A Steady Situation, Part 7

To smell the ocean breeze, the perfume in the air, and the food cooking on the beach, one could feel it all merge on their skin and fall with their sweat. She nudged him, encouraging him to take another deep breath and he made some joke about how she needed to get back to work.

What a long voyage! It’d been a slow acclimation process, and just enough time to learn how to live as guests in their culture, if only for a short period. It was difficult not to treat it like some silly little excursion, when the excitement was bouncing between them like bolts of static in a stormcloud. But, she had a job to do, and they both knew that.

As she went back from the window and to her desk, he hung there for a moment, taking in the view. It was a strange thought, the world being so large, and his garden now somewhere as foreign to the moment as this place instinctively felt to him while he was back home. He appreciated the chance to learn different perspectives and mindsets, but was already feeling the fatigue. His mind went to dinner, and how unfamiliar he was with preparing the ingredients on offer. He had decided to bring some food along with them, and was excited trying a new fusion.

Still leaning on the windowsill, he glanced back over at her carefully laying foundations in a scribbling and complex format. Ever since they had been back from the building site, she had been aglow with a dense stream of ideas, and he felt a deep sense of infatuation towards her.

As he closed the blinds and meandered over to the kitchen, she also peered back at him. She mused for a moment that it was his steady, committing temperament that influenced her to take the temporary job. She’d always felt somewhat out of place in her senses, and he was getting her into trying new things, like handling the building material physically. She thought again, for a moment, then returned to her task.