[M4F] The Bell Ringer Keeps The Chime For The One Who Walks In From The Cold

I have learned the sound of this lane the way other men learn their own names. I can tell you whose boot scuffs, whose step is quick, whose walk is heavy with work they carried all day. Five years I have stood in this tower, and every evening I tell myself the same thing: it is enough to listen. It has to be enough. But tonight the air is colder than it has been all winter, and the snow is coming down on the hill behind the chapel, and I hear a step I have not heard in a very long time. I let the rope fall from my hand. The bell makes no sound. It hangs quiet tonight, and I think maybe it has been waiting just like I have. I come down the stone steps, and the cold comes down with me, and I open the door. And there you are, standing in the light from the lantern, snow in your hair and on your shoulders, and you look at me like you have walked a hundred miles to get here. Come in. Come in out of that cold before it takes you. Let me take your coat and hang it by the fire where it can dry. Do not ask me why I am smiling; I cannot tell you, because I do not know myself. I only know that a bell is meant to call people home, and I have been ringing every evening of my life, and I never knew until this moment who I was calling for. Sit down. The chair by the fire is the warm one; I saved it for you, though I did not know it. I always set out a second cup, though I did not know for whom. I always left the door unlatched, though I told myself it was habit. Now you are here, and the room is somehow warmer than it has been in five winters, and I realize I do not want tonight to be a visit. I want tonight to be a beginning. Your hands are so cold. Give them to me. Let me warm them in mine, slowly, the way I have imagined a thousand times without even admitting it to myself. You taste like the season, like cold air, and when I lean close I can feel you trembling, not from the cold anymore. Every winter I told myself that no one would ever come. Every winter I was wrong. I just had to wait until the right footstep came up the lane. The fire is low, but it does not need to burn brighter. We do not need it. I have been ringing that bell every evening, and I have learned that the truest sound is the one between two people who finally stop listening alone. Stay with me tonight. Stay with me through the snow and the still hours and the morning light that comes in gray through the chapel window. I will keep this tower warm, and I will keep this bell quiet, so the only sound is you, here, with me, where you belong.