Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Legion and I met when I was twelve and he was fourteen, which some people would call children and some people would call the beginning of something inevitable, and I think both assessments are accurate in ways that don't cancel each other out.
We were not exactly children. Not if you account for context. Not if you factor in what his life already looked like by fourteen, what mine already required of me by twelve.
Me with my curated online presence and the particular loneliness that lives inside a life that is entirely, exhaustingly public.
Him with that scrappy, load-bearing stubbornness that comes from having nobody to depend on but yourself, from learning early that the world is not going to offer you anything it isn't legally required to.
But we were innocent at the same time.
Both of those things are true and I have made peace with the paradox.
It is a beautiful silo, I think. Objectively beautiful, in the way that things are beautiful when they have been shaped by weather, and time, and the slow patient indifference of decades rather than by anyone's intention or design.
The metal walls have a patina you absolutely cannot buy or manufacture, that particular blue-gray oxidation that comes from Montana winters stackin' on top of Montana summers until the steel itself seems to have opinions about the weather.
The solar-powered string lights Legion put up months ago are still lit, which surprises me every time and moves me in a way I can't fully explain, the fact that he thought to do that, the fact that they're still working, still waitin'.
The sky behind the silo is inky, and enormous, and salted with stars so dense and low they look almost architectural, and the Milky Way cuts across it like someone spilled something luminous and never cleaned it up.
It is, taken on its own terms, perfect.
I wouldn't want to meet him on the sly anywhere else on this earth.
But. And there is always a but when it comes to Legion and me, some subordinate clause attached to the beauty that reframes the whole composition.
It sits in the middle of an old craggy pasture that hasn't seen a productive season in probably twenty years, and it has a dirt floor, and the track Legion rides to get here is more of a deer trail than a road—two ruts pressed into dry grass by habit rather than engineering, more suggestion than infrastructure.
Which makes the whole situation feel, from the outside, like exactly what my brothers would call it.
Trashy.
That's the word. I know it is.
But if this is trashy—if this is what trashy looks like, lit lanterns, and solar fairy lights, and a cathedral of stars—then I suppose I can live with it.
Cassia stops without me askin' her to. She always does. She knows where we are the same way I do. She never needs me to explain myself. She just knows.
After I slide down off her bare back I slip her bridle off in one easy motion and she doesn't even wait. She already knows the assignment. She drops her head and wanders off toward what's left of the summer scrub, content, unhurried, perfectly certain that I'll still be here when she's ready, and I envy her that certainty more than I can say.
I cross the soft dirt with bare feet and hang the bridle on the tree limb the way I always do. Same branch, dead since the first time I ever came here, and still holdin'.
And isn't it funny, I think, the way dead things can be so perfect like that.
So useful.
So quietly, stubbornly beautiful.
I resist the urge to check my phone. To check the time. To pollute this IRL moment with things that don't belong.
I know I left very early, but I took my time. If he's comin', he should be here soon.
I go inside the silo and everything is just as we left it. The fairy lights glow faintly, like the limits of their usefulness is nearing their natural end. The little sage bundles inside have dried to a dark green color now. Even the blankets Legion brought the night of my engagement party are still here. On the ground, dusty and probably crawling with bugs.
Well, not bugs. Not this late in the year. The days are still warm, but the nights get cold. I'm not wearing a dress tonight like I usually do so Legion doesn't have to waste time taking my clothes off. Tonight it's loose faded jeans and a rust-colored Ashby Ranch hoodie with a jean jacket.
I draw the line at shoes though. I can't imagine comin' here in shoes. It's never been a winter place, but if I can't convince Legion to let me back into his life, I might have to rethink my footwear decisions.
I take a seat on the wooden ladder that leads up to the loft, settling my bare feet on the lowest rung, and prop my chin in my hands. Just thinkin'. Lettin' my mind wander back the way it always does in here, like the silo itself is a kind of memory palace, and every stone and splinter holds a different piece of the girl I used to be.