Snowy, Snowy Nights

They fucked on the braided rug, Bran on all fours and Jeremiah crouched over him, fucking him like a dog. Bran had moved toward the bed when they’d both realized what they were going to do, but Jeremiah had pushed him down on the rug, saying in a rough voice, “No, not on the bed. Not there. The floor’s good enough.”

Once Jeremiah was gone, Bran looked around the cabin. He needed to do something else to show his gratefulness. The cabin was so drab. It wasn’t long until he was out in the forest, picking out a tree and chopping it down with an ax he’d found in a stump in the yard. He brought that in and got it stood up in a corner on the fireplace wall. He went out and chopped wood and brought it in and stacked it on the other side of the fireplace.

He looked critically at the tree. It needed something else to make the cabin look Christmassy. He went out in the barn and scrounged around, finding an old stirrup here and some tops of tin cans there, and bits and pieces of metal elsewhere. The tree looked better with those stuck in its branches, but it still didn’t look very Christmassy.

He threw open the shutters inside the two windows and let the light in. That did it. The light shining off the metal ornaments really brought in the spirit. Candlelight and light from the fireplace would do it at night.