Malachi watched the girl’s face as she spoke – at least, what he could see of it in the moonlight that reached them.

Whereas she had seemed all too happy to tell him all about the land itself, with its open skies and mountain ranges and trees, Mable again appeared to cut herself short before she could say much about the details. It did not sound as if they’d had many animals like a regular farm might have, and he supposed that was why she had said that it was not like a normal farm.

Some of the water from her kick made its way onto his sleeve. While he listened, his free hand dipped down to gently splash a bit of water in her direction.

There must have been something, or perhaps someone, that made their house feel less welcoming than the world outside. He could understand that.

“Oh,” that was a difficult question. “We’re very different, is all. He had a daughter quite young, as well, so a lot of the responsibility of taking care of her went to me.”

From the way he spoke about it, it did not sound as if he minded it, per se. Merely that it was a point of contention between them.

“After my father adopted me, he married a woman from London and we moved into the house that I grew up in. It’s a nice place, I suppose,” though not one that he had enjoyed living in. “I was not allowed outside much.”

Or at all. He would have killed to be able to leave and go outside the way that Mable described she and her brother doing – but he was outside now, at least.