Rust & Starlight
Chapter 14 : Mason Plays Guitar for the Sheep
The sheep were not good critics.
Mason had discovered this three days after Wren’s birthday, when he’d taken Luke’s guitar — her father’s guitar, he corrected himself — out to the north pasture. The afternoon was cold but clear, the sky a pale winter blue, and the sheep had gathered near the fence line, watching him with their strange, horizontal pupils.
He’d started playing without thinking. Just chords at first, then fragments of melody, then the half-finished songs he’d been working on in the barn loft. The sheep chewed their cud and blinked. None of them walked away. None of them asked for autographs or demanded he play “that one hit from 2019.”
It was the best audience he’d ever had.
Wren found him there on the third afternoon.
She’d been looking for him everywhere — the barn, the loft, the chicken coop — and was starting to worry when she heard the music. It drifted across the pasture, faint but clear, carried by the wind.
She followed the sound.
Mason was sitting on an overturned bucket, his back against a fence post, the guitar cradled in his arms. His eyes were closed, his fingers moving across the strings with a ease that belied the bandages still wrapped around his palms. He was singing softly — not performing, just being — and the song was one she hadn’t heard before.
“The prairie sky is wide and cold,
And I’ve got no one to hold,
But there’s a light in the farmhouse window,
And it’s calling me back home.”
Wren stopped at the fence, hidden by the curve of the hill. She shouldn’t eavesdrop. This was private — a man alone with his music, unaware of being watched. But she couldn’t move. The song was too beautiful, too raw, too him.
“I crashed my truck and my whole life,
Through a fence of barbed wire,
But the woman on the other side,
She didn’t call the law, she didn’t call the fire.
She handed me a coffee and a post-hole digger,
And said, ‘Boy, you’ve got work to do.'”
Wren’s hand flew to her mouth. He was singing about her. About the crash, the fence, the contract written on a feed sack. About the night she’d held his shaking hands in the barn.
“And I don’t know if she’ll ever love me,
I don’t know if I deserve her grace,
But I’m gonna fix every fence on this farm,
Till I earn a smile on her face.”
The song ended. Mason opened his eyes, looked up, and saw her standing at the fence.
“How long have you been there?” he asked.
“Long enough.”
He set the guitar aside, his expression unreadable. “That was private.”
“You were playing in a pasture. In front of sheep.” She climbed over the fence — gracefully, in a way he never could — and walked toward him. “Nothing’s private in a pasture.”
“I was working through some things.”
“I could tell.” She stopped a few feet away, her arms crossed. “That song. It’s about us.”
Mason didn’t deny it. “It’s about a lot of things. The farm. The fence. The way you looked at me that first morning, like you wanted to kill me and feed me to the sheep.”
“I still want that sometimes.”
“I know.”
She uncrossed her arms and sat down on the ground beside him — not on the bucket, but on the cold grass, close enough that their shoulders touched.
“Play it again,” she said.
“The whole thing?”
“The whole thing.”
Mason picked up the guitar. His fingers found the chords, and he began to sing — not the abbreviated version he’d played for the sheep, but the full song, with all its verses and bridges and a chorus that rose like a prayer.
Wren listened with her eyes closed, her head tilted back, her face turned toward the pale winter sun. She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. She just listened, and in the listening, something between them shifted — deepened — became more than either of them had words for.
When the song ended, the silence stretched out, full and warm.
“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,” Wren said quietly.
“It’s not finished.”
“It doesn’t need to be.”
Mason set the guitar aside again and turned to look at her. Her profile was sharp against the sky — the line of her jaw, the curve of her cheek, the small scar above her eyebrow where she’d been kicked by a calf years ago.
“I meant what I said in the song,” he said. “About earning a smile.”
“I know.”
“About not knowing if you’ll ever love me.”
She turned to face him. Her eyes were the color of the winter sky — pale blue, clear, honest.
“I don’t know either,” she said. “I’m not there yet. But I’m not nowhere, either.”
“Where are you?”
She considered the question. “I’m on the fence.”
Mason laughed — a real laugh, surprised and bright. “That’s a terrible pun.”
“I know.” She smiled, just a little. “I inherited it from my father. He loved puns. Drove my mother crazy.”
“I would have liked him.”
“You would have. He was terrible at guitar, but he loved music. He would have sat right here, in this pasture, and listened to you play for hours.”
Mason looked down at the guitar, then back at her. “Maybe I’ll write a song for him someday.”
“He’d like that.”
They sat together as the sun began to set, painting the prairie in shades of gold and rose. The sheep had wandered to the far end of the pasture, bored of the entertainment. The wind had died, leaving a stillness that felt almost sacred.
“Mason,” Wren said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you crashed into my fence.”
He turned to look at her. Her face was soft in the fading light, unguarded in a way he’d rarely seen.
“I’m glad I crashed into your fence too,” he said.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her. And they watched the sun go down together, the guitar silent between them, the song still hanging in the air like a promise.