The next morning, Luke awoke long before Morel had. He quickly fed the rabbits and Ember. Button and Ember, as usual, quickly began to play with one another, promptly forgetting that Luke existed once they discovered their best friend was there.

  To his surprise that morning, Button and the other rabbits did not make any sort of fuss about him being the one feeding them. He had even bent down and petted them, speaking to each by name in a similar manner to what Morel did.

  He had caught himself while doing so, realizing he was not thinking of the balls of fluff as just rabbits; no, he saw them as individuals. Luke knew each by name and could now pick up on the details of who each of them was.

  The feeling was odd; Luke had never had pets. But having to take care of these bunnies made him feel warm, oddly fulfilled.

  Once the little ones were fed, Luke turned his attention to his first steps toward bridging the gap further with Morel. Or more accurately, he had the next half hour while cooking breakfast to hype himself up to ask Morel about something he believed she considered sacred.

  Luke was aware of many things about Morel’s passion for the arts: she had studied it and had a room upstairs dedicated to her process. Luke had never been inside the room, but had seen her going in there after dinner each and every night.

  She had invited him in there once, but Luke was so exhausted from digging holes for the saplings that he ended up passed out on the sofa that night. He had awoken late, covered by a hand-crafted blanket, with a note and water telling him to hydrate.

  In quick order, Luke set out to craft an excellent breakfast for Morel. She usually made breakfast, and he had been tackling every other dinner. Today, however, he was an early riser and would do something nice for Morel.

  Carefully, Luke moved his step stool around the kitchen, going from the fridge to the range and back again as he gathered everything he needed to make a simple but delicious meal. After a near-fall, hefting sacks of pancake mix and powdered nuts that were twice that weight, everything was laid out.

  As carefully as Luke could cooked pancakes to the most perfect golden brown. The nut-and-flour mix steamed heavily, filling the room with a heady aroma that made Luke’s mouth water. He placed each gargantuan, chest-sized flapjack onto a plate and into the warmed oven.

  The morning went with a steady, predictable rhythm until the time came. The sounds of Morel’s hooves clopping on the hardwood floor echoed through the halls and pierced the sounds of frying vegan bacon sizzling on the stovetop.

  Luke flew off the step stool, leaving the spatula to weigh down the soy-based abominations as they finished cooking. He clambered up onto the countertop and retrieved one of the mugs sized for Morel, then filled it with sharp, black coffee.

  After sugaring the liquid, Luke was about to place it on the table, so it would be ready and waiting for her, but the instant the beer-stein-sized mug touched the checkered tablecloth, Morel rounded the corner.

  All of Luke’s preparations and self-assurances that he could be honest with Morel and himself nearly flew the coop when her attire made his jaw slacken.

  Tight daisy dukes hugged her wide hips. The strained fabric barely had enough room for her thighs. And the loose upper button hinted at a golden bush.

  Looking up from the shorts, Morel’s stomach was bare, taut, and lean. The same cream color of her cleavage trailed up from the waistband, ending abruptly as a curtain-like shirt draped from her bust. Just like her shorts, her shirt left nothing to the imagination.

  Luke wrenched his gaze away from her chest the moment he noticed her hard nipples peaking at the caps of her mountainous bust.

  “Good morning,” Luke swallowed, setting her mug down.

  “Good morning, sug, you’re up early,” Morel yawned, using her hand to brush at her tousled golden hair.

  “Yeah, I wanted to cook breakfast,” Luke said, returning to the stove to remove the vegetarian bacon from the plate and pull out the pancakes.

  “Thank you, Luke,” Morel smiled, sitting down at the table, and hoisting up the mug. She drank slowly, letting the warm liquid flow through her being. She breathed deeply as she set the coffee down. “Mmm, that’s perfect.”

  “I tried to make it the way you do, I’m glad I did alright,” Luke replied, putting the pancakes onto plates, and then the plates onto a platter.

  Morel looked at Luke with near reverence as he set a plate of nut pancakes before her. Her mouth watered as the hot steam wafted up and burrowed deep into her mind. The stack was marvelous and was the proper amount for her size.

  When Luke had first arrived a few weeks earlier and tried to cook for her, he had absentmindedly only cooked for two humans—barely enough for her alone. Today, however, the food might as well have been mountains.

  In reality, Morel doubted she could finish it all. It truly was a haul.

  With little hesitation, syrup flowed, coffee was gulped, and a second round of vegetarian bacon was cooked. They did not speak during their meal. Morel was too enraptured by the syrup's sweetness and the full-bodied cakes, coupled with the perfect bitter kick of coffee. Luke, however, sat silently, internally struggling to build the courage to open up just a bit. But he was in no way doing so well. He slowly ate, but it did nothing to soothe the gnashing teeth in his gut.

  After he had nibbled at half of his meal, Luke stuck to coffee, having lost his appetite entirely.

  “So what are the plans for the day?” Morel asked, mouth stuffed full of pancakes like a squirrel with nuts, in the same manner she had every other morning.

  Luke glanced away, shifted nervously in the chair, and sipped his coffee, but did not reach for his data-slate, something that Morel noticed. Luke had thus far been very predictable; easy to guess what he would do next—any deviation from the norm was an enigma.

  Even his waking up early to cook breakfast surprised her.

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  After a good long while of her peeking up at him, seeing his nervousness grow, Morel could not take it anymore. Morel set her fork down and tentatively reached across the table, resting her hand atop Luke’s. “Are you feeling alright?”

  Luke froze like a statue, eyes darting straight toward her hand. His shoulders slumped, and he sighed, the same type of sigh one would expel when surrendering to an inevitability.

  “Y–yeah,” Luke replied, the words feeling like pulling barbed wire through his mouth. “Just a lot on my mind.”

  “Oh, is there anything I could do to help?”

  “Well…uhhhh. I kinda wanted to see your art,” Luke admitted.

  She tilted her head slightly, confused for a moment, having expected him to admit that he was beginning to think the farm could be salvaged. But once her mind had caught up with reality, she lit up like a star.

  Never in all of Luke's life had he seen a woman who looked so excited about something. The only time he had ever seen anyone nearly as excited was back on Mars when the coalition recruiters had passed a group of slum-dwellers by, choosing to take another family's only son to send into the meat grinder of war.

  “Really?” Morel stood up, clutching tighter to his hand, pulling it against her bosom while leaning over the table.

  “I mean, yeah. I was too tired the other day, but I really do want to see them,” Luke replied, trying to extract his hand and failing to do so.

  Without wasting a moment, Morel pulled Luke along, guiding him upstairs, past the bedrooms, and toward the door at the end of the hallway. The door slammed open, and Morel paused, looking back at Luke for a moment, all of her excitement fading for the moment. “Please don’t laugh.”

  Returning her gaze without any hesitation, Luke smiles softly, showing no teeth like a beast ready to strike. It had taken all of his will to even ask; doing something as cruel as laughing at Morel’s art was unthinkable.

  “I won’t.”

  As gently as a flower's bloomage, Morel stepped to the side and guided Luke into her sanctum. Her safe space. Like many creatives, where she dwelled and practiced her craft was uniquely hers and hers alone.

  Not unlike the rest of the home, it smelled of wood, almond, and bliss, but unlike there, the unique tang of paint and graphite tinged the edges of the senses. Offering a more grounded, tangible nature.

  It was a burdensome odor. One that could only be generated from the sweat and tears of someone who had given their all and then some to their craft.

  Easels sprouted like trees throughout the room, each depicting its own unique representation of worlds that could not exist. They were ethereal depictions of abstract art, which, when one's eye lingered on them as subjects, one could almost understand each of them.

  Morel's works were fleeting, flighty. In their very design, one could not appreciate their beauty by looking directly upon them. Only by redirecting your view adjacent could the true art be known.

  Hues the mind of a man entrenched within numbers could not fathom crawled from each masterful brush stroke: cobalts, sables, saffrons, ocher, and a million other tones Luke could not describe, dared he attempt to catalog them.

  Only a grand master armsman of the brushstroke could dare to create such works.

  Standing in a gallery that ran the gamut of peaceful sanctity, willy ruckus joy, and deep-seated agony, Luke was nearly brought to his knees. Each time he looked at one painting, the meaning —the actual image behind the abstraction of the ten others—flooded his mind.

  Being right there, standing before Morel's artwork was like looking into the eyes of a god. The void that stared back. Touching the soul of another.

  “Morel…your art. It’s…it’s…” he pinched his brow, scrunching it in frustration, his mind fumbling through every diction he knew to find the one that appropriately praised her skill. “It’s…fuck…it’s amazing, and I don’t even feel like that does it justice.”

  She blushed. “Come on, Luke, it’s not that good. It’s just some paintings.”

  “Some painting?” He said, offended by her own estimation of her art. “Morel…these are masterpieces-no, more than masterpieces. It’s… awe-inspiring.”

  “My teachers said that too,” Morel admitted, nervously, looking around at her paintings, recalling all the times they had told her such creations would not bring her profit, bring a life for her to live and love.

  Yet, no matter how many times they demanded she change or urged her to place her talents into more profitable pursuits, she held her course. Like the rising of the sun and setting of Luna, Morel was assured in her practice.

  She saw beauty in the odd, the strange, in representing things with queer shapes, colors, and patterns. An idea that her professors could never grapple with. Like her parents, they did not see the vast expanse of possibilities her vision held.

  They held the ideas of profit and the need for capital deep within their souls. Be it her parents and the farm, or mentors demanding she write what's profitable. But as Morel gazed upon Luke, seeing his auburn eyes burn with her vision, only vindication reigned true.

  Luke, standing before her, seeing her art in its most raw gestation, tugged at her soul; his virgin gaze cut at her like a knife, but equally held a mythic golden apple of immortality.

  If he condemned her work as little more than hogwash, nothing but nonsense put to a brush, Morel felt she would crack; shatter under the pressure of yet another critic of what she believed to be angelically wondrous art forms.

  Despite being the artist, Morel, like Luke, still found pause when analyzing her creations.

  She did not think when laying a stroke on paper. Morel felt it all. She gave her soul to the art. So much so, when looking back in hindsight, it felt like she was looking at another person's work.

  “I’m sorry if you don’t like them,” Morel defensively said, scanning her paintings, keeping time with Luke's gaze.

  “No, they're beautiful,” Luke uttered, running a hand over a painting, as if questioning its reality; feeling that his hand's touch would suddenly be transported to Morel’s imagination.

  He softly caressed a depiction of Golden Fields, the vibrant pastel holding all of his attention. “Have you ever considered selling these?”

  Morel shook her head as Luke moved from one easel to the next. “No, I figured no one had any interest,”

  “I’m certain you could,” Luke said, looking at a painting of Grey Rock. That was shockingly well recreated.

  “We could set up a table at the summer festival,” Morel suggested. “Maybe selling some of them might help us get some extra money.”

  Luke scanned the rest of the paintings, amazed by them. There was no way these wouldn't sell. He could see half of these in his father's mansion on Mars. Collectively, Morel's works were worth the farm and then some to the right buyer.

  “When is the festival?” Luke asked.

  “A month or so away,” Morel said. “It replaces the usual weekly barbecue.”

  “Let’s try that then,” Luke said, turning around to find Morel shockingly close to him.

  With little hesitation, Morel grabbed Luke and pulled him into a hug. All her caution be damned, Luke was the first person in years she had shown this place to, had shown her heart to. That he thought it was not just good, but good enough to sell was unmistakably wondrous.

  Unlike every previous attempt from Morel to get closer to Luke, he did not run. He did stand stock still, like a deer in headlights for a moment, but Morel leaned down and whispered to him, “You can hug me back, sug,”

  Without hesitation, Luke reached up and wrapped Morel's wide hips in his arms, accepting the hug and giving his own. He rested his head against her, her warm almond scent filling his lungs. Her heart drummed in his ears, powerful and steady.

  But standing there, all alone, with just her, made the entire world fade away. It was just the two of them, and the gentle comfort that both cared for the other without rhyme or reason. Although they still had a long way to go before they were truly together, that little moment was the first time either could believe the other was there for them wholeheartedly.