“Aye. It’s me.”Bracken tilted his head inquisitively, like I’d been the one to stop him mid-task with a question I needed answering.
“So, um, how’s it going?” I winced, slightly embarrassed. I really wasn’t sure how I was meant to be communicating with a squirrel.
“I am well, Liora.”Bracken made a soft chittering sound, and I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like he might be laughing at me.
“Listen, I have no idea what to ask a squirrel. Like, how’s the foraging going?” I asked, amused.
“It’s well, thank you. I’ve got quite a good store for winter.”
I immediately felt chagrined. I’d been teasing a bit, but the reality was the squirrel was needing to put food away to feed himself for months at a time. I couldn’t even plan out my next week.
Even Bracken had his life together.
“What did you mean when you said that I was yours?” I decided to cut to the chase, as the wind had picked up slightly, and my pajamas were threadbare.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Liora. I’m here to help.”
“Help how? With what?”
“You.”Bracken made that soft chittering sound again and his fluffy tail bounced behind him.
“Is it a tiny oracle you are then?” I tilted my head, amusement filling me. “You’ve got the answers to all my problems?”
“I might. I might not. Answers are like acorns.”
“Is that right?” I laughed, delighted with the way my morning was going already. How could I be glum? Here I was having a cup of coffee that I didn’t have to make and talking to a squirrel on a crisp autumn morning. “And just how are answers like acorns?”
“You see…every winter I have a problem. How will I eat through the long, cold, dark days? And so, as I learn and grow through the year, I hide acorns. Every year, I find better spots to hide them. And they’re only known to me. When the time comes, when I dearly need my acorn, only I know where to find it.”
I blinked at him, slowly unpacking his words, and then smiled with delight.
“You are a wee oracle!”
Bracken bowed.
“At your service, madam.”
“So I gotta find my acorns. And then I’ll have the answers I need.” I raised my cup to him as Bracken scampered to the edge of the yard. “Hey, Bracken?”
“Aye?”
“What if you forget where you hid your acorns?”
“Then you find new ones.”Bracken ran up the side of the tree and I laughed as he bounced from branch to branch, chittering at me, before turning and going back inside.
“Schooled by a squirrel first thing in the morning.” I sighed and finished off my coffee. “And he’s not wrong. I do need to find new acorns.” Because whatever answers I’d buried deep insidemyself currently weren’t surfacing, and I needed solutions to problems.
The first being, gainful employment.
I wasn’t going to touch astrology, no matter how much I longed to pull out my charts and have a look at the current state of affairs surrounding my life. What I did know was that it was a new moon today, so a perfect time for new beginnings, and even if waitressing wasn’t my passion in life, at least it would give me stable income and a chance to immerse myself back in the community.
And to set some past rumors straight.But now you’re “dating” Torin.How do we explain that we reconnected as soon as I arrived back in Loren Brae, and despite “the past,” we felt like a good fit?But never cheated?Goddess, what a mess.
After a quick shower, I plaited my hair neatly back, put on my siren-red jumper again, topped it with a deep purple woolen trench coat, and shoved my feet into slouchy suede boots. With a tumble of my favorite crystal necklaces around my neck, and a malachite bracelet at my wrist, I locked up and decided to walk into Loren Brae. Torin’s house wasn’t all that far out of the village, and I’d tucked my brolly in my handbag in case of rain. I needed some time to center myself, to recalibrate, I supposed, as I adjusted to these new developments in my life.
I was back. In Loren Brae.
And living with my boyfriend, it seemed.