XIX. The specifics of love
The Specifics Of Love
Clementine was a cedar waxwing with a preference for exactly one berry: the second-ripest serviceberry on the northern-facing branches of trees growing within a kilometer of a creek bed. She started with the ripest berry for a few weeks, but she found them too sweet. Then she tried the third-ripest, but they were too firm. The second-ripest were perfect. She could tell by the violet hue which berry was just right. A color only visible in the sky on Tuesdays in October.
She did not have any friends or family. This was fine. Friends and family require compromise, and if that meant occasionally eating a third- or most-ripe serviceberry, or, God forbid, a blueberry, or a mulberry, or, eugh, a strawberry, Clementine did not believe that was worth it. There was no such thing as “acceptable” to Clementine. There was only the correct and incorrect things to eat.
Lucky was a cottontail rabbit who would only eat four-leaf clovers from patches that grew in the shadows of birch trees, and only where the soil had a slight downhill grade of about four-and-a-half degrees. He measured everything with a protractor he had stolen from a teenager’s backpack. It was his most treasured item, and he kept it in his burrow. Measurements on the protractor made sense. Animals did not. Obviously, Lucky also had no friends. Though unlike Clementine, this wasn’t due to a lack of trying. If another rodent, like a hamster or a field mouse, would talk to him, he’d spend the entire afternoon explaining to them the differences in taste between four- and eight-degree-tilted clovers. Usually, they would just fall asleep, walk away, or chew him out for not letting them speak. * * * Lucky and Clementine’s paths crossed on the second Wednesday of June. They met next to a creek and a birch tree in a forest called Pine Park. Clementine was mid-flight when she spotted a bush full of serviceberries. However, as she flew closer, she noticed a rabbit sitting motionless beneath a birch tree, staring at a clover patch with a certain intensity she only ever saw in herself. He tilted his head, leaned in, sniffed a stem, then another. After all that, he seemed lost in thought. She landed on a nearby branch. “Y-you’re not eating!” she blurted out. Lucky was startled, looked up at her, and regained his composure. “Well, the grade of the soil’s tilt is wrong. It’s nine degrees here. It used to be perfect, but somehow some of the pebbles shifted a few centimeters to the right. It really sucks. This was the best spot for my clovers.” Clementine blinked. “Whoa. You can tell the grade of the soil’s tilt?” Lucky pointed at his protractor. “Yeah. With this.” Clementine had never seen anything like it before. But she was very interested in this strange rabbit. She started to speak with much more confidence: she explained her whole preference for serviceberries. Her ripeness grading system, the branch orientation requirement, the creek proximity rule. All of it. She talked for thirty minutes, and this was the longest she had talked to anybody since she was a fledgling. Lucky listened. He didn’t fall asleep. When she finished, he said: “Northeast-facing would be even better than just north-facing. The morning sun hits those branches first, but the afternoon shade slows the sugar conversion, so the second-ripest berry holds its tartness longer.” Clementine felt something rearrange in her chest. “Whoa,” she whispered. “You know your stuff.”
* * *
They began meeting at the creek-grove border every morning. Clementine would eat her berries. Lucky would scout clover patches downhill. Sometimes they’d sit together in the in-between space, too far from the birches for proper clover, too far from the serviceberries for proper berries, and talk about “nothing useful,” if you asked other rodents or birds. They made each other’s strange, specific lives a little easier, and neither of them had to pretend that a nine-degree slope was just as good as five. * * *
One late evening in July, Clementine landed on his head and pecked him on the cheek. Just briefly. Just to see what he’d do. He held very still, and would have blushed if rabbits could blush. “Your fur is exactly the color of a properly graded clover patch,” she said. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” he responded. “It’s the only nice thing I’ve ever said to anyone,” she admitted. He twitched his nose. She stayed on his head a moment longer than necessary. Today was, by every reasonable measure, precisely right.