By Lamplight

Spring had settled fully into the garden, and the light lingered later now at the close of each day. Nyra lit the lamp and set it at the center of the table, though there was still some pale glow at the window. She drew her chair to one side and left the other chair open. The evening had become a time for writing, and both of them knew it without saying so.

She placed the old book down first, the thick one, its pages soft at the corners from many winters of handling. Beside it she laid the newer book, lean and slim, its spine still stiff. The two volumes lay together in the lamplight, and neither crowded the other.

The girl came in from the garden with soil dark under her nails and took the open chair. She did not wait to be told what to write. She drew the lean book toward her, opened it to the fresh page she had begun that morning, and dipped her charcoal. Nyra watched her settle, then reached for the old book herself.

For a long while there was no sound but the scratch of two hands at work, each bent over a book of her own. Nyra wrote of the day in her slow, rounded script, the warmth of the air and the first heavy rain of the season. The girl wrote her plain marks in narrow rows, a number for the beans set out, a number for the beds turned. Neither looked up, and neither needed to.

When the lamp had burned low, they closed their books almost at the same moment. Nyra set the old volume back in its place on the shelf, and the girl set the new one beside it, the way they now belonged. Between them the whole of the day had been kept, one book holding the sky and the other the labor. No word had passed, and none had been wanting.