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| Warnings | TODO |
Rachel leans back in her rocking chair, gazing out at the swiftly thickening blanket of snow covering her garden. The wind whips flurries past her window, blocking the view out altogether now and again, and even though she's perfectly warm inside she draws her shawl more tightly around herself. The kettle, sitting atop her squat iron stove, chooses that moment to start whistling. Rachel picks it up and slowly, deliberately pours a stream of near-boiling water into her teacup. She prefers to take her time with the little rituals of her life, and doubly so in weather like this. Her favorite blend of roots and leaves, most of them foraged from her own land, swirls inside her metal tea-strainer and she pauses to inhale the faint floral scent rising from her mug.
Standing, she pads over to her small kitchen and deposits the still-hot kettle, saving the water and its warmth for a second steeping later tonight. A half-dozen biscuits are still cooling there, almost ready to be tied into a bread bag and stored somewhere safe for eating over the next couple of days. Baking over a wood stove is far more difficult than using a gas or electric oven, but Rachel doesn't mind that - after a few experiments she's gotten quite good at it, she thinks, and she can't remember the last time she made a batch that weren't at least edible.
She hums a few bars of an old folk song to herself as she unhooks a hurricane lamp from its hook attached to a rafter and sets it on the small table by her rocking chair so that she'll have better light to read by. She's just picking up her book when she hears Cassie's sharp bark from just outside her front door.
She stands abruptly, dashes the few steps to the front door, and pulls it open, ignoring the snow that immediately begins drifting across the threshold and melting on the floor. Cassie, like Rachel's other dog Max, is a stocky and powerfully-built Alaskan Malamute, for whom this kind of snow probably barely even registers. She ought to be sound asleep in her doghouse, warm and dry, but instead the big sled dog frantically waves her tail the instant she sees Rachel, barking again and motioning for Rachel to follow her.
"Okay! Okay, I'm coming," Rachel says. She shrugs off her shawl and on her heavy winter parka, then stamps her feet into her boots. Gloves and a hat complete her preparation for the weather. She checks that she has her knife on her belt - she does - and scoops the hurricane lamp off the end table to see by. After a moment's reflection, and another glance at Cassie, she also picks up her rifle, checks that it's in good order, and slings it across her back. There aren't many things that would have the dog this worked up on a night like this, and it's better to be prepared for every eventuality.
She steps outside, raising the lantern a bit, but Max is nowhere to be seen. That's odd, she thinks - usually the two dogs are all but inseparable. She can't hear Max's deeper barks, either, which she'd expect if there was an animal in distress somewhere or a predator threatening her livestock. Cassie bounces in the snow a couple of times, waiting for her inexcusably slow human to get going, then starts jogging towards the barn, keeping just close enough for Rachel to keep her in sight despite the blowing snow.
Christ, it's cold, Rachel thinks to herself. Despite her heavy winter clothing and the scarf she immediately pulls up to cover her nose and mouth, the wind seems to cut right through her, and she marvels at how dark it is for being not even five o'clock yet. Dark comes early this far north, she thinks, mostly to distract herself from the way her breath is condensing and then freezing on the fabric covering her face.
It's only a couple of hundred meters to the barn. Once it's clear that Rachel is headed that direction with all due haste, Cassie stops barking and races ahead, disappearing inside the building. Rachel approaches, then pauses as she sees one of the barn doors is slightly ajar. She's certain she shut it tightly earlier when the snow started to fall, to keep the sheep safe from the storm. Laying one hand on the hilt of her knife, she gently pushes the door further open and steps into the barn, lantern leading the way.
In the flickering orange light, she can see that all of her sheep are clustered in one corner of the barn, obviously in some distress, and Cassie is standing by them, pacing restlessly. The dog's presence seems to be calming them a little bit, but they're still clearly out of sorts, and a couple of them bleat plaintively at her when they see her. She takes a few more steps forward into the barn, and then she spots Max - the tip of the dog's tail is sticking out from behind a stack of hay bales in one corner. She walks over, uneasy, and that's when she spots a flash of grubby pink skin nestled underneath her curled-up dog.
As soon as he sees her, Max shifts slightly, and Rachel gasps. The sled dog had been curled up around a tiny child, probably seven or eight at Rachel's best guess, who is shivering and seems to be nearly unconscious.
"Move, buddy," she says to Max, and the dog grudgingly obeys, taking a couple of paces back so he can stand next to Rachel and watch the girl. Rachel clips the hurricane lantern awkwardly to her belt and leans down to pick the girl up. She's light - should a kid this age be this light? Rachel doesn't know, but now that she's gotten a closer look she can see the girl is deathly pale and her lips are almost blue. She pulls the girl as tight as she can against her chest and jogs outside, back into the storm, heading for her cabin.
In a few minutes, she's setting the girl down on the floor by her stove, close enough to gradually warm her without burning her. Both dogs insist on being let inside, and the moment Rachel does, they lie down next to the child, pressing their fur against her. Rachel crouches down over her and assesses things. She's still only semi-conscious and seems delerious, but her shivering is gradually subsiding and Rachel thinks there might be a bit of color returning to her face already. She's dressed in a torn and discolored parka, a bit too big for her, and what look like jeans and rain boots, which are very much not appropriate winter clothing. Rachel frowns, picks up the blanket from her rocking chair, and drapes it over her. At least she's in shelter now with a proper fire, so both she and her damp, freezing, decidedly non-weather-proof clothes will be warming up soon.
At a loss for what to do otherwise, Rachel slumps against a nearby wall, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, while a distant part of her brain starts chewing on the puzzle of how on earth a kid ended up in her barn during a snowstorm. Nervous energy thrums in her veins, and she gets to her feet to busy herself with putting her rifle away properly. She's glad she didn't turn out to need it. She finishes doing that and turns just in time to see Cassie cautiously lick the girl's face, which seems to stir her awake. The girl blinks, opens her eyes, and starts trying to sit up.
"Woah," Rachel says. "Easy there. Probably best if you just stay lying down for now."
The girl seems startled, but only for a moment. She rolls herself onto her side facing Rachel, draws the blanket more tightly around herself, and gives a jerky nod.
Rachel approaches her, cautiously, the way she would any frightened creature. She crouches down low.
"What's your name, kid?"
The girl's teeth are chattering, but she says: "K-Kristen."
Rachel smiles at her. "Well, Kristen, I'm Rachel, and you're in my cabin. You got a really bad chill out there but between the fire, the blanket, and these two" - she gestures with a hand at Max and Cassie, who are still curled up next to her, sharing their warmth - "we'll have you warmed back up in no time. I guess you can probably use something to eat and drink as well?"
The girl gives another jerky nod, and Rachel ducks over to her kitchen. She returns with a mug of still-warm water from her kettle with just a dash of honey added to it, and one of the biscuits from her bread bag with a little butter. She sets both on the floor next to the girl, giving the dogs a meaningful glance.
Kristen pulls herself up a little more until she's sitting crosslegged with Rachel's blanket wrapped tightly around her and her back to the fire. She picks up the mug, takes an experimental sip, then quickly drains the entire thing. The moment she sets the mug back down, Rachel takes it and refills it for her. The girl breaks off a chunk of the biscuit, pops it into her mouth, and swallows after hardly chewing at all.
"Easy there," Rachel says. "No hurry on eating, and you gotta chew properly so you don't choke on it. There's more if you finish that one and you're still hungry, but just take your time."
"Okay," Kristen says, voice small. Rachel sits back, her own tension easing now that the girl's conscious and eating. Now she just has to figure out what the heck to do next.
"So how come you were in my barn?"
Kristen swallows. "Um. I was trying to walk home from school, and it started snowing so I thought I'd better - better take a shortcut if I could, but then I got lost and it was so cold and it was getting dark so I... yeah. Um. I went in your barn."
Rachel frowns. "Whereabouts is school, and whereabouts is home?"
Kristen mutters a pair of addresses, and Rachel has to go rummage in one of her drawers for a map of the nearby streets. She lays it down on the floor and points. "Here and here?"
The girl nods, then looks away from Rachel as though embarassed.
Rachel does some quick calculating. "Hon, that's a seven mile distance if you follow the road. It's nearly five even cutting across my land. You walk that often?"
The girl shakes her head, now definitely refusing to meet Rachel's eyes. "No, but my - my mom couldn't pick me up today so I had to walk."
"Like hell she couldn't," Rachel snaps, then feels a hot wash of shame when the girl flinches at her tone. "Sorry," she says, softening her voice. "I just - I mean, you could've died out there, kiddo. If not for these two" - she reaches down to scratch Max behind the ears - "you could've frozen to death right in my barn. Your mom can't just leave you to walk by yourself in a snowstorm."
The girl doesn't say anything to that, but she sets the rest of the biscuit down on the floor and seems to curl into herself. Rachel picks the biscuit up and offers it to her again.
"Eat up, kid. Once you're good and warm and you've got some hot food in you, we'll hop in the truck and go find your mom. I'm not mad at you, not at all, and I'm sorry if it sounded like it before. I'm sure she'll be glad to have you home."
Kristen nods to that, but there's something worried in her eyes that Rachel doesn't like the look of one bit.
Even though it's only a few miles, it takes Rachel more than fifteen minutes of cautious driving through the deepening snow to get to the address Kristen gave her. She follows a long, winding driveway, the headlights of her rugged old truck picking out ranks of gnarled and twisted trees marching away on either side of the road into the gloom. She glances sideways at the girl in her passenger seat, and shivers in sympathy as she imagines the poor kid trying to walk home through these woods. Rachel's a good thirty years older than her and did nearly twenty years in the Army, much of it in some of the most remote and coldest places in the country, and she still wouldn't relish the idea of being outside on a night like tonight, even with proper gear. She feels another flash of hot anger, but she takes firm hold of her temper and pushes the feeling away.
After one final turn, the lights on her pickup reveal a cleared area amidst the woods with a small house standing to one side and a beat-up sedan sitting in a car port by it. The house and car are both utterly dark, with no signs of life at all from within. Rachel flips her high beams on, but the brighter light doesn't reveal anything further.
"This it?"
The girl next to her nods, looking out the window but not at the house. Rachel reaches for her and lays a hand gently on the girl's shoulder.
"C'mon. Let's get you home, kiddo."
Rachel hops out of the truck, leaving the engine running, then helps Kristen down from the passenger door. The snow is deep enough to overtop the girl's rain boots and immediately starts soaking into her jeans. Rachel grimaces, turns, and starts up toward the front door with Kristen following close behind her.
She knocks on the door, waits a minute, then knocks again. Beside her, Kristen is already shivering in her inadequate winter clothing. Just as Rachel's considering simply pushing the door open and walking in uninvited, it swings open and Rachel finds herself looking at the startled and frightened face of a teenage girl. She's a bit shorter than Rachel and a heck of a lot skinnier - despite the ratty grey sweater and blue jeans that hang overlarge on her frame, it looks like she's practically skin and bones. She blinks in the glare of the truck's high beams.
"C'n I help you?"
Her voice is thin, reedy, like she's struggling to breathe a bit. She draws her arms in closer around herself, shivering in the cold. A pang of sympathy tugs at Rachel's heart - whoever this girl is she's clearly no better off than Kristen is.
She gestures with her head towards the girl. "She live here? Is her mom here?"
The teenager, squinting in the bright light, finally spots Kristen. The instant she does, her eyes widen and Rachel can see her tension and fear ease a little.
"Krissy?"
Without saying a word, the little girl rushes forward and wraps her arms around the teenager, who hugs her back tightly. She rubs the girl's back affectionately, then makes a motion for her to head inside. Kristen lets go of her and disappears inside the darkened home, leaving Rachel alone with the teenager.
"I, uh," Rachel begins. "I found her in my barn, nearly frozen to death. She was trying to walk home. From school. By herself."
The teenager's face reddens, and tears well up in her eyes. "I'm sorry about that, ma'am - I'll make sure she doesn't do it again."
"No," Rachel says. "I don't care about that. If she needs my help, she's more than welcome to just come knock at my door any time. Same goes for you, by the by, or anyone else who lives around here. I'm more worried about the bit where she had to walk home on her own. Is her mom around? You look kinda young for it to be you."
The teen girl winces. "Normally mom would go pick her up, but she's... in a bad way. I tried to wake her up, but it's like - well, she just needs her rest."
Rachel frowns. "Yeah, that's not really going to cut it, kiddo. A girl - her own kid - nearly froze to death on her account today. Go get her for me, if you please, so I can have a chat with her. I'll wait out here if need be."
The teenager swallows. "Um, okay. I'll - I'll go get her up."
She pushes the door shut, leaving Rachel standing on the porch under the glare of her truck's headlights. The house is still utterly dark, which she finds surprising. It looks like they're hooked up to the grid, but maybe grid power's out because of the storm? She looks around a little more closely, and notices that one of the windowpanes is smashed and seems to have been covered over with a tarp or something on the inside. Huh.
A couple of minutes later, the teenager reappears at the door. "She's, um, out. I'm sorry, ma'am."
Rachel peers past her into the living room; there's a broken-down couch facing what looks to be an old flatscreen TV, but not much else visible in the way of furniture. Rachel has an unpleasant feeling there isn't too much else in the entire house.
"You have power in there? And heat?"
The teenager nods. "We just - mom likes to keep it down low. Saves on the bills."
"I bet." Rachel gives the teenager a thoughtful look, taking in her grimy skin, greasy hair, and the slender, hunger-sharpened cast of her cheekbones. "You have a name?"
"Alice," the girl says, plainly.
"Well, Alice," Rachel says. "I'm Rachel, and I'm your neighbor, such as that is, in" - she points off into the darkness - "roughly that direction. You ever need anything, or your sister does, you can come find me any time. Understand?"
Alice nods jerkily, eyes wide. Rachel gives her a small smile. "Now - I also know some medicine. Was a medic in the Army for some years. If your mom's out of sorts, you mind if I take a quick look at her?"
The girl bites her lip, clearly nervous, then shakes her head. "She's just, uh..." Her voice fades to nearly a whisper. "She's just real drunk, ma'am. Like real drunk."
Rachel's expression hardens. "That happen often?"
The girl looks away and doesn't say anything, but gives a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
"Alright. Well, Alice, here's the... situation, as I see it. It looks pretty dark in here and I don't feel any heat from inside your house, so it's probably going to get real chilly overnight if it hasn't already, especially with that broken window. I ain't gonna make you come with me, but I've got a warm cabin not too far away with places by the fire enough for you and your sister, or even all three of you if you want. Just offering."
The girl swallows, a mix of confused emotions playing across her face. Eventually, she says: "we'll be fine, ma'am, but thank you."
Rachel tries to keep her skepticism off her face. "Alright then. I'll come by tomorrow, see if I can have that chat with your mom. You stay warm, you hear?"
"Yes, ma'am," the teenager says with a nod.
"Goodnight, Alice," Rachel says, turns, and trudges back to the truck, her heart in her stomach.
Rachel worries the entire way home, and by the time she pulls her truck up in front of her cabin, she's made up her mind. She hops down, boots crunching in the snow, and both dogs circle her, waving their tails excitedly. She reaches down to rub Cassie between the ears and hangs her heavy parka up to dry just inside her front door.
She walks into her kitchen and scoops up three glass jars of stew off a shelf. Since her home doesn't have a refrigerator, most foods she wants to keep for longer than a few days needs to be salted, smoked, or canned. Whenever she makes a big batch of soup or stew or chili, she has to go through the laborious process of splitting it into jars and pressure-canning them properly to keep them safe to eat. She cracks open three of the jars of stew, pours them into one of her cooking pots, and places it atop the stove. She forces herself to be patient while the stew gradually comes up to temperature, then grabs a pair of big thermoses from one of her cupboards and carefully tips the stew into both of them.
A short drive later, she's knocking softly on the door of the run-down old house next door. Alice pulls the door open and seems very surprised to see her. Behind her, Rachel can see Kristen peeking at her over the back of the couch, and she gives the younger girl a smile.
"Here," she says, handing Alice one of the thermoses without explanation. Alice accepts it wordlessly, and Rachel offers her the other one. Alice peers down at it, apparently confused.
"It's beef stew," Rachel says. "Good and hot. I figured you... well, I wanted to make sure you had a good hot meal, even with your power out."
Alice pauses. "Oh," she says eventually, still looking down at the two thermoses. "Uh - are you sure?"
"Yeah," Rachel says, "of course. I got home and I - I got worried, you know. About you and your sister going hungry. So."
The teenager blushes, still not looking at Rachel's face. "Th - thanks, ma'am. Really."
"No worries," Rachel says. "Here, brought you these too." She hands Alice a handful of her biscuits in a small cloth bag.
Alice takes those as well, and sets them down on the floor of the cold dark house, then shoves both hands in the pockets of her jeans. "Thanks," she mutters. "You don't have to."
Rachel smiles. "Don't worry about it, really. Neighbors should help each other out. I'll come grab the thermoses and stuff tomorrow morning. You have a good night, okay? And stay warm."
Rachel makes herself a quiet breakfast, baking a couple of flatbreads in a pan atop her stove and tossing in a few slices of salted beef for some protein. She'll make a shopping trip later today, which means a few days of fresh fruit and vegetables (or at least, what passes for fresh up here), and she's already looking forward to that very much. Her normal diet is plenty nourishing and healthy, but it's definitely a bit monotonous surviving on what can be stored without a fridge or freezer.
As she finishes her meal and sips her coffee, she thinks again about whether living this way is really worth it. It'd be fairly straightforward, if not exactly easy or cheap, to get grid power run out to her cabin. A fridge, a freezer... she could even get an electric water heater instead of needing to warm water for her baths on the stove. The idea of such luxury momentarily pulls her into a daydream, but she shakes herself out of it and stands up to clean her plate. She likes the simple life, really, even though it's a bit more work and a bit less comfort.
It looks to be a beautiful sunny winter day outside, so even though it's quite cold the idea of starting on her daily chores is very appealing. She dresses for the weather and steps outside onto the front porch of her cabin, sipping the rest of her coffee and considering her day. Perhaps it's finally time to spend a good few hours working her way through the -
She hears something and cocks her head. Is that a car? She peers into the trees down her own driveway, and sure enough, a moment later she sees a small, beat-up car struggling down the rutted road. Rachel frowns, then she suddenly recognizes the car that was parked at the run-down house last night. This'll be Alice and Kristen's mom, then, most likely. She tenses, and one hand instinctively checks that she still has her knife on her belt.
The car pulls up in front of her house, and a woman steps out. She looks like death warmed over, all bloodshot red eyes and stringy black hair hanging loosely down her back. She's skinny too, angular of face, figure swallowed up in a grimy green ski jacket and camo pants. She stomps through the snow up towards Rachel's house and stops at the foot of her front steps.
"Y' Rachel?", she says, a slight slur on the edge of her voice.
Rachel sticks her hands in her pants pockets, willing herself to stay calm. "Yep. What can I do for you?"
"My girls told me you were round our place last night. Dropped off some food an' such for 'em."
Rachel nods. "I did." She wants to say more - wants to yell that if this woman was doing her job, she wouldn't have had to - but she keeps a bridle on her temper and just waits. Picking a fight won't help anything, and will probably make a lot of things a lot worse.
The woman scowls at her. "We can get along just fine on our own. Don't need any charity, not from you or anyone else. Just 'cause you're all" - she gestures at Rachel - "you know, don't mean you're better than us."
Rachel doesn't rise to the bait. "I'm no better than anyone else, lady. I'm worse than a lot of people I've met in my life, in fact. No judgment at all from me. I just - I saw a neighbor who seemed like they might be in a tight spot, with your power being out last night, so I brought over a hot meal to tide you all over."
The woman huffs, a flush creeping up her neck slightly. She looks down at her feet. "Well, I - okay. Thank you for that, I... I guess." She doesn't look up.
"We're still gonna talk about your daughter winding up in my barn last night, though," Rachel says, tone firm. "You can't let her walk home on her own like that, especially in winter. She could've died. I mean that."
All the color drains from the woman's face. "She what?"
"They didn't tell you? Well, your youngest tried to walk home from school, across my land. The dogs found her frozen half to death in my barn, taking shelter from the snowstorm. You can't - I mean, she deserves better than that. Any kid does."
The woman's face crumples abruptly, and she falls to her knees. "Oh my God," she sobs, hands pressed to her face. "I - I - I can't..."
Rachel comes down the front steps and crouches next to the woman. "Hey," she says, reaching for her. The woman looks up at her through tears, and Rachel finds she has no idea at all what she meant to say next. Instead, she lays a hand on the woman's shoulder and rubs gently through her jacket until the woman's sobs eventually subside. She wipes her face with a hand one last time, then looks up at Rachel. This close, Rachel can taste the scents of alcohol and stale sweat - and can see what looks like a slender black collar, just visible under the neckline of the woman's sweater.
"Look," Rachel says. "I get that you're struggling. I'm not judging you for that. I just - I can help. If you want. You just have to ask."
The woman gives her a skeptical look. "That easy, huh," she says, sarcasm edging her tone.
Rachel shrugs. "You don't have to trust me if you don't want to. I'm just offering. I don't need anything in return."
The woman frowns at her. "Sure. Well, thanks I guess." There's a silent moment, and then she brightens up a little bit. "Oh, hey, I brought you your bottles and stuff." She straightens and starts walking back to her car.
Rachel smiles. "Thanks. Would it bother you if I come by occasionally, bring you some more of my stew and biscuits and such? I've got too much of it. You'd be doing me a favor, really."
At that, the woman gives her a small, amused smile. Under the years of hard life sitting on her, the grime, and the bloodshot, swollen eyes, Rachel realizes the woman must've once been rather pretty. "Sure," she says. "That'd be okay."
"Good," Rachel says. The woman hands her the thermoses and the cloth bag the biscuits were in. Rachel is pleased to note that all of them are empty, and that the two girls must've eaten well last night. The woman opens the driver's side door, slides into the seat, then pauses, one leg hanging out. She looks up at Rachel, thinking, and then says:
"I'm gonna - I have to do better. I have to. For my girls. Thank you for the - the gentle kick in the butt... ma'am."
Rachel smiles at her. "Of course. Drive safe."
Esther is profoundly grateful to be finished driving. At the end of three weary days on the road, winding her way northwest from Calgary, she's finally here: Morgan's Cove, which is both a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and the largest settlement for fifty miles in any direction. This whole area of northern British Columbia is as close to uninhabited as anywhere gets, and Morgan's Cove manages to earn "spot on the map" status with a population under two hundred.
Still, it's cute. The town center, such as it is, is a small handful of buildings clinging to both sides of a single gravel road as it winds its way through the vast and trackless alpine forests marching away endlessly to either side. A small creek crosses the road here, running beneath a quaint little arched stone bridge, and that must've been enough of a prompt for someone to build a settlement here once upon a time.
She pulls off the road and into a gravel parking lot, in front of a sprawling, handsome wooden building with a weathered sign out front reading THE TRADING POST. She hops out of her truck, boots crunching, and stretches to see if she can work out the knot that's been building in her back. She loves her old Toyota, but it's not exactly comfortable to spend seven hours a day in for days on end. At least she made it here in one piece, and from the looks of the tarp-covered truck bed, she even made it here with all her possessions. If all goes well, this will be her home for the next... however long.
She walks slowly around her truck, taking in her surroundings. Oh! She can actually see the church, a hundred meters or so down the road, peeking out from around a curve. She feels a new wave of excitement rising in her, with an answering rush of nervousness. Everything, this whole plan, suddenly seems far, far too real. The entire time she'd been packing up and saying goodbye to her seminary friends in Calgary it had seemed like a grand adventure, a trip back to the far north to do something good in the world, but now a cold feeling is settling into her stomach and she feels kind of sick. Oh God, she thinks - she has no idea what she's doing here. Why did they send her, of all people? God! She's going to screw it all up, she can already tell. She's going to...
She hops back into her truck, blinking back tears, and folds her hands in her lap to pray. Give me strength, Lord, give me strength...
She's pulled out of her spiral of anxiety by the sound of another truck pulling in next to hers. She straightens up and takes a deep, shuddering breath. She can do this. She will do this, and when she's not strong enough, God will carry her. She has work to do.
She hops back out of her truck, rubs her eyes a little bit, and marches into the Trading Post. The inside is dimly-lit and surprisingly cozy, with a long serving counter along one wall, a handful of tables in an open seating area, and a few aisles of products stretching towards the back. From the look of things from the outside, and according to her atlas, it's also an inn, and apparently the town's post office. All things to all people, she supposes. Behind the counter, there's a white-haired man with the kind of leathery skin that speaks of a lifetime spent working outdoors and deep smile lines. He grins at her and gives a little wave.
"'ello stranger! Welcome to the Post! And to Morgan's Cove too, I'm guessing."
Esther smiles back at him. "Thank you. It's good to finally be here. I'm Esther, and I'm moving here."
He raises two bushy white eyebrows. "Moving here? What for?"
"I'm, um, a minister. I've been sent up here to reopen the church. I saw it down the road on the way in."
"Oh, wow," he replies. "Well. You'll have your work cut out for you, no mistake there. It's been the better part of twenty years since it closed, you know. Probably in pretty rough shape now... and I doubt there's much money the folks around here can spare to pay you, if you don't mind my saying."
Esther shrugs. "I figured. I'm here on a grant from the denomination, and we still own the church, so at least I'll have a little money for food and a place to sleep. What else does one need, really?"
He chuckles. "Fair enough. Well, you'll find I have the best prices in town on everything I've got."
"From the looks of things," Esther remarks, "you seem like you actually have the only prices in town."
The old man grins. "Also true. But look, ... Esther, right? The folks around here are - they're in a really bad way. They don't have much, and what they do have, they need to stretch as far as it'll go. You know what I mean? So I sell for as little as I can afford to."
"That's very good of you," Esther says, meaning it. "Well, I'll be glad to be bringing what money I can into your town - and hopefully some spiritual comfort, too."
"Now that, I imagine, you'll be able to find some takers for. We've definitely got - oh, hello there, Rachel."
Esther looks over her shoulder to see another woman who's just entered. She's a couple of inches shorter than Esther, but considerably more muscular, and she carries herself upright, proud, like she owns the room she's just walked into.
"Morning, Gordon," she says. "Gas on pump two, please, and I'll need to pick up a few things." As she turns to pick up a basket, she seems to finally notice Esther. "Oh, hello."
Esther gives her a shy smile. "Morning."
"New in town?"
Esther's beginning to detect a theme that she suspects appear quite a few times as she meets the residents of her new home town. "Yup," she says. "Moving here, actually."
"Huh," the other woman says. "Well, nice to meet you. I'm Rachel." She shuffles her basket to her other arm, then sticks a hand out for Esther to shake. Esther squeezes back firmly, doing her best not to stare at the woman's hair, which is a flood of coppery-red that looks soft and inviting. Her eyes flick down to the woman's neck, but of course it's bare - she could've guessed that from her presence alone. She feels herself flush slightly, and it's only then that she realizes she's probably been silently staring and holding the woman's hand for at least a couple of seconds.
"Esther," she manages, giving herself a mental shake. She can't be making eyes at dominants like this if she wants to minister to people - even dominants who are admittedly quite... striking. "I'm, um, here to reopen the old church. Ma'am."
Rachel brightens, apparently ignoring Esther's abrupt honorific. "Oh! That place closed before I moved here. That's exciting. It'll probably need quite a bit of work, though. It's been boarded up the whole time."
"Yeah, I expected that," Esther says. "I have a bunch of tools with me, and I know my way around a lot of - that kind of stuff. Plus, if I need to, I have some money to hire help. Hopefully I can find a couple of handy folks locally."
Rachel gives her a small smile. "I bet you can. Well hey, good luck, and lemme know if there's anything I can do for you."
"Of course," Esther says. "I'm just gonna head over and check it out now, actually. See how things look."
Rachel's smile widens. "You want a bit of company?"
"Oh, I wouldn't want to trouble you."
"Nah," the domme says. "It'll be my pleasure."
Before they're even inside, Rachel can tell that Esther's going to have her work cut out for her. The church is a handsome little log building that she must've driven past a hundred times by now without ever really paying much mind to. Now that she's standing in front of it, she can see that the paint is badly weathered, and she's already starting to entertain serious doubts about the roof. Esther, for her part, seems unbothered. She grabs a crowbar from the back of her truck, pries the nailed-on sheets of plywood off the front doors, and pushes them gently open.
"Woah," she says, stepping inside. Rachel suppresses a smile and follows her. Inside it's quite dark with all the windows still boarded up, and Esther digs a small flashlight out of one of her pockets. Swirls of dust, kicked up by their entry and by the place's first breath of fresh air in probably fifteen years, dance in the narrow beam of light. She turns slowly, staring up at the ceiling, and her eyes widen as the flashlight catches the stained-glass window above the altar and long-dead colors blossom once again.
"Oh my," Esther murmurs. "Well, let's go have a look back here." She walks slowly, reverently, past the altar and lightly pushes a small door open. Rachel follows her through, and Esther's light reveals what must have once been a little apartment for the resident minister. Every stick of furniture is missing except for a squat iron stove in one corner, presumably too heavy to be worth moving. Esther takes a step inside and her boots raise more swirls of dust from the deep drifts on the floor. There's a back door which Rachel guesses leads outside, but when Esther tries it it doesn't budge.
The other woman turns and gives Rachel a huge smile, just barely visible in the reflected glow of her flashlight. "I think the first things to do," she says, "is get the boards off all the windows and doors so we can get some light and air in. That'll let us have a proper look to see what kind of shape it's in. I'm encouraged that there's so much dust, though." She starts back towards the front door.
Rachel follows. "How come?"
"It means it's been pretty dry and undisturbed in here, which means it's probably still weather-tight. Hopefully that means there isn't any rot or mold or anything. We'll have to take a deeper look later though."
Esther unfastens the ladder attached to one side of her truck and leans it against a wall of the building.
"Spot me?"
"Sure," Rachel replies. Esther scales the ladder quickly, crowbar in hand, and Rachel has to sternly remind herself not to stare as she does so. Instead, she focuses on holding the ladder steady. Esther is about as far as possible from Rachel's stereotype of a small-town minister. She would've expected a grey-haired old man, leathery and tough and probably stern, or at least reserved. Esther, on the other hand, is young - younger than Rachel herself is, certainly - and quite pretty, even underneath her grey coveralls, and she moves as though she's just barely containing her own energy. It's quite fascinating to watch. Rachel abandons the idea of not staring and watches Esther prying a slab of plywood loose.
A short while later, the church's windows and doors are all uncovered and Esther has made a neat stack of very weather-beaten plywood. She grins at Rachel, hopping up onto one of the running boards of her truck to grab a water bottle out of the cab. "Thanks for holding the ladder," she says. "And your company. Um. You really don't have to stay, though. Unless you want to."
"I can stay a bit more. What can I do to help?"
"Well," Esther says, offering the water bottle to Rachel. "Next steps are to get as much of the dust out as we can, and to start checking the inside over for any water damage, rot, or leaks. You mind sweeping while I do the checking?"
"Not at all. Just hand me a broom."
Esther pulls one off her truck. "Here you go, ma'am."
She follows Rachel inside with the ladder, leans it against one of the walls, and climbs up. Rachel pauses for a moment, considering where to start. With sunlight now streaming in, she can see that this was once a beautiful space. High windows on both sides admit winter sunbeams, catching swirling motes of dust, and the stained glass above the altar casts pools of brilliant color across the pews as new light floods through it. Beneath the blanket of dust, Rachel can now see a floor of rich, dark wood boards and walls of well-laid logs. She takes the straw broom Esther handed her and starts sweeping from the back towards the open front door.
Esther breaks the companionable silence first. "Thanks for being here," she says, simply, while peering at an area of the rafters with her flashlight from atop her ladder. "And for... welcoming me to your town. It means a lot."
"Of course," Rachel says. "Do you know anyone else here already? I sorta figured that you'd have come here because you were from here."
Esther shakes her head. "No. I'm from Dawson City originally, then I did seminary in Calgary. I'm a stranger here."
"Lucky for your church they picked a minister who's apparently pretty handy," Rachel remarks, chasing some particularly difficult dust out of a corner. "The church where I grew up, the minister was some old guy, must've been eighty years old. I wouldn't have liked to see him up a ladder."
Esther giggles. "That's the main reason I'm here, really. Before seminary I did trade school - carpentry - but I've always been pretty good at fixing whatever needs to be fixed."
"How'd you get from trade school into seminary? If you don't mind my asking."
Esther doesn't reply for a moment, and when Rachel looks up at her, she's standing at the top of the ladder, looking thoughtful. "You don't have to say," Rachel says quickly.
"No, it's... it's alright. It's just. In small towns everyone knows everything, you know? I'm thinking about how I want the people that are going to be my congregation to know me, and what I want their first impression to be."
Rachel nods. "I'm not a gossip, if that's what you're worried about. I don't really know anyone to gossip to in the first place."
Esther gives her an appraising look, then a small nod. "I trust you, ma'am, so I'll tell you. When I was just about fifteen, I... I ran away from home. Wasn't trying to go anywhere in particular, just away from there. I wound up in Calgary, homeless. The - the church took me into one of their shelters, and these old nuns started fostering me. I think it was pretty clear to them that I wasn't really nun material, so they sent me off to learn a trade instead. I liked that, was good at it, did it for a couple of years, but I also... I've always been pretty religious, ma'am, and I guess I just felt the pull of it, so. Put myself through seminary, got ordained, and now here I am."
Rachel looks up at her, throat suddenly dry. Somehow, all she can think about is the woman standing in front of her as a frightened, lonely teenager, homeless in a big city.
"Come down off that ladder," she manages after a few seconds.
Esther gives her a quizzical look, but obeys. "Ma'am?"
Rachel takes two quick steps towards her and pulls her into a hug. "I don't - I don't know. Just... I needed to give you a hug."
Esther hugs Rachel in return, rubbing a soft circle over her back with one hand. "I'll never say no to a hug."
"That's good," Rachel murmurs, laying one hand on the back of Esther's head and gently tucking the sub's face into her collarbone. She squeezes Esther tightly one more time, then slowly lets her go. Esther gives her a wide-eyed look, cheeks slightly pink.
"Sorry," Rachel says, suddenly embarassed to have impulsively touched her in such an intimate way. "I shouldn't have - I don't know what I - I was just... I was just thinking of you being homeless, when you were younger."
Esther, saying nothing, draws Rachel back into a warm, soft hug. "Nothing to be apologetic for, ma'am," she says, quietly. "If I was uncomfortable, I would've stopped you."
"Well, yes, but I didn't ask. I mean, I'm practically a stranger to you."
Esther smiles at her. "There's a saying I learned in trade school. It goes like this: we can fix that."