wouldn’t want to be huddled up under that tree with this much lightning.”
Josh dropped his backpack and spread the quilt out near the firepit he’d circled with rocks a few visits ago. “I’ll build us a little fire to warm this place up.”
Emma shivered. “What can I do to help? Is that hail?”
He turned and looked at the cave entrance. “Yep, and that would be why it’s gotten so cold. If you’ll sit down right here in the middle of the quilt, I can wrap the edges up around you. That will keep you warm until the fire gets going.” She sat down, and he pulled the edges up over her shoulders to make a shawl. “The fire will take the damp off the cave in a hurry.”
“I didn’t even think about a jacket,” she told him.
“These storms come up fast out here in the desert,” he said as he laid kindling in the firepit. Once that was burning, he put a few small logs on top of the embers. “First time I did this I was afraid the smoke would run me out of here, but this place has a natural vent up there to get rid of the smoke. I’d love to know the story of why that’s even there.”
“I’ll make up a story for you.” She smiled.
“I’d love to hear it,” he said as he got a good blaze going.
“Once upon a time, a princess lived in this area in an adobe castle with her parents, the king and queen of Hummingbird Lane. She fell in love with a young man, but he was a lowly blacksmith,” Emma said, “and the king would never consent to her marrying the man. Jeremiah, the blacksmith, found this cave when he was running away from the princess’s brothers late one night. He pulled some brush over the opening, and they never found him, so it became the place where he and the princess could meet.”
Josh pulled back the quilt on one side and sat down. “You should have been a novelist as well as an artist.”
“When I was a little girl, I spent lots of hours entertaining myself with made-up stories. Mother fussed at me for spending more time with my stories and pictures than I did with math and history. Truth is, I never wanted to do anything but paint anyway, and I would much rather have cleaned houses like Rebel did than run a big oil company like Mother. Rebel was my hero,” Emma said.
“Tell me more of this story that you just made up.” Josh could have listened to her soft voice all night.
Emma turned her head slightly and smiled.
“Her name was Rachel, and his was Jeremiah. She was a beautiful woman and he was a very handsome man, but he was just a poor man. They knew they could never be together, so after a very long winter, they decided to run away together. They traveled all the way to the shore and lived happily ever after,” she said.
“And it all started right here in this cave?” Josh asked.
“Yes, and it was raining the night they made plans to run away together, just like it is now,” Emma said. “The end.” She had moved closer to him and wrapped a part of the quilt around him.
“But I wanted a whole long family saga that brought the story right up to this century,” he protested, hoping that if she kept talking she would stay right beside him.
“Maybe you are a descendant of one of them—either the blacksmith or the princess. One of their spirits led you to this cave because they knew that someday, you would need protection.” Emma spun more of the story.
“I would rather share genes with the blacksmith. They were artists of a sort.” He stretched out his hands to warm them over the fire.
“Then that’s who you will get your DNA from in my story. He had a strong, square jaw and brown eyes,” she told him.
He blinked several times. “My eyes are hazel, which is pretty common.”
“Rachel had very light brown eyes, and down through the ages, there were some blue-eyed people in my story.” Emma smiled.
“Do you think I’ve saved a princess from getting wet?” he asked.
“No, you’ve saved a commoner from getting hit by lightning. I don’t want to be a princess. I just want to be a common woman who lives in a trailer, goes out into the desert on adventures, and paints pictures of horny toads with purple