’s so clear, you can see everything. Not like in the city.”

“Nothing gets through that light pollution,” Jonathan commented. “Cities blind themselves trying to outshine what’s already up there. Most don’t know what they’re missing. Most have never seen anything like this, which is a shame.”

I glanced at him, watching the faint starlight catch the edge of his sharp profile.

“Didn’t grow up with much. But I had a telescope. Learned most of the constellations on my own.” He tilted his head back, slowly tracing invisible lines with his sweeping gaze. “Our planet sits way out on a spiral arm of the galaxy, and at its very center is a massive black hole. In our corner of space alone, there are billions of stars andcountlessplanetary systems.”

I tilted my head, listening to him speak. There was a string of awe in his voice, one I was fascinated by.