The Firefly
T
hey slept the first night on the beach, and he moved into the shack with her the next day. Packing and unpacking within a single tide. As sand creatures do.
As they walked along the tide line in late afternoon, he took her hand and looked at her. “Will you marry me, Kya?”
“We are married. Like the geese,” she said.
“Okay. I can live with that.”
Each morning they rose at dawn and, while Tate percolated coffee, Kya fried corn fritters in Ma’s old iron skillet—blackened and dented—or stirred grits and eggs as sunrise eased over the lagoon. The heron posing one-legged in the mist. They cruised estuaries, waded waterways, and slipped through narrow streams, collecting feathers and amoebas. In the evenings, they drifted in her old boat until sunset, then swam n***d in moonlig
