Free quintessence. by Sarah Buhl

people can use it to sell crap to people, but I want to focus on products that are useful. There can be good in everything, right?” she asked as she wound her swing up again to spin.
    “I suppose you’re right. It just depends on the person’s intention. If someone does something to help people or to lead them toward growth and not to use them—then yes, that is what’s important no matter what you’re doing. But, the flip side is doing something for your own gain. I saw the same thing with people in the military. There were those of us that joined because we wanted to help people; we wanted to defend our country. Then there are those that yes, they wanted to defend our country, but they wanted to just shoot at people. Any chance they could get, they shot. They made the rest of us look bad and unfortunately, those are the ones you hear about in the media most of the time,” I said, spinning my own swing around.
    We sat in silence for a time as we both turned our swings around. I stopped mine and just watched her. I watched as she pulled my pieces into alignment, waiting to be sewn all the way together.
    “Come here,” I said, putting my hand toward her as I stood from my swing.
    I walked us to the merry go round and climbed on it. I stopped her in the center of it. “Okay, wrap your leg around there to balance yourself. Does that feel okay?” I asked, and she smiled at me with a nod.
    “Now, just yell if I need to stop,” I said.
    I jumped down and started to spin it. I didn’t run with it; I used my upper body strength to get it into motion. I didn’t want to go too fast, because I also wanted to watch her.
    She began with her hands on her face and her head tilted back, closed eyes to the sky. “I love this feeling,” she said and her voice became muffled by her mittens. She laughed into her hands and it was the most breathtaking thing I’d seen.
    “Put your hands out, Maggie,” I said, and she laughed louder as she dropped her hands to let them trace across the air that spun around her. Though the bottom half of her didn’t move, she let her hands dance through the wind.
    As I slowed the motion of the merry go round down, she stilled her hands. She kept them out stretched, her fingers spread wide, and then dropped her chin, giving me a majestic smile.
    “That was so much fun. Thank you.”
    “You are most welcome, Maggie.”
    “I think that’s a healing moment,” she said, as she unwound her leg from the center bar. She stepped to the edge by me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Yes, this is a healing one.”
    She breathed in and let out a deep sigh and I heard the tears in the sigh. “I just want to find my present tense, too,” she said.
    “You will—be patient. Let it happen and stop resisting it. That’s something I learned. Remember what the Borg said about resistance on Star Trek , right?” I laughed.
    “It’s futile, I know,” she said with a laugh as she released our hug, but kept her hands on my shoulders. “I will stop, and just let it happen. I will allow my present tense to come. That’s my homework—present tense and personal space?”
    “Yes, that’s your homework. If you can’t do what you’ve always done, you just try something new. You try doing it a different way. Get creative. I know you can,” I said with a pinch to her chin.
    “Will do,” she said, and leaned in and kissed my cheek. She breathed in deep when she felt me tense at the motion. My fingers tightened on her forearms as my eyes closed. It was the closest I had been with a woman since I was home after my second deployment. I forgot what it felt like to be touched and intimate with another person. I had kept it at bay, scared of how I’d react.
    She let go of me and smiled. I read in her smile that she didn’t feel the moment or the intensity I did. She looked at me with the innocent smile a friend shares.
    In my mind, I set the needle on the table next to my pieces and decided I needed to