When Charity said that she loved the wilderness, Shannon narrowed his eyes, and peered at the fell buildings spotting the grasslands where they had stopped to rest. He saw the abandoned chicken factory with the slanted, metal and tin patchwork roof; at the old homes with the silvering, slitted wood and the bulging porch and cobble chimneys; at that one barn with the browned wood and that was clothed with string lights and confederate flags. The quilted star was pasted above the black passageway inside, where before the barn, the doors of it sat asunder, silvered, rusted; overcome with English Ivy. He saw perhaps two buildings that were not condemned. But every other structure that stood in the valley was beyond repair.

“What’s so great about it.” He said, looking up at the vast, sapphire mountains that encircled the valley on all sides; that stood as walls, grand and unmoving, “Whole place ‘s condemned. Pretty well damned.”

He cleaned the remains of hare entrails, and chanterelle liquid, off his knife with a cloth. Seeing in the blade’s reflection that he had sticks in his beard, he combed himself over, as best he could. Charity had woven a bracelet of yellow wood sorrel and was putting it around her ankle and she shot him a concerned glance. She brushed off her pink dress and took off her yellow cardigan, leaving it by the fire.

“Well, It’s the little things Shannon.” She said.

“Like what.” Shannon turned the spit.

“Well, like them wildflowers.” Charity pointed to the grasses and ivy that had grown around the dilapidated structures. Shannon narrowed his eyes. He saw where Charity was pointing. At first he did not understand, what there was beyond the dilapidation, and despair. But Charity insisted that he look again, and he did. Looking again—this time more attentively—he saw the white brush and bloom of the Reeve’s Spirea; the fragrant, salmon cups of the Mountain Laurel, spotting the woods of flowering emerald leaves in the early summer. He saw woven in the overgrown grasses the sprawling tress, the head of Queen Anne’s Lace. Looking at Charity, he saw around her a thatch of yellow wood sorrel and dandelions; the gold of which matched her hair seamlessly, as did her fair, wide eyes reflect the green of the grasses.

And as he glanced once more at the fields; at the old chicken factory and the cottages, his countenance softened. For the first time in many grim, sober afternoon, Charity looked at Shannon, and she saw his eyes had brightened; From a dim, sunken blue had arose a slight, but still noteworthy violet; as slight as the gleam of a hidden gem. Charity smiled sweetly.

She knelt, and she glanced vaguely at Shannon’s eyes as he turned the spit, as if they were yet another small, sweet flower to behold.