If I filtered out the city's sounds enough, I could pretend I was home. If I could ignore those candy wrappers, new-fallen on the snow that currently hid so many other urban sins. And if I could ignore the children screaming and pelting one another with snowballs over that hill. I only had to clear my mind... My willing delusion faded as one of the children yelled something shockingly profane at his comrades.

I ached for home, its seemingly endless expanse, its crisp clear air, its wealth of wildlife, its quiet and directness. Life and decisions had been more clear-cut there.

I couldn't help being surprised that it had taken me so long to miss my home so deeply again. My first months in Chicago had been difficult, but the emptiness had faded over time to something tolerable. But lately I felt the city pressing in on me.

Suddenly Diefenbaker left my side in a wild dash. As I turned to see him go, I noticed the familiar figure approaching. Ray hit the snow with a yelp as Dief knocked him over. I had the sudden urge to greet Ray that way myself, bowl him over in my joy at seeing him. Instead, I let Dief do it for me. A gleeful, chaotic struggle followed, spraying plumes of white in all directions.

"Fraser! Some help here?" Ray yelled.

"I wouldn't dream of it," I shouted back.

"That's not buddies!"

After waiting for a proper interval of time. I finally ran over and separated them, unable to stop myself from smiling at the picture Ray produced. He looked as if someone had sprinkled powdered sugar all over him. Tiny ice crystals gleamed in his coat, jeans, hair, and face, but not as brightly as his eyes or smile. As he stood up, he muttered something about overgrown puppies mugging him, but he laughed as he said it.

"Dienfenbaker," I chided, but my companion didn't even bother to look chastened. He knew I didn't truly mean it. "I'm sorry, Ray."

"You should see the other guy," Ray said, just before he stepped back to stand beside Diefenbaker and shook the snow off himself, canine-style, at the wolf. Greatly offended, Dief bounded away. Ray stopped and put his hand to his head. "Whoa. That ain't as easy as it looks. Dizzy." He leaned against me for support, and I smiled again. He had that effect on me.

I must have lost track of time if Ray had finished his shift and found the time to look for me. "How did you find me?"

"Went to the Consulate first. Rennie said you were getting that look again, so I knew to check out here."

"I have a look?"

"Yeah. Like yer body's here, but yer eyes are looking out over the Territories." Under the affectionate teasing, concern and fear lurked.

Ray worried. Worried about me, about my happiness, about my homesickness. Worried that his love might not be enough for me. Worried that I might leave him. Worried that I might not leave for home when I should because of him, and I would suffer for it.

It took me time to see that the city had solitude too, a solitude that could be crippling. It just had nothing to do with silence and physical isolation and everything to do with mental, spiritual, isolation. Ray once said that "no alone was as lonely as being alone in a crowd." I realized that I'd often felt that way myself, utterly alone, around my grandparents, much as they'd loved me. I believed that a solitude of that sort had driven Ray to jettison his own life to carry on another man's.

We never would have found one another otherwise, but I saw it as my life's mission to make sure Ray was never left alone like that again.

He would let me go home if he thought I needed it; he would give me up. It would hurt him, but I knew he loved me so deeply he would give anything to make me happy. I felt the same way about him and would do the same.

I realized something that I had actually known, deep in my heart, for some time. At this moment, I no longer felt that quite so much was missing. Going home while leaving Ray here wouldn't make me happy. Solitude had lost some of its charms for me. I had been alone, physically or mentally, most of my life, never knowing there could be another way, never understanding why I felt vaguely dissatisfied. Asking me if I felt lonely then would have been like asking a man who could only perceive the world in black and white what the color blue looked like; he would lack even the frame of reference necessary to answer.

My time in Chicago had shown me that I'd been missing something, but it wasn't until Ray Kowalski agreed to share my life that I understood, in my heart and blood, what that thing had been.

I couldn't just "go home" and be happy with that. Part of "home" was with Ray.

I put my arm across his thin shoulders and pulled him close. "I just needed to get away for a little bit."

He smiled. It amazed me how some of the smallest gestures could make him happy. "Understood. Hey, you done with yer nature hike yet? I'm hungry." He squirmed and mumbled, "How the hell does that wolf manage to get snow inside my coat?"

Grinning, mask up, I moved away from him. I knew how I could reassure him and distract myself from my brooding all at once. "I'm not hungry yet. I think I need a little more exertion first."

"Yeah? Like what?"

In one swift move, I bent, scooped up some snow into a ball, and hit him with it point blank. "That might help," I answered as I gave him my best Innocent Mountie look.

Ray blew snow off his face. "Yer ass is toast, Ben."

"I don't know if you want to do that, Ray. You have so many other things you like to do to my--"

He tackled me down into the snow. As we rolled, wrestling, giggling, I protested, "You were supposed to throw a snowball back." Diefenbaker barked and circled us, lending aid to one side and then the other.

"Yer the one who keeps saying I'm blind. This is evening the odds."

"You're tickling me! And getting snow under my coat!"

"Never said I would play *fair*, Mountie-boy."

But even as I enjoyed playing with Ray, I still brooded on the inside. Home was the Yukon, but home was also Ray, who was city-bred to the bone, whom I couldn't ask to make such a sacrifice on my behalf.

I couldn't see a way to reconcile the two.

**********************THE END***********************

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet one another."
- Rilke's _Letters to a Young Poet_

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room at http://members.tripod.com/~drovar/viridian/