Chapter 5: Thunder

The first thunder came in the third week, a little after midnight.

I was on my mat by the bed, half asleep, when the window lit white and the roof cracked open overhead.

Something hit the floor beside me.

"Lanxi."

He was on his knees on the boards in his sleeping shirt, with his hands clamped over his ears.

"Lanxi, it's the big noise."

"It's only thunder," I said, and sat up.

The sky lit again, and he made a sound I had not heard before, a thin high sound, and shoved his whole body against mine.

I had no time to think.

I opened the quilt and he got under it, and I felt him shaking from his shoulders down to his feet.

"It can't come in," I said into his hair. "The roof's good. I checked it myself."

"It's shouting."

"It shouts every autumn. It's never come in once."

The thunder rolled again, farther off, and his hand clutched the front of my nightshirt.

I lay still on my back with my arm under his head.

He was a heavy, warm weight against my side, all long bones and breath.

His hair smelled of the camphor soap I washed it with, and his shoulder was a grown man's shoulder, wide and hard under my palm.

I kept my palm there anyway, and I kept it perfectly still.

I told myself he was afraid, and that I was his wife in name only, and that I would not think of how long his arm was where it lay across my waist.

I thought of it for a long time.

By the third roll of thunder his breathing had slowed.

By the fifth he was asleep with his mouth open against my collarbone.

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