{"id":5302,"date":"2016-09-17T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2016-09-17T05:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jackofharts.com\/?p=5302"},"modified":"2016-09-14T02:38:07","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T07:38:07","slug":"its-good-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/?p=5302","title":{"rendered":"It’s Good Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAre you here to stay?\u201d she asked and I started to remember her. When I last saw her she had brighter hair and less swimsuit. She\u2019d been one of the few Arnam that stayed through the Minnesota winters. We\u2019d gone to school together. We\u2019d partied together on hundreds of lakes and beaches on both sides of the border. And then the Shang dropped Yosemite Station all over America.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought you died,\u201d I said in confusion and she laughed as I stepped away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey missed,\u201d she returned with a shake of her head and followed me with a determination I remembered very well. \u201cAnd then I helped rebuild.\u201d She stopped and spun around with a familiar laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s just like we remember isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s paradise, Jack! Like the Shang never came.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had to sigh at that. \u201cBut they did<\/em> come. And nothing\u2019s really ever the same again once you lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was when she stepped up and wrapped her arms around my neck. \u201cMaybe not the same, but we can make it better, Jack. Can\u2019t you stay? It\u2019s good here!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the second time she\u2019d asked me a question I couldn\u2019t answer. She was right of course. About everything. But I wasn\u2019t the boy that left this little town twenty years ago. I\u2019d dreamed of coming back. Worked so hard to break the Shang precisely so I could. And now I looked at her and started to wonder for the first time if I could ever really go home again after everything I\u2019d seen and done.<\/p>\n

\"its-good-here-800\"<\/a><\/p>\n

High rez version available on Patreon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAre you here to stay?\u201d she asked and I started to remember her. When I last saw her she had brighter hair and less swimsuit. She\u2019d been one of the few Arnam that stayed through the Minnesota winters. We\u2019d gone[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diaries","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-jack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5303,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions\/5303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}