3:28<\/p>\n
Gareth didn’t know what he felt. Betrayed, bereft, or simply and suddenly alone? He just knew that something was suddenly and irrevocably changed from his life; and that it wasn’t the lemon tree.<\/p>\n
As he wandered aimlessly from one room to another he couldn’t help feeling that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He had no idea what was supposed to happen, but surely this sudden and jarring shift wasn’t it. As Gareth stood looking at the circular dent in the carpet where the plant had been, it started to dawn on him that Rowan was staring at him in a most peculiar way, and the tone of her recent comments stated to filter into his perceptions. Well, isn’t this a kick in the ass<\/em>, he thought. He cracked a small smile as he replayed the events of the preceding five minutes from an outsider’s point of view, and slowly dropped to one knee to run his hand over the empty patch of dirty green carpet.<\/p>\n Well, at least there were some short, stiff brown hairs helping form the perfect circle. That ought to prove he wasn’t completely off his rocker. Of course, it might take a CSI dude to prove they were beaver and not dog, but the hairs lent an air of plausibility to his story. He rolled onto his ass and sat crosslegged on the floor staring for a moment longer into space.<\/p>\n Where had the beaver gone? Why had he gone? For that matter, why was he so sure that the beaver was actually gone? It couldn’t just be the missing tree. It had been small enough that the beaver never would have had it even for a snack. Maybe he’d find the pot shoved in a closet and the beaver out for a breath of air, trying to find some way to justify the citrus-icide. But somehow Gareth knew the situation wasn’t that simple and no pot would be found in the apartment.<\/p>\n He just didn’t understand.<\/p>\n Rowan was still standing there with a look of twisted humour, and sitting here wasn’t solving anything. Time to stand up and move forward. Beaver or no beaver, he still had things to do.<\/p>\n He moved to the boombox, hit the power button, and in the new and seemingly intense silence turned to his guest. \u201cCan I offer you a beer?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 3:28 Gareth didn’t know what he felt. Betrayed, bereft, or simply and suddenly alone? He just knew that something was suddenly and irrevocably changed from his life; and that it wasn’t the lemon tree. As he wandered aimlessly from one room to another he couldn’t help feeling that this wasn’t the way it was supposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}