THE FLOOD…PART 7:

WHAT HAD NOT BEEN LOST

Maximus woke as the bathwater cooled. Lifting his head, he saw that Joimus was still asleep, but he was concerned about her getting chilled as the water cooled further, so he touched her cheek, waking her.

"Mmmmm?" she murmured sleepily.

"Time to retire to the bed, beloved," he said, kissing her brow.

She sat on a stool, letting him dry her. As he turned a bit sideways at one point, she saw a large bruise on his hip. Very, very lightly she touched it. "How...?"

"I was swept down the stream some ways," he replied, continuing with his careful drying. "A fallen tree stopped my progress."

She looked up at him, realizing how much she did not know of recent events. "We need to talk."

"In bed," he smiled. "Let us dry ourselves first."

He went to the closet to pull out a nightgown for her, but she said, "No. I want nothing between you and me. I...I was so very...alone there...for so long. I need the feel of you beside me."

Once he'd removed the muddy quilt, he pulled back the covers and they both slid gratefully beneath them. Finding positions that did not hurt her side too much nor his hip, they lay together, his length warm against hers. She told him of the one large plant and her attempt to dig it up, of how the bank had given way and she'd found herself trapped beneath the rock. "The rain," she explained, "flowed down over the rock, into my face like a waterfall. All the rest of the day, all night, I fought to breathe. I saw your face," she
rested her palm on his cheek, "and holding on to the sight of that, I knew I must survive."

Because the rain had stopped by the time he found her, he hadn't thought of how the water would have streamed into her face. The realization of what she had endured went through him and he gathered her more closely to himself. If only he'd known where to look sooner, had been able to spare her even a moment of that. How close, how terribly close he'd come to losing her. Then he told her of the fight to keep the pond from overflowing, of discovering only very late that she was missing and how they'd looked all night for her in the pouring rain. He told of finding her and of their struggle to move the rock and get back up the bank.

And when each knew of the suffering and the pain of the other, they lay quietly, wrapped together, her listening to his heart beat, he to her breathing, and knew the gift they had been given of the continued presence of the other. Not once, not ever in their seven years
together had that been taken for granted, but there were times, as now, when the reality of vulnerability , the fragility of life, was utterly, utterly present. For now, they would sleep, nested in what had been given, what had not been lost.