"Can you believe people are dumb enough to do that?" the man with emerald eyes and coal-black hair asked me. "It's like an instant death sentence."

"Right?" I laughed at his statement. "What on Earth would make someone think that waking a sleeping bear would ever turn out well for them?"

Wyatt scoffed back rhetorically. "Seriously."

Then he picked up a nearby pebble and flung it towards the tall evergreen perched at the edge of the cliff I was camped out on. The fire in front of us crackled softly as he continued. "I can't reckon why they have to have a law against doing that. Alaska is bear country. You'd think people would just know."

"You would," I replied quietly with a half-smile. Our conversation triggered my memory of an incident that happened a few years ago involving an eager tourist and his 2 dogs. Shaking off the morbid image I had seen in the crumpled newsprint, I grabbed an errant stick and picked at it like a split-end left behind by Mother Earth. "Some people just don't have any sense, though."

"Hey, but there's hope," Wyatt grinned, reaching up to brush a stray bang out of my eyes. He tucked it behind my ear with a sprig of Queen Anne's lace he had grabbed from the crop sitting next to us. "If you want to turn your picnic table into a boat, you're welcome to it. You just have to make sure you have enough safety gear and vests for anyone riding on it when you're in the water."

Unable to contain my glee at the absurdity of such a law, I chuckled softly, ducking my head beneath my chin to hide my slowly-forming blush. I had never expected to run into another traveler when I set out on this journey 2 days ago. Wyatt had surprised me, though, coming upon my camp a few hours after my arrival at this isolated edge of the world.

"Now you're just making things up," I said, shaking my head in disbelief. Never having paid much attention to politics or law, I had somehow missed these finer points of our uninhabited society.

"No, it's true," he continued, enthused by my lack of belief. "And, do you know that bringing flamingos into a barbershop in Alaska is illegal?"

"Where do you come up with this stuff?" I joked with him, tossing my frayed twig sideways at him. "Next thing I know you'll be telling me I can't ride a Moose without a license."

"I don't know about that," he replied absently, standing up to stretch his legs and walk around our fire to get closer to the cliff's edge, before glancing back to answer. "But, I do know that looking at a Moose from an airplane is illegal here, and so is pushing one out of a moving airplane for that matter."

Laughing, I stretched my neck rearwards before pushing myself off of the ground with my open palms. "You're too much."

Bending down, I picked up the woolen blanket we had been sitting on. Having purchased it in a local shop some years ago, it was now care-worn and almost thread-barren, but I refused to give it up. I took it on every trip out into the back-country.

Birds and wolves were woven into the filaments, with images of the sun, moon, stars and ocean surrounding them. A large tree, that I liken to the Mother, was weaved into the center of it all. It was a beautiful piece, and having spent many long hours learning to knit and crochet myself, I knew the originator must have been a real master at her work. Creating it was way beyond my skill level.

The crisp bite of Autumn wind was in the air and the blanket was a perfect buffer between the evening cold and my small frame. Donning the blanket around my shoulders, I shook the pins and needles out of my booted feet to stand shoulder to shoulder with my new-found friend.

Never having been at ease with strangers, it still surprised me how comfortable I was around this man. This unknown stranger who came to my rescue the first night I made camp; rigging a makeshift tent pole to replace the one that I had inadvertently broken.

I had never experienced such tranquility in the presence of someone so alien to my environment. Having lived on the outskirts of normal society my whole life, I was used to the tranquility of solitude. Being a self-proclaimed introvert helped matters a bit as well.

It's only been in recent months that I've begun yearning for something more; something unnamed and just out of my reach. Until Wyatt showed up, I didn't know what I was craving. Now that he was here, however, I felt a hunger down deep where one had never made its presence known before. I was eager to spread its wings and see where it might take me.

As the Northern Lights danced in a mired of iridescent colors, I tentatively reached out to hold Wyatt's hand. When his fingers closed softly around my own, the calluses in his hand brushing across mine, I looked up and caught his curious eye.

"Did you know that the Northern Lights are collisions in the sky? Electrically-charged particles meeting in the Earth's atmosphere."

He turned his body towards my own, his back to the wind of the cliff and his eyes full of something intense and anticipatory. "I did."

Rubbing my hand across his flannel-lined jacket, I turned my head to rest it on his chest, sighing contently when I noticed his own camp perched in the distance. The smell of cedar wood and light cologne coasted over me and I found myself saying a prayer of thanks before looking up at him shyly.

"I'm glad we met here this weekend," I whispered, drawling closer to Wyatt, enveloping my blanketed arms around his shoulders.

"I am, too," he murmured before meeting my waiting lips with his own. They were soft and warm, pensive and innocent, unaware of where things were heading but cautiously testing the waters before coming to the surface again. "I am, too."

THE END.
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