“I’ll be careful.”
“It’s awfully dry out.”
“It’s not that bad. I won’t wave it around crazily. Just do an arc above my head with it and out in front.”
“Okay. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Morgun lifted her camera to her face. “Okay….go!”
Laney lit the sparklers. She threw the lighter away from her so that it wouldn’t be in the photos and started waving the sparklers. Morgun went with it, quickly adjusting settings as she shot. She didn’t look at the raw photos until after the sparklers burned out. They had a couple packs just in case, but she was astounded to see the results.
“Look!” She brought the camera over to Laney, who laughed in amazement as soon as Morgun started flipping through.
“That worked out well, didn’t it?”
“Yes! Oh my God, these are going to look so good!”
“I guess we can start packing up, unless there’s something else you want to do.”
“No, I think we’re good. Unless there’s something else you want?”
“I think I’m good. Silas is probably waiting to serve us tea. It’s been a couple hours.”
“Don’t worry. He knows exactly what we’re doing. He’s watching us with his binoculars, remember?”
Morgun groaned. “Please don’t say that.”
“It was you who came up with it.” Laney laughed. She very unashamedly stripped out of the costume and got her regular clothes back on. She, at least, got to keep her underthings on, and the barn hid them from view of the house.
&nbs
p; Morgun felt the same burning heat she always felt whenever she looked at Laney, especially Laney stripped down to just her bra and panties, but she turned and forced herself to start packing up equipment.
“Oh look!” Laney suddenly announced. Morgun whirled. She saw Laney first, slipping her jeans on, and nothing else. “A cat!” Laney thrust her other leg into her jeans and pulled them over her hips. She left her costume on the ground and made cute little kissing noises, calling, “Here kitty. Come here.”
Morgun still didn’t see a cat. Laney obviously hadn’t lost sight of it. She went cooing and kissing around the side of the barn, calling for the cat, which was probably a farm cat and likely feral. Morgun set her camera carefully into its bag, then went trailing after Laney. You’d think that a person who didn’t even know what an opossum looked like and was about to attempt to mace it, albeit with hairspray, wouldn’t be so gung-ho about a wild cat.
“I don’t see a cat,” Morgun whispered behind Laney, now rounding the other side of the barn.
“It was just here. It keeps running up ahead. I saw it. It’s one of those, what do they call them? Tuxedo cats? With the black and white?”
“Oh. Well, it probably doesn’t want to be pet. That’s why it’s walking away from us. We should probably just leave it.”
“Okay.” Laney turned. “Yeah. You’re probably right.” She was about to follow, but then she caught sight of something again and pointed. “No, look. It’s right there!”
Morgun followed her finger and she did indeed see something black and white, but the creature that popped back around the barn’s weathered corner was no cat.
“Ah!” She yelled frantically. Too loudly. “That’s not a cat!”
“What? Oh shit!” Laney could obviously finally see that it was indeed not a cat.
That black and white cute tuxedo was a huge freaking skunk.
“Should we run?” Laney hissed under her breath, trying not to startle the animal, which now was, alarmingly enough, heading straight towards them.
“No,” Morgun whisper-yelled back. “I think that would just scare it. I don’t think they spray unless they’re threatened. We should just back away. Carefully. Slowly. Little steps.”