I am typing this in bed. It is not a very good angle for typing, but Husband is nestled against me and I do not want to move. I want to stay in this bed with him for as long as I can. Though he has said we will hunt gators tomorrow.

We are at the Elkwallow Lodge near a town called Broken Bow. We came here the day after we finally made Husband's gasoline (or "cornoline", as he has started calling it). It is nice to not smell like corn or corn oil or cornoline. It is nice to not have projects or needs or community to build for a little while. It may bore me some day, but today is not that day.

I did not know what Husband had planned when he went off with Leon to Tulsa, but he had said we would be together, that we would hunt gators, and that it would be fun. So I decided to let him show me what he thought was fun. I can always correct him if he is wrong. I cleaned up our cornoline-making work, Returned to Wyatt, and stopped in the Pit in the afternoon.

"Hello, Sam."

"Hey there. Still not an alcoholic?"

"Still not, yes. Did Trevor install the lights in the shed?"

"He said he'd get to it in a couple days. Got him down to a hundred fifty."

"You are a good merchant."

"Thanks. Anything I can get ya?"

"I am just here to tell you we will be gone for a few days."

"Oh? Off lookin' for work?"

"No, we will simply be spending time together."

Sam smiled. "Romantic getaway, huh? Whatcha got planned?"

"Husband promised to take me gator hunting."

The smile went away. "Uh...you ever hunt gators before?"

"No. Husband said it would be fun. I would like to hunt bears, but Husband says there are no bears in this state."

"...Black bears in the eastern mountains, so I hear."

"Oh? How big is a black bear?"

"'Bout as tall as me when it stands up."

"That is smaller than what we have hunted before. Those were brown and taller than people."

"That...sounds like a grizzly."

"Grizzly, yes. Husband says they are in mountains far to the northwest. He also mentioned something called a...kodiak?"

Sam stared at me for a moment. "...Tanks and shit."

I smiled. "Tanks and shit."

"So, where ya headed for the gators? Louisiana?"

"McCurtain County."

"Dunno if gator huntin's legal in this state."

I met his eyes. "Then I suppose we are not hunting gators in McCurtain County."

"S'pose not. Y'all have fun. Don't get anything bitten off."

I went to the library and told Mrs. Hobbes I might not be in on Sunday. Then I went to the diner and told Mrs. Hartman we would be gone. She seemed happy about it, and hugged me. "Now, I know it can't be a lot of fun for a young couple, being in a house with old folk like us, so you two go off and have a good time together. We'll be fine here."

I did not tell her about the gator hunting. If it worried Sam, it might have frightened her. When Husband arrived to join me for dinner, he agreed. "Not sure what would scare her more...the idea of her little Tsu'na going gator hunting, or the idea she's living with gator hunters."

Husband erased our menu blackboard and wrote, "NO NIGHT MENU THRU SUNDAY". The children were unhappy about that, so we did not charge for the evening's pretzels and pies.

Lying on my front with a pillow under my chest helps with the angle. Husband has shifted in his sleep to press against me however he could. Perhaps I will do all my typing like this.

The next day was spent mostly in buses. We took the bus to Tulsa, then got on another bus heading south. Husband said it was nearly two hundred miles there. That was about as far as we had traveled for cotton, but this time we were not sitting on a goobbue, and we were not traveling through the air in a straight line.

We were in the bus for five hours, with some brief stops for food and bathrooms. We took turns reading and mapping, finding what harvesting spots we could in range of the road. Husband named the different animals we saw in fields passing by. Sheep in this world are less round than Eorzean sheep. Cows look like buffalo, but smaller, and the ground does not tremble when they walk. I have not before seen anything that looks like an alpaca.

Broken Bow is larger than Wyatt in space and stores. It has a Walmart. Many more people go to Broken Bow; Husband said many of them are "tourists" on their way to the lake nearby. It seemed we were also on our way to the lake, as we got on a much smaller bus that took us north to a smaller town called Hochatown.

From Hochatown we rode our bicycles a few miles to Elkwallow Lodge. I had expected a hotel like the ones on Highway 51 near Wyatt, but those are long buildings with many doors. The lodge building looked too small to have rooms. It only seemed to have a lobby with a desk and a restaurant in the back. "Where will we be sleeping, Husband?"

"I got us a cabin. It's like a small house just for us."

"It is better than a hotel?"

"I looked at the reviews for hotels in the area. Most of them sound like the inn in Ishgard."

"You mean The Forgotten Knight? The room there had mold on the walls and trash on the floor."

He pulled out his phone, did some searching, and showed me reviews of McCurtain County hotels. "Mold on the walls." "Trash on the floor."

"But does a house not cost more money than a hotel room?"

"Kinda, yeah. But I wanted this to be special."

A young man was working as innkeeper at the lobby desk. Husband told him we were Saul and Tammy Hartford. The innkeeper looked at a computer and asked to see the credit card that paid for the cabin.

Husband got out his wallet and produced a card. I wondered how he had gotten a payment card without ID.

The innkeeper typed something and nodded. "Okay, looks good. Can I see your ID?"

"Sorry, we don't have ID."

"...You...What do you mean?"

"We don't drive. We don't have ID."

"How come you got a credit card but no ID?"

"It's a prepaid card."

Like the phones. Perhaps that is what Husband did in Tulsa.

"Well, I can't give you a room without seeing ID..."

"Oh, sorry, do you need a bigger deposit?" Husband took out money. "Will this cover it?"

The innkeeper studied the money for a moment. He looked to either side, then said, "I'm sorry, sir, the deposit is more than that."

Husband took out more money. The innkeeper grabbed it and handed Husband a key. "Enjoy your stay, folks."

As we left the lobby I asked him, "Do you have any money left?"

"Maybe enough for pork rinds."

We walked down a road that had small houses spaced apart from one another, not as close as the Hartmans' house is to its neighbors. Some had cars next to them. The one matching the number on the key did not. Compared to the Hartmans' house, this house seemed older and made of boards like our workshop, or like houses in Raincatcher Valley.

The first thing I saw when we got inside was a wall that seemed to be one large window. It made the house much brighter than I expected. I could see a few trees outside and a lake beyond them. There were some small boats on the lake. A porch outside the window had chairs facing the lake, as if people liked to sit and watch it.

There was a living area with a couch, a television and a fireplace. In front of the fireplace was a furry rug that looked like a beast hide, though I could not tell what beast it had been. Near the living area was a table with chairs, like the Hartmans' dining room, though not a room. A kitchen area was beyond the table. The entire house seemed to be one large room, though we also found a bedroom with a large bed and a comfortable bathroom with a deep tub.

"This is our cabin?"

"Yes, my love."

"Does it work like an inn room?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is there a summoning bell?"

He hesitated. I could see he was choosing his words. "I have not observed hotel rooms in this world that are equipped as adventurer's inn rooms."

"So there is not a summoning bell, glamour dresser or orchestrion?"

"I would be extremely surprised to find them. The bed does look comfy, though."

"It does, yes."

Perhaps we were tired from all the travel. Bicycle riding is still something that I need to think about while doing, which makes it more work than simply riding it should be. We were starting to relax, being for the first time in this world in a house no one else would enter. There were many reasons for us being in the bedroom.

We started slowly, touching each other, holding each other, looking at each other. We took our time, and then we lost track of time. The cabin had gone completely dark by the time we thought to notice.

We turned on lights next to the bed. We ate from our inventory, not leaving the bed or each other. We did not feel a need for words. We turned off the lights after eating and did not notice time passing until morning.

When we got up, I saw that Husband had apparently also gotten food while in Tulsa. He taught me how to make an omelet, holding me from behind and giving me advice over my shoulder as I worked the pan and spatula. As distracting as he was, I was pleased to only have burned it as little as I did.

We ate lunch in the lodge to let the servants clean and change the sheets, but otherwise stayed in the cabin that second day. The entire cabin and every place in it was ours and we enjoyed it all. I have bathed in streams and waterfalls in Eorzea, and sat in the spa at Ishgard, but none of that was the same as sharing a tub with Husband. We lit a fire in the fireplace in the evening and cuddled on the rug. There was not an orchestrion, but there was a sound system that Husband could attach his phone to for playing soft music while we laid on the couch.

We sat on the porch, looking at the bright stars and listening to the creatures making noises in the night. Some of the creatures I could hear were people on other porches, trying to be quiet about what they were doing. When I told Husband about it, he called it "sounds of nature". But we did try to be quieter ourselves.

We spent more time out of the cabin the next day, walking near the lake, looking at the people out on or in the water, noticing the plants and the creatures in or on them. We had not tried fishing in this world, so we switched to Fisher and filled our fishing logs, releasing what we caught. Husband said fishing requires a "fishing license", but our Gatherers' Sneak seemed to mean no one bothered us about it.

We rode our bicycles on some of the paved trails. I think I have levelled in bicycle riding, but I did fall once when I hit a rock I did not see. I healed quickly, but Husband still got down on the grass next to me and stroked my leg. We almost forgot where we were before someone asked if I was all right. We laughed and waved and reassured them. Then we went back to the cabin.

Husband speaks of "stealth tensions", things we worry about without knowing we do. I think many of these have gone away while we have been here. We have worried about nothing but being together, and being together has been so natural that we have worried about nothing at all. Even such a simple thing as the bedding has not been a worry. We did our laundry at the Hartmans' house and therefore had clean sheets in the evening, but here we come back to a cabin with clean sheets ready for us.

"word for knowing something is still true": "conviction"

"word for saying something is still true": "reaffirm"

I love him and he loves me. I belong to him and he belongs to me. We know this. We have said this in the past, we promised it in the Shrine of the Twelve, and here we have been reaffirming it, in everything we say and do. We may have our own projects and curiosities, but we have each other, whatever may happen. Whatever worries we might have, our love should not be one of them.

Running my hand over the sheet, I am only now thinking that the bed is the one thing in the cabin that can be easily cleaned. Not so for the couch, or the furry rug, or the porch chairs, or the dining table, or any place else. If people before us were as eager to use the cabin as we have been, none of those places would have been very clean before we used them.

I think perhaps it is important to not think of this before we use the cabin. But it is also important to enjoy a shower together afterward. And not worry.

Husband's breathing has changed. He is stroking my back.

I think I am done typing for now.