Before the Severing

# Chapter 1: Permission Denied

The clover by the south fence is blooming.

I notice this the way I notice most things lately, slowly, from very close, with my hands already in the soil before my mind catches up to what I'm looking at. The white heads bob in a breeze I can barely feel down here at ground level, and the bees are thick in them, fat and purposeful, their hum a lower register than the one I carry in my chest. Two different songs. They don't clash. I press my thumb into the dark earth between two clover roots and feel the warmth answer back, steady and deep, the way a sleeping animal breathes when it knows you're there and doesn't mind.

Three weeks home. Twenty-one mornings of waking in my own bed with the quilt Cob mended pulled up past my ears because Thistle keeps the cottage windows open at night now and the mountain air pools in the low places of the room like cold water. Twenty-one mornings of Bramble's weight on my ankles, her breathing slow and heavy, her fur warm through the blanket. Twenty-one mornings of not being anywhere else.

I should be grateful. I am grateful. I am also planting thyme starts into the herb bed with the careful, repetitive focus of being not thinking about the things they are not thinking about.

The thyme goes in at six-inch intervals. Thistle told me the spacing was wrong yesterday and I told her thyme doesn't read books and she told me neither do I and we stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment not quite smiling at each other in a way that felt like progress.