The ice disappears and the snow returns as we weave our way through the labyrinth of trees that greet us once we make our way through the opening. When I ask how Adam knows where to go, he tells me that there’s a path underfoot that we’re following, but I’m almost certain that I can feel myself stepping onto the roots of multiple trees, as though we’re not following any path at all.
I follow Adam’s lead as well as I can, but every so often I feel him stop and wait a few metres ahead.
“You shouldn’t have brought me with you – I’m so slow,” I tell him truthfully, and I watch as he laughs and walks back to meet me. Covering both of my hands with his, he lowers his face to mine and smirks, his eyes never diverting from mine. “I’m serious,” I say, but this time I’m focused on his smirk, his stare, his closeness and I find myself smiling within seconds of speaking.
When Adam doesn’t turn around and continue walking, I recognise the shift in our situation from a few days ago. Whereas before he would have offered one last smirk before walking on, he now stays where he is, slightly crouched, his lips still curved upwards, his eyes still focused on mine, his hands still covering my own.
“Can I ask you a question?” He whispers almost inaudibly, and I can feel a part of me crushing as our tiny moment ends. I nod, though, and bite my lip. “I asked you to go to the Highland Games with me as a kind of reserve, I guess right?” I slowly nod my head, unsure of what he was getting at. “What if I was to ask you as my date for Thursday?”
I didn’t know what Adam was going to ask, but that certainly wasn’t what I had imagined. Perhaps he was going to ask if I was too out of breath to continue, or maybe he was wondering if I’d had a good day… I didn’t expect – well – that. The surprise quickens my heart rate.
“What if you did?” I challenge him, but my confidence fades as Adam leans closer than he’s ever been before.
“What would you say?” he asks and, despite his smirk, I hear the intrigue in his voice. “Hypothetically, of course.”
“Of course,” I reply, my face falsely serious, but I know I’m biting my lip as I speak. “I guess it would be rude to say no, don’t you?”
“I think it would be incredibly rude!” I find myself giggling as Adam grins, but as he pulls his face away from mine, I can hear my laugh becoming strained in disappointment. “Besides,” he continues, standing up to his full height, stretching out an arm to me, “I’ve already entered us in for a reel, so I kind of needed you to say yes.”
The threatening sky has deserted us an hour later, leaving only the undisturbed snow as proof of today’s blizzard. Once we started moving again, we were walking for fifteen minutes longer until we couldn’t venture any further; a small beech fence divides us from an open void which looks as though it’s a two hundred feet drop into a sea of icy rocks below.
Beyond the emptiness, is a summit of a mountain, tall and sharp like a spear, and I realise how high we have been without noticing all this time.
“Not bad, eh?” Adam asks, and all I can do is nod, my eyes still absorbing the sight before me. The fading light would normally concern me, knowing we have to walk back to Lochnaheife as the sun begins to disappear, but the pink light peeping out behind the mountain top has me breathless and wanting more. As I continue staring out, I imagine myself extending my hand, grabbing a ball of light from above and putting it in my pocket to burn later.
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But I don’t do anything of the sort, and instead turn to my right where Adam’s voice had come from a few minutes before. But he is no longer there. Instead, I see him sitting on a picnic blanket behind me, his knees supporting his chin, his hands curled around his ankles; my fingers entwine behind my back as I watch Adam staring back at me, smiling as though there’s nowhere else he would want to be.
“I thought you’d like it,” Adam notes, nodding towards the light. I walk towards him and sit down on his left, my legs crossed like a child’s. A little croak is all I allow to escape, as my eyes return to the view again.
As we both continue gazing out into the openness ahead, I feel Adam’s arm wrap around my waist, and I raise my own hand to meet his.
I guessed that when the pink light disappears, there would be nothing worth staying here for, but even as the last rose dies in the sky, there is still something oddly beautiful about a winter’s evening sky that forces us to stay silent and simply appreciate everything around us.
And I do.
We don’t move or speak for almost an hour; we just watch the clouds forming unseen shapes and birds singing unheard lullabies. The little birds singing are perched on thin branches that look as though they will break any second – only, they don’t – on a surprisingly large tree about five metres behind us. We watch as other birds, larger birds with a teal breast, circle the summit, three circling clockwise, one anticlockwise.
My eyes remain on that one lost bird that is trying harder and harder to catch its friends - but it can’t. They pass them, they glance at them, but it always seems too far away. As I watch it try harder and harder, but fail nonetheless, I find my head resting on Adam’s shoulder, and he wraps one arm around my neck, his palm lightly touching the side of my head in comfort.
“They’re not usually here at this time of year; they tend to go south when the weather starts getting colder,” Adam explains as the lost bird stops for a second and perches on the summit, watching the others circle around him. As the three others come to meet it, the four of them struggle to fit on the apex ahead of us, and we watch as two of them fall five metres or so, before flapping their wings and regaining flight.
When I feel my body relax, I’m suddenly aware of how tense I’ve been.
“Come on, it’s late. Let’s get back.”
The walk back is even harder than earlier, with our old footprints icing over making it harder and harder to find safe footing. Every so often I find myself slipping, and Adam expertly catches my arm, or my waist, steadying me just before I fall face-first into the snow.
We both squint to enable us to see properly, the moonlight not projecting deep enough into the highlands for us to make an easy job of the snow. I look up once, perhaps twice, during the hour walk, and have to pause to absorb the sight. There are no strange colours swirling in the night sky, but the richness, the plainness of the empty canvas above, dotted randomly with twinkling white balls of light stop my heart momentarily. Adam always stops too – sometimes just for my benefit, sometimes to admire it himself.
Just as the view of the familiar track leading to Lochnaheife and Adam’s bungalow comes into view in the distance, a flash of light above startles me. It happens so quickly that I think my tired eyes have just deceived me, but when Adam chuckles quietly at the sky, I realise I didn’t imagine anything.
“You saw that, right?” I ask. My head still titled upwards. I hear Adam’s whispered reply, and I look over to him to see a sight of awe on his face.
“I’ve never seen one before,” he tells me, and I smile at his reaction to something I previously thought was mythological. Adam steps behind me, wrapping both his arms around my waist, and resting his head on my shoulder – like I had done an hour before. “Make a wish,” he whispers directly into my ear, and I shiver like I seem to do every time he comes near.
I close my eyes, rest my hands on Adam’s and take a deep breath…
I wish that nothing takes me away from here. Ever.
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A/N: Sorry about the wait ... Again. Also, sorry about the length of this chapter! I didn't want to overload it with stuff that is planned for the next one :) Hope you liked it, and please please vote and/or/if you want to be nice comment with niceness ... xx
