They sit across from one another, the boy and the girl, and neither has broken a sweat. That is the first strangeness. In my village, a man and a woman are put together by their fathers over the price of a goat, and by the time they sit at one table the whole matter is settled, God willing, and there is nothing left to do but breed and toil until one of you goes in the ground. But these two are only now deciding. Deciding! As though a life were a turnip you might sniff and put back.
They have laid out no bread, no salt. Only two clear cups of something that fizzes and hisses like water bewitched, which they drink slow, so slow, while the daylight is wasted and the fields go untended. Neither has calloused hands. The girl laughs at a thing the boy said, laughs when nothing funny has happened, no man has fallen, no pig has got loose. I do not trust laughter that comes so cheap.
They ask each other questions. What do you do, what do you love, as if a body's days were his own to spend as he pleases and not owed to the lord and the soil and the tithe. Nobody speaks of the harvest. Nobody speaks of the winter coming, and it is always coming.
I watched them a long while. No priest, no dowry, no oxen changing hands, no fathers glowering. Just two soft creatures, warm and fed, choosing.
The good Lord gave us hunger so we would know what to do with a day. These two have forgotten hunger, and so they must invent this. God keep them. They have too much time.