My fingers follow along the wall for balance in the indoor dark. I can smell the tallow candles burning.

The Instrument Maker looks at me uncertainly from his workbench, the unfinished wooden body of a lute in his arms. When I walk towards him, he stands up quick, overturning the bench. I step over it to clutch him, wrap my arms around him, press my face into his chest. There’s a short questioning bark on his lips as he tries to guess what I’m after. His breath pushes against me, and he twists to find his balance against the fallen bench.

I grasp him tighter, a shaking sob coming from deep in my guts. He gets still, his heart thumping through his skin. I press all of me against him. His body is taut, resisting, yet to me it’s the soft protection of my father. He tries to turn from me, but he’s the breathing warmth of the Country Mouse. He doesn’t embrace me back, but he’s my mother. He is all the folk no longer with me and all the folk I cannot have.

My sobs are hard and awkward, and snot and saliva smear across his shirt. The sobs come faster and faster, then slower and slower, till I’m left with hiccups. My fingers loosen around him, but he doesn’t pull away. He lays the lute, still clutched in his hand, down on the floor. Then he takes my hand.

He pulls the bench up and sits me on his lap. A callus on his thumb brushes my palm. Short, dark hairs skim my wrist. I forgot all the ways you can feel another person. I push my cheek against his jaw to feel his beard. I leave my brow in front of his lips to feel his breath. I want to get inside him. I want him to hold every part of me. It’s like when I was so hungry for food, and I could think of nothing else. I am the same hungry for touch, warmth, skin, breath.

I pull the neck of his shirt open and push my face in, his curly hairs going up my nose. I pull, pull, pull at the shirt until his whole chest is bare. He lets me do it. Even helps pull the shirt over his head, then holds me close against him.

My legs find their way around his hips until I am buried in his arms. My breath matches his, the hiccups catching me only now and again. I open my hands against his back, soaking in his warmth like sunshine.