Moss (Crossposted from AO3)

In Which a Lost Child is Named

Cheerio,

the letter addressed to a townhouse in Vantaa said,

I apologize for not writing sooner. I am well. My friends have taken very good care of me. I am still reading.

I have decided to travel to Keimola in December and I should like to visit for the solstice, if you are so inclined.

Snufkin

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"What are we to each other?" Moomin asked one day, as they huddled together in the hammock in the garden. September brought the slightest chill in the breeze. It was unwelcome. Moomin found it terribly intrusive.

"Very dear friends, I always figured," Snufkin replied. He did not feel so strongly about the change of the season as Moomin did. At least, not for the same reasons.

"But don't we act more like lovers sometimes?"

"Friends can also love each other."

"Is there a difference? Between lovers, and friends who love each other?"

Snufkin looked intently at the trees above them instead of responding right away, seeming as if he was carefully examining their overlapping lines in the hopes of finding the correct answer.

"I don't know. Do you feel that there is one?"

Moomin thought it over, watching the tree branches slowly move back and forth across his field of vision as Snufkin nudged the hammock with his single foot on the ground. Snorkmaiden had been a lover, and she had been a friend. She was now a friend, but not a lover, as she and Moomin had drifted apart the better part of a decade ago in that regard. Now she had her own lover—a husband, rather—and a young daughter. She wasn't even Snorkmaiden, now, but rather Snorkmamma.

Snufkin was much harder to define, and he surely liked it that way.

"I guess it's hard to say. But, Snufkin..."

"Yes?"

"What would be the harm in simply putting a word to it? To say that we were lovers as well as friends? Surely we can be both."

"I wouldn't want you to feel like you couldn't have others besides me."

Moomin found this to be a perplexing answer indeed.

"But I wouldn't want to have a lover other than you," Moomin protested. A thought then seemed to occur to him. "Why? Do you? Wanting other lovers, I mean."

"Oh," Snufkin said, sounding a bit scandalized. "No. Not anymore. When I was younger and I knew I would never see them again, the thought might occur to me, but..."

Moomin furrowed his brows. He caught himself feeling upset about the idea of Snufkin being with other people that way. He would have liked to believe that he could allow Snufkin to do that without battling himself, but he wondered if perhaps he overestimated how much he had unlearned his inclination to cling so fiercely to Snufkin.

"Did you ever?"

"No."

Moomin felt ashamed of the relief that answer gave him. "Why not?" he asked, as his relief didn't override his curiosity.

"Too risky," Snufkin said plainly. Moomin felt a twinge of remorse at that, as it had been with him that the risk Snufkin referred to had become an unfortunate reality, and Snufkin had suffered greatly for it. He found himself wondering if Snufkin ever regretted it.

A pause. Then, a new thought.

"Was I the first one you did those things with?"

Snufkin lifted his remaining leg into the hammock.