Chapter Text
idealism – naivete – head in the clouds
✳ ❖ ✳
Everything seemed to pass with a daze that night after dinner. Sol felt her hands move across the dishes she washed, but it was at a distance, far away from where she sat in her mind. Her hand had been in Arthur’s a few hours ago, when he helped her off the wagon. The tension in the air dissipated and she followed him to a building a few yards away to find his steed - a speckled work horse who idly chewed on the grass at her hooves.
“Pallas,” he said. He stroked her neck with an open palm, then untied the reins from the hitch. “That’s ‘er name.”
“It sounds lovely,” she responded, trying her compose her nerves again. ‘Lovely?’ Since when do you say words like that? Before she could overthink her word choice further, she asked, “Where does that come from?”
He didn’t look back at her, and instead hoisted himself on the saddle with a swift swing of his leg. His weight settled nicely on Pallas’ back, and it was clear even to Sol that the horse felt very comfortable with him. “That’s... All I'll give you today. Maybe next time, if there is one,” he smiled. Arthur gave a nod, keeping the brim of his hat tipped down as he gently pulled on Pallas’ reins. She nodded back and the horse slowly plodded away.
Sol hoped so badly that there would be next time, she wanted nothing more than to see him again already. Her head spun as she thought more and more about it. She knew it was crazy; it was dumb and reckless to even consider the thought of trying, especially with someone like him. But at least within the confines of her wild imagination, she could imagine it.
“Mari? ¿Todo bien?” Her mother’s voice reminded Sol of where she was; her fantasies would have to wait. Her parents were waiting on her to finish the dishes so that they could drink cafe con leche before bed. The list of chores would continue to pile if Sol couldn’t get her act together.
“Sí, mami,” Sol called back. The dishes would have to wait. She quickly moved to the stove to where the coffee ground water was already boiling, then poured it into two separate mugs and added fresh milk into each one. As she made her way into the dining room where her parents still sat at the table, Irene beamed a warm smile when Sol appeared, a sure sign that she had been waiting patiently with her gaze fixed to the kitchen. Joaquín, however, sat opposite of his wife and buried himself deep into a newspaper, hardly budging when Sol placed the coffee mug in front of him.
“Gracias, mija,” Irene said sweetly once she received her cup. In the comfort of her own home, away from customers and narrow-minded comments, she could finally speak her native language without fear of judgment or, worse, confrontation. She continued in Spanish, "You seem unwell all day. Are you sure that you’re not coming down with something? We can send you to the doctor if it’s serious."
"Oh no no no, mamá, I’m fine," Sol responded in Spanish as well. "I’ll be sure to go to bed early this time. I was caught in a good book last night and didn’t fall asleep 'til late."That answer would have to do - she couldn’t fathom telling her mother everything about the strange men who appeared, especially with her father sitting right there.
"That seems to be the excuse lately. You and those books, Mari," her father grumbled, finally putting down the newspaper to reach for his coffee. "Make sure you don’t let them get in the way of work next time. Understand?" Sol was sure he would never say out loud that he took pride in her interest in literature and writing, so she simply nodded at her father. Joaquín blew on his drink before sipping. "Everything okay with Sr. Vonderhorst and Sr. Williams? How was the ride? None of the items they purchased broke on the way to their stead, right?"
Sol sat in the chair between her parents. "Of course not, papi," she responded. Was he worried about me or the shop, she thought to herself. "They were very happy with the whole affair. Bizcocho loved it too, the men were very nice and gentle with him."
The very mention of the family horse softened Joaquin's expression, but it was hard to tell with all of the hair blocking his smile. "Bien, bien. If Diego took to them, then I suppose they're alright in my book too."
The name dropped in Sol's stomach. All at once, she remembered that something didn't feel right about the ordeal, ignoring her blissful ride home with Arthur. She didn't want to ask, but she knew she had to put her heart at ease. "Papá, when did Diego say he was leaving the country again?"
Joaquin went back to his newspaper. "I suppose Diego should be gone by now. Said he was taking a boat from Doveport to some other town, and after a few days there, he would be back in Guarma. Why, mija?"
The timeline of events still didn't make sense to her, Her father was in a rare good mood, though, and she took it as a sign to put it past her. So she merely smiled and said, "No reason. I already miss him is all."
✳ ❖ ✳
The next few days dragged, thanks to the spats of rain that followed. It wasn't by any means torrential, but it was sporadic enough that it made being outside that much harder. The cracked soil gathered water and became a sludge closer to wet concrete than mud. Not that it mattered much to Sol - she spent a lot of time indoors working, but every so often on her break, she enjoyed finding some respite in the fresh spring air, which gave her an excuse to people-watch and daydream without being bothered.
However, after a while, another excuse appeared. Hosea said they'd break down their camp and be gone in a few days, but they must have stayed nearby all the same. Every so often, she would see someone from the group in town; sometimes it would be Dutch or Hosea at the bar chatting it up with the locals; other times, it was Annabelle in the shop for fabric, or Bessie for groceries. The only people she didn't see were John and Arthur. John made sense to Sol - she could hardly leave on her own and she was two years older than him. She could imagine Susan assigning him menial chores to keep busy. But she couldn't come up with an excuse for Arthur. Was he purposely avoiding her? Was he embarrassed? Ashamed?
Even with these distressing thoughts, she couldn't help but look out for him. Anytime she heard a horse trot by, she'd fly to the window to see who it was. She took longer to clean at the hotel, offered to close the shop more often, and asked for extra shifts from her mother so she could keep an eye out for him. Eventually, the days blurred into a week and Sol's disappointment became second nature. She resigned herself to believe that perhaps Arthur simply didn't want to run into her anymore. He had to have caught on to her silly fascination with him and decided he'd rather do anything else than humor a young girl.
Late one afternoon, she decided to go for a walk for her day off from work. It had been a while since she took advantage of her free time - she typically focused time on staying inside to read or write, especially if it meant saving herself from the humid air. However, the weather turned out to be a rare spell where the skies opened up to a cloudless blue and a cool breeze blew in from down the hillside. Summer was well on its way and temperate days would be few and far in between.
Harmstead sat downways between two large hills, with a river flowing through the middle. Sol packed some food, a book, and a blanket in her knapsack to find her favorite spot. It sat just outside the center of town, to the west, where the flatlands began to crawl up to an incline. The trees gathered closer together there, providing the right amount of cover from the roads and a thick canopy of shade, and the babbling of the river right along them helped drown out the idle chatter of farmers nearby. It was far enough away where travelers and townsfolk alike wouldn't bother Sol, but still close enough to where her mother and father could come fetch her if needed.
As she walked closer to her destination, she heard a faint grunt coming from the river. No one, aside from her parents, knew this spot, and it remained a secret place for her to retreat to. She paid it no mind and continued anyhow, and realised that the sound that she heard was a horse laying on the grass. It was strange, the way the horse wasn't spooked by her arrival. It stared at her for a moment, and its ears flicked back at the sound of something moving. Sol had seen its mottled coat before... Once Sol connected her thoughts to an action, she saw a figure shuffle behind a tree. Her heart thumped something awful, even after she saw who it was.
"Can't I ever get a moment of peace 'round here?" the voice rumbled without moving from its seat. A few steps forward from Sol revealed Arthur on the other side of a tree, his hand slowly moving away from his holster. A notebook remained splayed out on his lap - Sol noticed he had been drawing before she arrived. For once, his hat was off, placed neatly next to his satchel on the ground.
She, however, did not miss a beat: "Speak for yourself - I've lived here much longer than you, and this has always been my spot." She walked to the side of Arthur, which prompted his horse to finally rustle from relaxation and move closer to the riverbank. "Besides, I haven't seen you in days. How have I been bothering you?"
Arthur sighed. "I wasn't talkin' about you, exactly. This is the first time in days I've been able to relax." Sol's shoulders eased at the notion that Arthur wasn't avoiding her all this time. "There's been... A lot goin' on. So I was hopin' to find some reprieve away from all the commotion."
Sol immediately wanted to ask questions, like what exactly have they been doing, why haven't they left, what about Dutch and Hosea, and it took everything in her to bite her tongue and leave those questions be. "What is reprieve for you?" she asked instead, finding a place to sit on a rock.
It seemed to be the right choice. He smiled in a way that made her heart melt and remember why all the waiting felt worth it. "Well. I guess you're lookin' at it," he chuckled. "Sittin' in solitude, talkin' to nobody. Just listenin'." Up close, she could tell he attempted to clean his face up a bit a while ago, but a beard was already growing back in quickly. His sharp eyes, however, bluer than the sky above, stayed the same as the night she met him. He didn't wait for an answer, maybe he didn't want one. They sat for a few moments, enjoying the breeze rustling the branches above. That moment felt more profound, more enlightening than any other time she had spent there alone.
"Drawing too?" Sol broke the silence and glanced down at Arthur's lap. He snapped back into reality quickly and clutched the notebook shut with a swift motion. She stiffened in her seat again. "Oh, don't be like that! I can't draw anything even if my life depended on it." She pulled out her book in hopes of alleviating whatever tension was trying to creep back in. "Anyway, I have a break from work too. This is the only place I'm allowed to go to on my own so..."
Arthur didn't hesitate to stand up. "Understood, I can leave-"
"Wait a minute! That's not what I meant!" she said. Pallas raised her head from grazing weeds. "I'm happy to share space. I would..." Sol took a breath, then continued, despite how nervous she was. "I would like the company, honestly. It's not every day I have a friend to sit with." Arthur darted his eyes around as he stood from behind the bushes. He turned slowly to Pallas, who seemed to be waiting for a signal. "I, uhm. Also brought food too, if you're hungry," she finished, much softer than she started.
Arthur tapped his boot on the ground for a few more moments, then reposed himself and shrugged. "Alright, you got me," he said with a smirk. He shifted his weight to one hip. Sol had to internalise the swoon that began to creep up her throat. "I'm a bit famished. What's our meal then, Miss Sol?"
"This again," she sighed, but not without digging into her knapsack. Ignoring him and his devilish smile, she began to pull out her blanket. "Before anything, we have to lay this out. I don't wanna stain my skirt from sitting too long." Arthur simply nodded and took one side of the blanket to help Sol set the blanket down evenly. He then plopped down and crossed his legs before she had a chance to settle, then waited for her wordlessly. She took her cue to start pulling things out of her bag. "We'll have to split these - I wasn't expecting to be here with a guest." He nodded again and eagerly waited.
She laid out a plate and unraveled small rations tied with canvas lining. Out spilled rice, beans, and stuffed plantains. Arthur's eyes widened as Sol handed him a fork. "Like I said, I only brought one, so I'll let you take the first bite," she said.
Arthur took the fork but still said nothing. He stared at the plate for a moment and poked at the plantain. "Listen, I mean no disrespect, but," he stabbed one and held it inches from his face. "What the hell is this?"
Sol's neck flushed with heat. "You mean the tostones? They're just plantains."
"Yeah? And what are those?"
She quickly realised that Arthur had never seen a Cuban meal before. "Oh, sorry! Plantains are a sort of banana. They can be sweet like them, have you had a banana?"
Arthur looked between her and the plantain stuck in the fork. He took care not to flip once he noticed there was more food wrapped inside. "No... I know what they are, but I ain't never tried them."
In that moment, the reality between their two lives became more apparent. Sol couldn't imagine living in a world where she never had her mother's meals every day. A wave of simultaneous excitement and unease washed over her at the thought of having to explain Cuban food to him, considering the way he reacted to her teaching him Spanish a week ago.
"Well, they're quite good," she said, shaking the jitters off. "Much better when they've ripened." She picked a plantain off the plate with her thumb and index finger. "This is called a tostone relleno. The plantain gets fried, then wrapped in a way where you can fill it with meat. These have shredded beef." She took a small bite, enough for the beef to spill a bit into her free hand, but she tried to chew in a way that she thought came off as elegant.
Arthur watched her intently as she chewed, to the point that she could tell his eyes fixated on her lips. By the time she swallowed, he pulled the plantain off the fork, inspected it one more time, then popped it in his mouth entirely. He ate quickly, chewing much faster and swallowing before Sol could begin to speak. She was glad to have waited, however; his entire face gleamed.
"It's good, no?" Sol smiled as she watched Arthur reach for another.
"Good?" he said before biting into it. "If this ain't the best damn thing I've eaten in a long while." Arthur couldn't resist waiting and inhaled the next one. Thankfully, there was still one more left for Sol. "Sorry, I know you said you wasn't expectin' company. I haven't eaten a proper meal in days."
"That's alright," she said. "I have more of this at home. I can-" She stopped herself, attempting to regain enough composure to say what she wanted. Did she dare have the gall? "I can always bring you more meals if you'd like. There's no such thing as an empty stomach in my household."
As expected, Arthur's face dropped. "Oh no. No, I can't ask you t' do that. You've already done enough for us, for me. 'Sides, who knows if we'll see each other again after this?"
He was right - there was no reason for them to ever meet again, not since that fateful night weeks ago. And every reunion since then has been pure coincidence. Sol had a feeling that if she didn't make a move now, these coincidences would grow far and few in between, to the point that he and his group would move on before she got another chance. "I never said I'd do it for nothing," she retorted. "I think it's fair to ask for a trade, something worth our while."
His brows furrowed, though he continued to chew. His eyes darted to the beans and rice that were still untouched on the plate. "What kinda trade..." he relented.
This was her moment! But she still didn't consider what he would have to trade. It had to be something unassuming, something that involved very little pressure and would be easy to return for. "What about... Your drawings?" Sol said. "I mean, I don't actually want them. It's just, you seem to draw more than me. How about you show me some of your sketches and maybe teach me how to draw? In exchange, I can bring you a new meal every day." She marveled at her spot, how serendipitous and lucky it was to give her this day. She hoped Arthur would accept it too. "We can even meet here. And once you and your friends are done hanging around, we can part ways all friendly-like. You with a full belly and me with newfound skills to help my writing."
Arthur sat, also looking around him, the trees, his horse. He looked back at the dish and picked the fork back up again. Sol could tell this was wracking his brain, which she took as a good sign - he should have said no by now, or at least he would have at any other time before then. Feeling confident that luck was on her side, she asked, "Would it help if I said you could have the last plantain?"
He didn't hesitate to take the last one with the fork and immediately drop it in his mouth. This time, he chewed slowly, surely to savor the flavor, and when he finally gulped it down, he said, "Alright. You have a deal."