Overture Downs make like a boy scout and leave no trace

Another great reason to have Dhalia around: someone needed to watch the kids while they got a little alone time. And sure, Abel was around now to do that a little, but they hadn't known that would be the case before they left. It would've been awful for the poor kids if someone hadn't been around, because then they'd have to listen. Not that they wouldn't still hear —

Dusty Rose was a very loud singer.

"I've been fighting and holding on
But it's time to let it fall down
When it shatters, it makes a sound
And it sounds like rain
On the dry ground,"

He'd never sang to her like this before. Not in words. Not as he hunted her through the tall, fragrant grasses. What started as a croon quickly became something almost orchestral.

"I've been quiet, but I've been screaming
Been divided by my reason
But I can't wrestle the wind
And I can't drown the sea
It's drowning me — "

It'd been so long since she'd let the sweetness of song fill her throat, let it pour from her like so much rain spilling from the sky — but Dusty Rose was singing to her now, and Reverie couldn't help but feel the music in her veins. Was this not what they were made for? To live beautifully, to turn each moment into art.

So her voice joined his after a time.

Nothing is as bad as you think
Even when you're pulling at the seams
When the lights go out, you still got me,

She was reminded now, as always, of Rose; everyone had said they sounded just alike.

Detours lead to barricades
And home is far, your friends are fake
I'll be there to clear the way
And you, you know my love can hold you down
You know my love can hold you down.

He pinpointed her position with the sound of her song, giving chase even as she serenaded him. They were not the words to his own song, but he wove the lyrics together anyway, singing under her voice at times and above it at others.

"Cause there ain't no fear of dying
There ain't no hiding from the truth
The things we can't keep inside of us
We're gonna have to see them through,"

He felt it then; the same spirit that seemed to have taken hold of Slow West and Shady Bird. The song was in him — both songs — and he found he had more than enough air in his lungs to sing to her while they danced, her calling the rain and him dancing in it.

"And my heart goes rambling, leaping
Higher, deeper than my seeing
What is learning
It changes someday
But if I gave the wind its motion
I gave the blue unto the ocean
In return I'd only ask for freedom,"

When the roof caves in
And you just can't win
You know
It'll only get better, only get better,

Softer now, a lilting backdrop to Dusty Rose's song; a promise written in flyaway notes carried featherlight on the wind. Reverie had always been a dancer at heart. As the sound of his song drifted closer, she twirled away through the brush into a little clearing, all scant wet grass and muddy puddles. Dark water flew up around her feet as she took up the dance to call the rains.

When you fall too far
Can't go back to the start
You know
It'll only get better, only get better...

The song faded from her then as the dance filled her thoughts, crept down to her bones. Only for Dusty Rose would she sing — but when he found her, they would dance.

The last of the song was quieter and sweeter, but no less triumphant. It went like this:

"Soon enough it will be Spring
And I will leave my sheltered sleeping
For a road
I know that is why
Well, I've been lonesome
Through and through
But I get my courage from this feeling
That what I'm seeking is looking for me, too."

But that was when he found her, and there was no need of sound aside from quiet, breathless laughter and the usual racket the coywolf kept up when they played this game. He caught his prize again and again, and later on, in a bed of grass, he asked her:

"D'ya think I'm your One?"

He knew the answer. He just wanted to hear it.

Breathless and beautifully sore, she held Dusty Rose tightly, drawing his head close to rest against her chest while she tucked her own chin atop it. Her smile was in her voice as she answered him, Of course you are, She murmured in the way one might answer the question is water wet?

And that makes me the luckiest woman in the world, Reverie added, arms tightening further around him as if she meant to meld herself to him. That wouldn't be so bad, she thought. Her voice turned a touch more somber with her next words, if only because they were sincere: I don't think I've ever been as happy as I am now. She left the rest unsaid: in spite of everything, all the sadness and uncertainty; in spite of it all, I'm happy, and it's because of you.

She thought he would understand anyway.

Dusty's tail fluttered, but there was a sad cast to his features, for a moment. "Neither have I," he replied, and he felt guilty for how carefree a statement that was. There'd been plenty of sorrow in his life, but this time had been perfect for him. As perfect as his childhood, but infinitely more fun.

The cicadas were beginning to make a racket around them; perhaps they had been already, underneath their songs.

"When I was just a yearling, my big brother met his woman," he told her, his tail whisking once more. "Birdy. I tried to steal her off him, if you really wanna know. More 'cause I wanted whatever he had than 'cause of anything to do with her. But then the songs started — I just remember I'd never heard anyone sing to each other like that 'cept our dads. And I wanted that. So I decided I'd go find it and... you know the rest of the story, I guess. I regretted it ever since."

He shivered.

"'Til now, I guess," he told her. "'Cause I found you, and now I don't have to be lonely anymore."

It wasn't a surprise to her, necessarily, that there had been a woman before her. Or maybe there hadn't been a woman before her, really, but he'd had his eyes on someone all the same. There was jealousy in that; not so much, but still she prickled with it, pressing him closer to her.

He'd chosen her in the end, though, hadn't he?

And there'd been others for her, too, there was no denying that. But it was him she would choose in the end, even if they were to return, even if they were to beg — and if she wanted Dusty Rose to trust that, then she supposed it was only right that she try to trust that he would make that same decision even in the face of temptation. Surely it would come, not just from their past but the future which suddenly seemed so very long and bright ahead of them.

You'll never be lonely again, She promised softly. Not as long as I can help it.