Free Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda

pooled glow. It was very quiet; there was only a faint hissing from the stove. And it was black outside, the darkness draping over the windowpane like a thickened curtain, the mirrored reflection lost.
    “Cold out. Windy, too,” she murmured to herself.
    My head drooped again, a load of sleep weighing it down. I thought I’d be too drowsy to talk, but the words seemed to slip easily off my tongue. My voice, cupped in the elbowed cave of my arm, was deep and mature. “I walked Naomi to the bus stop. We got into a little argument. No big deal. But it got late.”
    The chair creaked as she settled herself into a more comfortable position.
    I paused, wondering if I should say more. “And then coming here, I just…”
    “Yes?”
    “I took a shortcut. Through the woods.”
    “And something in there spooked you?” she asked.
    I paused. “How did you know?”
    “You’ve got little scratch marks across your face. Just tiny ones. Something that branches would do if brushed against quickly. You were running,” she said matter-of-factly.
    I touched my face gingerly and traced the thin etches. “Nothing spooked me,” I said.
    “Really?” she asked. Her moist eyes were depositories of sympathy.
    “My legs feel like jelly now.” I stretched them out. “I’m sure they’re going to ache tomorrow.” She didn’t press. She only sat quietly, hardly there to me, but I knew she took measurement of my every word. For whatever reason, she cared for me. Back of all her eccentricities, there was something in her that reached out to me. I shut my eyes tighter, seeking a deeper darkness to escape into.
    She went to the stove and spooned out more soup from the dutch oven. “More?” she asked, sitting back down.
    I shook my head, too tired to even lift it. But I could hear her drinking the broth, a faint sipping sound and then the swallow down her throat.
    “I remember in my youth when I would spend whole days out in winters much harsher than this,” she said. “Used to out-play my brothers, even, strong and hardy boys but no match for me. Three, four hours later they were no good for the outdoors, would have to go whimpering home for some fire and hot cocoa. Me—” she chuckled to herself, “I was still good for another hour. Only had to come in when the day grew dark and couldn’t see beyond my arms anymore. Mama yelling at me to come in and get something to eat.”
    “You hardly go out now, though,” I heard myself saying.
    “Most of the time you stay in your room.”
    She said nothing.
    “What do you do all day?” I did not mean to be harsh. It was only that I was tired and didn’t want to use a great many words. “Don’t you get bored at all?”
    “I think a lot.” Her voice, too, was soft, bereft of self-defense. “At my age, there’s a library of memories to peruse. I think back to places I’ve been to, friendships I’ve shared. My husband, those years we spent together. I’ve had some happy years, and I like to reflect upon them.”
    “Don’t you ever want to go out? See this town a little? Meet people?”
    “After a while,” she said, “you see that every place is essentially the same. You come of age, and suddenly all places resemble each other. And people, too, for the most part, are basically the same, but even more so than places. All cut from the same cloth of gray. There isn’t much left out there that I haven’t already encountered in some shape or form. Most of it unremarkable and mundane, some of it downright ugly.” She sighed softly, unconsciously. “My best years have already been lived.”
    It was quiet again. I heard her gathering the bowls and utensils together. “I can’t wait to see the world,” I whispered.
    She stopped what she was doing as if to encourage me to continue. She was always doing that, trying to get me to talk more. So much of her actions were calculated to enter into a conversation with me. But never overbearingly. She was always careful not to smother