The Comfort of Dragons

Farla guided Shyler’s magic in the glass dragon the pair were crafting and smiled at how enthusiastic her partner was about this project. This was the thirteenth dragon and Shyler’s joy over creating smaller replicas of herself had yet to dim. Starting their next project might well lead to a pouting dragon, but creating this mobile for Farla’s niece had been a lot of fun.

After waiting for the crystalline dragon to cool, Farla tucked it carefully into a padded bag with two others and left the studio with Shyler perched proudly on her shoulder. The pair received varying reactions on their journey. Those of the neighborhood who knew them offered waves and cheerful greetings, but strangers shied away. A few people even crossed the street. It was hard to be sure if they were prejudiced against Farla’s elven ears or Shyler’s red hue. Elves tend to be stronger with magic than human channelers, which makes some humans nervous, while red dragons have a completely unearned reputation for aggression. And, of course, there had been a rising sentiment against using magic at all lately.

People who knew Farla and Shyler recognized two of the most highly regarded artists in the nation and remembered how much of their income Farla spent on helping local families. The driver of the city bus the pair caught knew them well enough to shake his head at the couple who got up and moved to a further seat after she sat down near them. He made sure to use both her and Shyler’s names when wishing them well as they disembarked.

Upon reaching her sister’s house, Farla took a deep breath. Her sister was out of town, as was her husband and their six-year-old. The house was being watched by Farla’s brother-in-law’s sister. The sister, Elise, had soft grey eyes, warm brown hair, a gentle smile, a stately figure, and a deeply rooted sentiment against magic-channelers, all of which she’d inherited from her mother. Farla and Elise had known each other for close to a decade, and had a few interesting conversations early on. Then the conversations dried up, leaving only some glances that Farla struggled not to read much into from across rooms and dining tables. It had been two years since Elise did anything other than ignore Farla as much as possible.

When Elise opened the door, Farla expected her to stand aside without a word before going to read in the study as she had done every other time. She did not expect Elise to follow her into Katchya’s room and watch her bring out the final three dragon sculptures.

“These are the last ones?” Elise whispered, sounding scared. Her gaze was locked on the floor tiles beneath her feet.

“Yep.” Farla put extra pep into her voice, trying to pretend that she wasn’t unsettled by the change in routine. Shyler flew up to sit atop a bookshelf along with an assortment of plush animals but watched Elise with open distrust. “Once I attach them, I can hoist this baby up and it’ll be all ready to surprise the birthday girl when she gets home next week.”

Elise’s eyes moved to the ceiling, where the hook for the mobile was already installed. “I wonder how long it will take her to notice.”

The thought of their niece entering the room and going about her normal business before suddenly going, “When did that get there?” made Farla chuckle. “She’ll either see it immediately, or not until she gets into bed.”

“Agreed.” As though mentioning the bed had reminded Elise it existed, she sat down on it as she watched Farla deftly attach the new dragons. Each of the glass reptiles was a different color, which would work perfectly since Katchya’s room already looked like a rainbow had exploded across it. “Um…” Elise said after several minutes. “I don’t want to sound rude. But… Are they enchanted?”

Farla’s fingers paused and she looked up. Her eyes met Elise’s and she processed what she saw there. The other woman was openly concerned. It would have made some channelers angry, but Farla figured it was a mixture of possessing ignorance and honestly caring about a little girl they both adored. She could never be angry at someone wanting to protect her beloved niece. “I couldn’t love Katchya more if she were my own daughter. The only magic in these guys was from their formation and a mild spell to make it harder to shatter them.”

Elise’s lips pressed together for a moment before she nodded. Then she licked them as Farla tried to think about something other than Elise’s lips.

Farla went back to double-checking the attachments on the mobile, making extra certain that the metallic chains the dragons were to hang from were secure. Satisfied, she waved Shyler over. “Time to get this up!”

“Wait!” Elise sprang to her feet.

Shyler hissed at the sudden sound and flew to hide behind a curtain. Elise stared at the lump the dragon formed behind the curtain fabric as Farla waited for an explanation. Eventually, she gave up on that and said, a little testily, “I already told you I didn’t cast any big scary spells on it.”

“Oh.” Elise blinked a few times before meeting Farla’s gaze. Her eyes dipped as though she was cowed by what she saw. “That’s not what I meant. I meant to say, please hold on for a moment because I wanted to ask if you could add an extra enchantment.”

Her head tilted as Farla studied the other woman. “I thought you hated magic.”

“No… Not really.” A hint of tears clouded Elise’s eyes as she continued to study the floor. “That’s… I was raised that way. And my husband, he feels that way…” Her voice trembled as she spoke, but when she looked up her eyes were filled with anger. “But I’m sick of shutting up and ignoring my own opinions just because he ignores them. I’m leaving him. Or I want to. But when I told him that I wasn’t going to come back from this trip, he threatened Katchya.”

As Elise crumbled, collapsing onto the mattress and burying her face in her hands, Farla breathed in and tried to still a growing rage. The bed creaked as she sat and put a tentative arm around Elise. “Have you told Ethaniel?”

“Do you think I told Ethaniel?” Elise asked with a bitter laugh. “Is he on holiday with Katchya and Yvonne or in jail for murdering his brother-in-law?”

“Yeah, alright, I see your point.” Farla’s hand rubbed against Elise’s shoulder in a way she hoped was comforting as her anger turned to resolve and her thoughts shifted to planning. Shylar, reading the change in her partner’s emotions, emerged from the curtain at ground level and took a few hesitant steps towards the pair of elves. She stopped a ways shy of them and watched closely as she sent a sense of support to her partner. “I can enchant the mobile easily enough. But I think maybe you need something too. And we’ll need to put a charm on Katchya to protect her when she’s not in her room. Everyone already knows I made her the mobile, so we’ll need a piece of jewelry we can say is from you.”

Elise nodded. Her expression was numb and her voice toneless as she answered, “Of course. Just tell me what to buy.”

“I have some rainbow stone back at my place. It’s good for holding enchantments. Especially if you wrap it in gold. I have a little bit of that too. So we just need a chain.”

“Okay.”

Farla’s chest felt tight as she gave Elise a squeeze and stood up. “You don’t have to stay for this part if you don’t want to.”

Elise looked up slowly. “I want to stay if that’s alright. I’m curious.”

Farla quirked her eyebrows. “So you really don’t think you’ll be damned by being around someone misusing God’s power?”

“No.” Elise shook her head and let out a soft sigh. “You couldn’t do evil if you tried, Farla. You’re the kindest, most godly person I know.”

Her lips parted as Farla replayed the words in her head. She had no idea how to respond to them.

“I’m sorry I let you think I hated you,” Elise went on. “I… I just couldn’t let Aris know I didn’t. If he had any idea how I actually feel about you… He wouldn’t handle it well.”

“How you actually feel?”

The softest of smiles graced Elise’s face. “Don’t get distracted. I’ll tell you all about it after we make sure the niblet’s safe.”

“Okay,” Farla all but squeaked. Could Elise be saying what Farla so desperately wanted her to be saying? No… Probably not. She probably just meant she wanted to be friends, right? Farla told herself not to let her hopes get too high and that now wasn’t the time for fantasies.

Early the next week, Katchya ran into her room and spotted the change right away. “Everybody!” she yelled. “There are dragons in my room!”

Laughing, the adults walked down the hall to admire the project. Her mom and dad looked up, making sounds of astonishment while her aunts smiled at each other.

Katchya put a hand on her hip. “Was this you, Aunt Farla?”

“Why would you think that?” Farla asked with a grin. On her shoulder, Shyler clicked merrily in the dragon equivalent of laughter.

“It was,” Katchya said to the others before running back to stand under the mobile. She lay on the floor so she could get a better view. “They’re so pretty.”

“So you like dragons?” Elise asked in a teasing voice. “I didn’t know that, Niblet.”

“Everyone knows that,” Katchya said.

“Okay, fine. I knew. That’s probably why I bought this.”

“Bought what?” Katchya bounced up again and looked eagerly at the package her other aunt held out to her. She grabbed the present and ripped the paper off it with excited efficiency. More gently, she took the lid from the box thus revealed. Her eyes went wide at the sight of a gold dragon clutching a rainbow-colored crystal to its chest. She squealed. “I love it!”

“Good,” said Elise. “I never want to see you without it.”

“You only see me on holidays,” Katchya said. “But I’ll wear it everyday.”

“Alright.” Elise smiled as Yvonne helped her daughter secure the clasp of the new necklace. “You’ll be seeing me more often than that from now on though.”

Ethaniel gave his sister a curious look. “She will?”

“Yeah.” Elise drew a deep breath. “I’m divorcing Astir.”

Everyone paused for a moment, then Yvonne blurted, “Thank God,” as Ethaniel said, “About time.”

“And…” Elise reached out for Farla’s hand. “And I’m moving in with Farla.”

There was another pause, during which Yvonne and Ethaniel shared a smile.

“Thank God,” said Ethaniel.

“About time,” Yvonne added.

“Awesome!” proclaimed Katchya. “This is the best birthday ever!”

Above image is by deviant art user Sandara. I urge you to check out her feed at https://www.deviantart.com/sandara and considering purchasing some of the works she has for sale. (A list which includes this imagine.)

It was offered as prompt on my Wording Wednesday Project

The Ghost of the Claw Machine

There are a variety of ways in which people respond to being dead. Some take the news well and start new lives in the world of Shadow, happily continuing on as ghosts for years or even centuries. But others try to deny their deaths, attempt to act as though it never happened and they're still alive. The souls in this latter group will usually pick one place of importance and stay there doing whatever is logical in the spot, like the grandfather who continues to sit in his recliner napping all day or the frycook who keeps trying to flip burgers.

What every spirit who remains in Shadow has in common is that they possess a purpose for remaining. The guy sleeping in his chair? He's probably worried about his widow or their grandkids. The frycook? He's worried about that coworker he was crushing on, or maybe he wants revenge on the manager who made him work until closing and is the reason he crossed the street at 11:30 instead of 8:30, which is how he came to be killed by a drunk driver.

Mara Brisbane remained living-adjacent rather than moving on to the true afterlife because of one thing: a claw machine. Well, a claw machine and a mentaly unstable young man with a gun.

On the afternoon of June twelfth, 1987, a gunman entered the Midtown Mall Arcade. It was years before Americans would start thinking of mass public shootings as normal events, but despite the fact that he injured five people and killed one in an age where this didn't happen several times a week, the news was too busy talking about Ronald Regan telling Mikhail Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall!" as though the Soviet Premier might start taking direction from the President of the United States to fully cover it.

Mara knew her murderer from school, where they'd shared a trigonometry class. She wasn't the reason he was in a homicidal rage, though. That honor went to Brittany Smalls, who had not only turned him down for prom but made certain everyone knew how ludicrous it was that he'd thought he stood a chance of her going with him. Brittany frequented the arcade regularly, but wasn't there that day. Even in the realm of people willing to commit murder, most people would go home and come back later if the object oftheir plan wasn't there. Not this guy. In the absence of the brunette he wanted to shoot, he shot at every brunette he could spot in the time between drawing his weapon and being taken down by off-duty cop who had been ordering cookies nextdoor when he heard gunshots.

It would have upset Mara to be murdered no matter what, but what really upset her about the whole thing was that she was absolutely certain she was a second away from finally managing to snag the plush wolf in the claw machine bin.

The wolf was important. It was for her kid sister, who needed it to comfort her as she had surgery scheduled the next week. Annie loved wolves. And Mara loved Annie.

That was over thirty years ago and Mara is still standing in front of the claw machine.

Over the years, she's developed the energy to work the machine's controls. That's how everyone knows the thing is haunted. She only uses it when the arcade is closed, but when she wins things, she leaves them where they fall. There hasn't been a wolf in there for years, you see. And she isn't interested in anything else.

I've pieced all this together over the last few weeks, through a series of conversations with Mara. It's only been a few months since I moved to this town and when my parents brought me into the arcade gushing about how they loved places like this "back in the day" I instantly spotted the teenaged girl in a short denim skirt, jean jacket, and high top sneakers. If I didn't have so much experience with ghosts, I would have thought she was being retro, but she's far from the first spirit I've come across. When I realized no one else seemed to see her, I was confident she was dead.

A couple named Jonesevich own the place and roll their eyes at the assertions of the place being haunted. Their daughter, Camille, though… She believes. And she helped me arrange for there to be a wolf in the claw machine. She also let me in after hours, which is why we're both walking up behind Mara as she concentrates on the machine.

"She's there, isn't she?" Camille whispers. She's shorter than I am, but her boobs are bigger and she's all-round prettier than I could ever hope to be. Her heart-shaped face is filled with awe and hope as it shines up at me from under a teal fedora, and her hands are grasped in front of her chest like she's about to break into prayer.

"Yes," I confirm. "But sush, she's concentrating."

Even though she knows Mara is there, Camille lets out a little gasp as the claw in the machine starts to move. It lowers, grabs a toy, and moves to drop the prize in the shoot to the collection bin.

Mara breathes out. "Okay. I should be able to get the wolf now. Can you get that thing out of the way?"

"Sure." I move over to where I can bend and retrieve what turns out to be a really cute blue dragon. Personally, I'd rather have a dragon than a wolf, but I don't say anything.

Aware that Mara doesn't care about the dragon's fate, I take it to Camille. "She says to give you this thanks for all you've done."

"Oh!" Camille grabs the plushie and hugs it tightly. I feel a twinge of envy for the dragon. Camille is my age, my type, and openly bisexual judging by the blue, purple, and pink heart pin attached to her hat. I'm not silly enough to think that means I stand a chance with her, though.

We wait as Mara takes a few tries to grab the wolf. When we first met, I asked her how she could operate the arcade machines without using tokens. She'd shrugged and said that when she came to after being shot, they just worked for her without her knowing why. Her theory is that her energy is somehow tricking them. I don't have any better explanation.

Finally, the wolf drops into the prize box and Mara takes it out with a whoop. She doesn't manage to hold it long; manipulating our world takes a lot of energy and she would already have been tired from using the machine controls.

I pick the wolf up off the floor. It is pretty adorable, although I stand by my assertion that the dragon was the better prize.

"Did she move on?" Camille whispers.

"No. She's still here."

Mara moves around, looking at as much of herself as possible. "Yeah, I kind of thought something would change."

"Maybe you need your sister to get the wolf," I say. Camille and I brought a box and we sit on the floor to put the wolf in it and seal it up. Annie's address, which I paid a service to get and hope is right, is already written on the shipping label and ready to go out first thing in the morning.

"Have you seen my sister?" Mara asks, standing over us.

"Not in person," I admit. "I found her Instagram account, though."

I open my Instagram app and put in Annie's username. A page full of pictures, mostly of two little girls and a Siberian Husky, pops up and stand to show it to Mara. "See? She's doing well. Those are your nieces. She never says their names, but their initials are MM and and SA."

"Mara Marie," Mara whispers. "My middle name is Marie. She named her daughter after me?"

I shrug. "Maybe. Probably? I thought about asking, but was afraid I'd sound creepy."

"And SA would be Sarah Anne. That was our grandmother's name, the one Annie was named for." Mara's eyes continue to focus on the screen. "Where do they live? Is that a beach?"

The picture she's pointing out does seem like a beach. "Her address is in Maine, so, I guess so."

"Maine? That so far away… But she's okay, isn't she? Like really okay?"

"I think so." It's hard to tell how someone is doing from an Instagram account, but she seems to have a nice balance of activities and interests.

Mara smiles. “That’s all I ever wanted. For her to be okay.”

Even as the words fade, Mara’s body starts to take on a transparency. Without further comment, but with a peaceful smile, she shimmers and is gone.

I stare at the spot Mara used to be in. I’ve never actually witnessed anyone moving on from Shadow before. “She left,” I whisper. “I think… I think she’s in heaven now. Or being reincarnated. Or, you know, whatever happens after Shadow.”

“Oh. So she just needed to know her kid sister's alright?” Camille looks where I am, although she never saw Mara in the first place. There’s a mist in her eyes. “That is so sweet.”

“It really is.” I bend over and pick up the box. “Think we should mail this anyway?”

Camille nods. “Absolutely.” She climbs to her feet. “And… Um… There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask, but it didn’t seem like right time before…”

My heart-rate picks up even as I tell myself she’s not about to ask me out. More likely she wants to know if she can learn to see ghosts too or something like that. “Okay. Go for it.”

“I…” She draws a shaky breath. “I was wondering…” Her eyes drop to the floor. “Would you maybe…” She brings her eyes back up, her expression saying it’s hard to look at me as she speaks. “Would you like to go out with me?”

I try not to stare. “Like on a date?”

“Yeah… I mean… You do like girls, right?”

I nod.

“And I know it’s a stretch to think that maybe you’d like me specifically, but-”

“I do!” I interrupt. “I like you specifically. Very much so. I would totally have kept that dragon otherwise.”

She laughs, relief making her body loosen. “Okay. Good. You pick where. Anywhere that isn’t an arcade.”

I join the laughter. “That’s really limiting, but I’ll think of something.”

With the box tucked under my left arm, I wrap my right hand around Camille’s as we walk out into the deserted mall.

The above image is Arcade by Kelsey Smith. You can find it an other works by the artist at INPRNT.com.

It was offered as a prompt for my Wording Wednesday Project.

If you like ghosts, you might be interested in my novel I'd Rather Not Be Dead.

Drew McKinney never liked living in Pine Bridge, North Carolina, but she liked it a lot better than being dead there. No way does she want to haunt this stupid hick town for the rest of forever. She doesn't want to haunt anywhere if she can help it. The whole dying thing knocked Drew back in time several weeks, so she's got a shot at saving herself from Hell in Appalachia if she can figure out why she died. Unfortunately, not only is she clueless about what killed her but there's a soul-eating fog after her, the ruler of the ghost realm is interfering in her afterlife, and the only living person Drew can turn to for help is Cooper Finnegan, who is hands down her least favorite person on the planet.

Available for Kindle and other digital retailers or in print.

The Tangled Tentacles of Fate

Agata swam under a sign labeling her as a eyhnu and blinked her many eyes, wondering for the zillionth time why it was that humans have such a hard time refraining from using flash photography. It’s not like there weren’t signs next to each display at The Zoo Aquatic reminding people not to use it. The worst part, Agata believed, was that since they were taking photos from inside submarines, there’s no way a photo taken with a flash was ever going to show anything other than a burst of light. Which meant Agata was constantly being blinded by people wanting a selfie with the giant tentacle “monster” but actually taking images of them next to a blinding light instead. Some humans, Agata was left to assume, were just dimwitted.

There was a petition going around the displays, as the creatures who acted like zoo exhibits were called, to insist that the human submarines coat their windows in something that would prevent the light from passing out. None of the management really seemed on board, though. Perhaps it was time to consider a strike.

It amused Agata to imagine the angry explosion Mr Apolusa, the owner of The Zoo Aquatic, would engage in should the displays decide they were tired of performing for minimal recompense and under conditions that were deteriorating, not rapidly but certainly with great regularity. The over-use of flash photography was just one of the complaints that could be filed. There were also concerns about the quality of food provided in the cafeteria, the inefficient fuel usage of the submarines, and the long hours during which displays where expected to be in their enclosures without bathroom breaks. The last one really got to Agata, who refused to do what some of the displays did and simply pee in front of everyone.

Nursing a headache, Agata went straight to her apartment as soon as she clocked out of work, stopping just long enough along the way to pick up a fresh algae pizza for dinner. It wasn’t, she knew, the healthiest choice she could be making, but who has the energy to hunt down fish while fighting off a migraine?

Normally, Agata would put something on her screen to binge watch, but she couldn’t deal with the backlighting, so brought out the novel she was reading, a romantic comedy about an orca who fell for a guy from the wrong side of the Puget Sound, or the Eei@ieey!!ie, as it was called natively.

Sometimes Agata dreamed of living in her own romance story, even though her previous attempts had been disastrous in the extreme. And when I say disastrous, what I mean is that of her five exes, only one had survived.

It was the survivor who knocked on her door this evening. “Oh, Paulo,” she said as she beheld him floating outside. “Why today?”

He moved about half of his tentacles in a struggle to stay put against the weak current. Half the tentacles he moved were solely to counteract ones that had moved erroneously, either in the wrong direction or with too much power. Paulo had always had difficulties staying put when he was nervous, which he appeared to be now if his pale pink pallor was anything to judge by. “Why not today?”

“Because we’re two weeks into tourist season and my head is trying to split in two even without having to deal with you.”

Paulo’s two largest eyes, the ones in the center of his head, dropped in discouragement. “Oh. I’m sorry. I’ll go away.”

As he started to turn, Agata was stricken with guilt over how mean she had been. Paulo really wasn’t a bad guy. That’s why she broke up with him rather than eating him like she’d usually do with a lover she no longer wanted. “Wait,” she said. “It’s okay. Come in.”

With a weak smile, Paulo adjusted course again and managed to navigate through the door. Agata’s apartment was decorated to be as close to a cave as possible, although the walls were far too straight and served to make people a bit uncomfortable with their uncanniness. This was the first time Paulo had seen it as he hadn’t visited since she moved our of their shared place last year. He tried not to stare, but a few of his smaller eyes did anyway. The apartment was so oddly boxed-shaped, he almost couldn’t process it. It reminded him of a picture he’d seen of a human dwelling, and he was puzzled as to why anyone would try to recreate that style underwater.

Agata closed the door and shifted in the uncomfortable silence. “How have you been?”

“Um… Alright. You?”

“Fine I guess. A lot of headaches. I think I’m getting more sensitive to light.” It was a common sign of aging, so Agata moved on quickly rather than discussing it further. “Still at The Zoo, but starting to think I might look for something a little deeper.”

“Really?” The question came quickly and contained an eagerness that threw Agata off.

“Maybe…”

Paulo looped a few tentacles through the water as he settled against a rock that was probably supposed to mimic a natural formation but was really just a singular rock sticking up from a flat floor. “It’s just… I’m moving down to i!eea@. My dad wants help with the hatchery.”

“That’s cool.” Agata mentally poked herself, trying to figure out what the emotion she was feeling in response to this was. It seemed almost like disappointment that he’d be further away. That couldn’t be it though, could it? They weren’t dating anymore, weren’t even really friends. What did it matter if he moved fathoms from her?

“Is it?” he asked softly, a few of his tentacles turning toward lavender. “You don’t sound certain.”

She wasn’t. But she could hardly tell him that. Instead, she shrugged a few tentacles. “Probably the headache.”

“Yeah, probably.” Paulo looked around the room, taking in the details. Whoever had built it clearly hadn’t had eyhnus in mind. It was built for something smaller, something more content to float in the empty spaces rather than wanting to cling to rocks. And it was too warm. And the pressure was too low. And there was too much light thanks to having a window, of all the bizarre things to have. He felt certain he’d have a headache just about every day if he tried to live somewhere like it, but he also knew that Agata wouldn’t welcome comments on the matter, so said nothing.

“Say hey to your dad for me,” Agata said. “I always liked him.”

“And he liked you,” Paulo responded, allowing sadness to weave through the words. “My whole family did.” He let it go unsaid that he had as well. That he still did. That, in actual fact, he adored her completely and wanted nothing more than to whisk her down into the depths to breed a new generation of eyhnus. He was certain she didn’t want to hear it now any more than she had wanted to hear it the day she left him. “Anyway… I just wanted to say goodbye.”

Later, Agata would blame the headache for the way she had just smiled and let him go.

It was the next day before she realized that he hadn’t come to say goodbye at all, that what he had actually wanted was for her to protest his leaving.

It was the day after that before she realized she had wanted to protest, that she still did want to protest. But it was too late, wasn’t it? She’d already let him go and now she was just going to have to live with that.

It yet another day before she realized that maybe it wasn’t too late, that maybe he would still want to be with her even though she had let him go the other night. And maybe, she realized, even if it was too late, that didn’t mean she shouldn’t try. She knew, with suddenly clarity, that if she didn’t find Paulo immediately and tell him that if he was going into the abyss, then so was she, that she was going to… Well, not die. Probably. But certainly regret it for a very long time.

She decided she’d go after work. Then another flash went off and she said to herself, “Self, this is crap. I’m outta here.” Even though the day was only half over, she flipped the sign over to the side that read, “Creature not on exhibit. Try back later!” and quit The Zoo Aquatic without notice.

When Paulo’s eyes landed on her as he swam outside his cavern giving it one last look over before turning his key over the landlord, his whole body went still. “You look awfully pink,” he told her, his own body portraying a pleased deep purple hue even though he had been a shade of green that bordered on white just moments before.

Agata stared at him for a moment as her hearts raced each other to see which would explode first. “It’s not cool,” she said.

Paulo tilted his head. “What isn’t?”

“You moving.”

A small smile skirted across Paulo’s lips. “Oh, it’s not?”

“No.” Agata realized she’d been drifting closer and was now near enough to Paulo to grab a hold of some of his tentacles, so she did. “Not if you’re leaving me here.”

“Is that so?” Paulo was grinning now, his skin now so deep a purple as to be almost black. “Well, the landlord already has a new tenant lined up for this place. So are you asking me to move into your weird box?”

“No.” The answer was quiet, blending into the rush of a school of fish that passed nearby. “I’m telling you to take me with you.”

Paulo’s tentacles rubbed against Agata’s, bringing a feeling of comfort and awakening a desire that she’d nearly forgotten. “I’d never be so foolish as to disobey you, my love.”

“You would too,” Agata said, smiling herself as her color rushed from pink through to navy blue.

“Okay, I would. But not about this.”

The pair brought their foreheads to rest together, the eyhnu version of a passionate kiss.

As soon as they could pack up Agata’s belongings, they moved to the depths and found a lovely little cave that was close to, but not too close to, Paulo’s father’s cave. Paulo helped his father at the hatchery, later taking it over completely, while Agata started a small business selling items imported from the human world. Occasionally she gets a camera, and she always removes the flash.

Above image is Sea Creature And Sub by Malvy Westbrook. This and other paintings by Westbrook can be purchased on Fine Art America.

It was given as a writing prompt by my Wording Wednesday project. Other responses can be found in the comments on that site.

Embracing Destiny

My grandmother says that the one good thing about humanity trashing the planet to the point that we encapsulated our cities under domes is that now you can see the stars at night. Apparently when she was a child, you could see the moon and maybe two or three stars from a city the size of ours. Of course, between the chemical pollution, the light pollution, and the dome itself, we should really be seeing even less rather than the vast array we’re treated to every night. And who’s to say which is better, really? At least my grandmother’s two or three stars were real and not projections.

Azealia knows the stars are fake, but she loves them anyway. To her, I think their lack of authenticity actually makes them more beautiful, because now they speak of the human need to create beauty and thus provide her with evidence that our species really isn’t as bad as it seems.

One of the things I love about Azealia is her faith in the basic goodness of humans. And it’s that faith that allows her to love me even though I don’t share it.

It was the stars that brought us together the night we met. I was walking across Founders Park after getting off my shift at the pizza joint that was my first place of employment when I came across a dusky-skinned girl with a bright blue pixie cut and golden eyes who was doing the strangest thing. She had an easel set up and was painting a skyscape, a realistic portrayal of the multitude of astral features decorating the dome.

I longed to ask why she was doing this in the middle of the night in the center of a park when the projection was public domain and could have been covering her ceiling at home, but actually asking seemed intrusive. Even stopping to watch her seemed like I was overstepping, but I couldn’t help it. I told my feet to walk on, but they refused to obey me.

After a bit, she looked over and me, smiled, and answered the question I hadn’t asked. “The stars aren’t meant to be seen from your living room.”

“Yet you’re painting them,” I pointed out before I could think through it enough to convince myself not to.

Azealia nodded serenely. She does most things serenely, her soul as infused with calm as mine is permeated with tension. “Yes, but the painting isn’t supposed to be a real sky. It’s supposed to be my perception of the sky.”

My eyebrows pulled together as I thought about that.

“Look closer.” She stepped to the side in invitation and I accepted by drawing near.

Up close, the painting was less realistic than I’d first taken it to be. It was clearly based on the actual sky, but the stars were in different places and the swirling nebulas were less subtle. I’d never studied art, but this seemed like art.

“It’s wonderful,” I told her. Then I walked on, like a complete fool. I beat myself up over that all the following week. I should have stayed and talked more, tried to figure out if maybe she was into girls, although I wanted to be friends even if she wasn’t. I should have asked her to do something with me, or asked her if her artwork was for sale anywhere, or at least gotten her name.

When she walked into the pizzeria two weeks after we first met, she was on a date with a gorgeous woman with ebony skin and a laugh that reminded me of Christmas. So she was clearly interested in women, at least some of the time. And she remembered me, which I told myself must have meant something even though she seemed clearly in love with her companion.

Azealia became a regular. So did the woman with the ebony skin, but that was alright because Clarice was amazing too. She was tall and toned, but also incredibly smart and outrageously funny. She was lead singer in a band I’d never heard of before but soon came to adore. They were called Under the Starlight, a name Azealia had come up with.

It was Clarice who asked me out first. For a second, I was confused. I’d never seen either woman with anyone else, so it hadn’t occurred to me that they were polyamorous. But they were. I never had been before, but as I thought about Clarice’s invitation to a traveling musical, I realized I was already in love with both of them.

Years passed. I finished college and started managing an art gallery with Azealia. Clarice’s band grew popular enough to support touring, but she never drifted away from us. Azealia does all Under the Starlight’s artwork and I run their online merchandise store. We’re happy, the three of us. Sometimes it makes me nervous, being so content, as though it’s tempting the universe to assault us.

I look down at the shirt I’m packaging to ship. It features the poster for Under the Starlight’s Embrace Your Destiny tour. A young woman in white stands on a platform with her arms open to the sky. Her build and her long dark hair are mine, symbolizing how all three of us are a part of our story, how we’re each other’s destinies.

Destiny isn’t a concept I ever thought I’d believe in. Yet, somehow, when I go home and fall into the duel embraces of my beloveds, I do.

The above image is "Kissed by Starlight" by Lisa Falzon. Ms Falzon's works can be found at https://lisa-falzon.com/. 

The image was offered as a prompt on my writing prompt project Wording Wednesday, more information about which may be found at https://wordingwednesday.blogspot.com/

The Birthday Present

I’m sure you’ve heard of alventogs, Elf Trains, even if you’ve never seen one. You already know they emerge from the tunnels between worlds looking like they appear from nowhere. You know they run without tracks, gliding along a few centimeters off the ground. You know they look a lot like steam locomotives and that their wheels spin but don’t actually have anything to do with the train itself moving. You know that sometimes beings other than elves ride in on them, but humans can only board if they have papers proving them to be part of an elven household.

I stand next to my daughter, paused on our walk into town while watching one glide past. It’s going slower than they usually do, and continues to slow as we observe it. That’s unusual. Most of the trains go straight through our little berg without even seeming to notice it.

I turn toward the train, looking up at its windows and trying to see inside. Although bright lights shine in every car, I see nothing. I most certainly do not see the elf I’m terrified of seeing. Or maybe I’m hoping to see him… It’s a little complicated.

“Come on, Mom,” Nora says in a whining sort of voice. She takes my hand and pulls me in the direction of town. “We don’t want Massil to run out of cake!”

I smile, trying to put thoughts of her father out of my head even though I think of him every time I see an alventog. Any other night, I’d make an excuse to go home and open a bottle of wine to drown in. But how could I possibly do that to my baby girl on her birthday? “They aren’t going to eat your cake without you, precious.”

“But, Mom…. What if a dozen other people with birthdays show up before we do? Or two dozen? Or a hundred?”

I laugh. “A hundred people wouldn’t even fit in The Flocked Goose.”

“Exactly!” she proclaims. “We wouldn’t even get in!” She gives my arm a few extra tugs, trying to get me to walk faster. “There could be two hundred starving elves on that train, all wanting birthday cake!”

Chuckling, I let her urge me into a trot. Our feet smack against the wet pavement, sending up drops of water that glisten under the street lights. Moments like this make everything worth it. So what if my parents refused to talk to me after I got pregnant without being married? So what if I found myself moving to entirely different province to make a new start? So what if I’ve had to work two jobs for years trying to provide Nora with everything a child needs? I wouldn’t trade a second of being her mother for all the riches in both my and her father’s worlds.

We jog into town after the train. It stops before us, gliding to a halt in the town square, and I do my best not to pay any attention to the elves who step off of it. They’re far enough ahead of us that even if Rhisman was one of them, I wouldn't be able to recognize him. He’d just be a dark outline against the night, a silhouette without substance. He was never much more than that anyway for all that I briefly thought he was.

The pub my friend Massil works in is on the nearside of the square, so don’t make it all the way to the alventog before darting off the sidewalk. Massil looks up at us from behind the counter and meets my eyes for a second. Unlike most of the town, who think I moved here as a widow, Massil knows the truth about Nora’s father, that he was an elven lord who turned his back on us, and I can see the question in her gaze. I smile as bravely as I can and jerk my head toward my daughter.

Immediately, a grin splits Massil’s face. “It’s the birthday girl!” she calls. The other patrons, who take about about half the tables, applaud and Nora beams at them and gives the room a curtsey followed by a twirl. She ends with her arms outstretched to her adoring public.

“Nora!” calls her friend Tad. “I brought you a present!” He rushes over to thrust a basket at her as she yanks her raincoat off and leaves it in a pool on the floor. Normally I’d chastise her for that, but it’s her birthday.

Certain I’ll be shown what was in the basket later, I grab the coat and then walk to Massil as I remove my own rain gear. Without me even having to ask, she’s poured me a shot of whiskey. I drape my and Nora’s coats over a pair of empty chairs and smile thanks before picking up the shot glass, making a toasting motion toward my friend, and downing the liquor in one go. It’s tempting to ask for more, but it’s too early in the evening to get sloshed, so I hand the empty glass back. Massil trades with me for a pint of my favorite low-alcohol ale and I try to look relaxed as I take it. “Thanks. You know you’re my favorite adult, right?”

Massil chuckles. “Yeah. I bet you say that to all the bartenders.” She reaches under the bar and pulls out a velvet bag. “This is for the sprog. Think she’ll want root beer or ginger ale today? Or should I make her an elaborate virgin cocktail?”

I glance over to where my daughter is hosting a court of fellow six-year-olds. “Definitely the cocktail.

“Coming up!” Massil gets started on it. “So, an alventog rolls into town and stops in the square on my god-daughter’s birthday. Should we be alarmed?”

“I don’t see why,” I say, even though I’ve been wondering the same thing. “I’m sure it’s a coincidence. Rhisman doesn’t even know she exists, let alone where she lives.”

“Good.” Massil’s eyes go to the door. “Then we don’t have to worry about the blonde elf who just walked in and is staring at Nora being her father. Because he’s a completely different blonde elf.”

My body chills and gooseflesh pops up across my skin. My shoulders tense so much my spine starts to hurt as I take a drink before forcing my head to move enough to let me see the newcomer.

He wasn’t dressed for rain, and it looks like the soft rain turned itself up a notch in the few minutes I’ve been inside because his long hair is plastered down his back and his shirt clings to his chest. He pulls out a keychain, touches on of the fobs, and is dry an instant later. His clothes go from nearly obscense to merely form fitting in a well-cut way that proves he had them tailormade. He always did know how to dress. I guess that goes with being raised a noble.

Rhisman stares at Nora, who hasn’t noticed his arrival in the slightest. If I act quickly, maybe I can get him to go away before she even knows he’s here.

The instant I move, Rhisman’s eyes jump to me. His lips part but he says nothing as he begins to walk toward me. I can’t let myself drown in his azure eyes though. I leap to my feet and rush to him. My hand goes up in front of me. “Stop!” I whisper. I wave him around the corner and into the hall the bathrooms are on, both relieved and frightened when he follows me.

His eyes locked onto mine again as soon as I turn back to face him. “I think we need to talk,” he says in a soft voice.

“Why? So you can tell me again how you don’t want anything to do with me or my bastard half-breed?”

He jerks back like I slapped him. “What…” His gaze moves around my face as I glare at him, shaking with nearly seven years of anger.

“That’s what you said when I told you I was having your child,” I remind him. “I can see how you might have forgotten. You break so many human hearts, why would mine stand out?”

“Stella…” His head shakes from side to side and his lip trembles. “I… That’s not what happened.”

“Oh?” My eyebrows go up in challenge. “So, what, I imagined the entire conversation? Hallucinated you turning your back and getting on one of those damned alventogs to go back home without the burden of a human lover?”

His mouth closes and tears spring up in his eyes. “I can see you believe what you’re saying,” he whispers, leaning in close. “But that is not what happened.”

I take a step back, my hand going to my hip. “Then tell me what did happen.”

He draws a breath. “I asked you to marry me. You said yes.”

“Right.” I nod. “So you went off to the elven realm to get the paperwork started. But then three days later, you waltzed in saying you’d changed your mind. So I told you I was pregnant and you turned downright nasty.”

“No.” Using quick and furious movements, he shakes his head vehemently enough to move his hair and reveal the delicate tips of his ears. “I didn’t. Stella, I never, never would have done that. I would have been thrilled to know we were having a child. When you said you’d marry me and move to the elven realm, it was the happiest moment in my life.” His gaze bores into me, his expression demonstrating the truth in his words. “I went back to my country. I filled all the paperwork for bring a human into our realm. And then I came back to get you. Only to find out that you’d skipped town without leaving any forwarding information or so much as a note. No one would even tell me why. I had no idea there was a child.”

Could any of this possibly be true? I bite my lip as I stare into his eyes and try to find a hint of deceit. I don’t see any. As I watch, he reaches up and wipes tears from his cheek. It’s heartbreaking. And yet… “I was there, Rhisman. That conversation was as real as this one.”

With a sniff, he shakes his head in denial. “Three days? I was only gone three days?”

I nod.

“My crossing took longer than that,” he says in a level tone. “I was gone a full month. Like I told you I probably would be.”

He had said that… I’d been surprised when he came back so soon. “You never went to the elven realm. You said you got to the portal and then turned around to tell me we were breaking up.”

He lets out a soft breath. “Stella… My Star… Why would I do that? Why not simply not come back?”

The tears I’ve been holding back leak out. “I don’t know. I assumed you wanted a solid end.”

Slow enough I could move if I wanted, he reaches out and takes my hands into his. My skin responds to this coolness of his with a pleasant thrum of rightness. “I don’t know who said those things to you, my heart, but it wasn’t me.” His hands clasp tight. “I loved you. I….” He draws a breath before finishing, “I still love you. And I just now lay eyes on her, but I love our daughter.”

I blink through my tears, trying to determine if I can let myself believe him or not. He sounds so sincere… His eyes seem so honest… The man is crying… And, yet, I know it was him back then. Wasn’t it? An elf with skills in illusion could have made themselves look like him. And one with skills in thought manipulation could have planted a false memory. But why would anyone have done that?

Rhisman leans forward, resting his forehead against mine. His breath is warm against my face and smells of the chocolate mint candies he’s always been addicted to. “My cousin could make you think you’d seen and heard things you had not.” He sounds sick to his stomach, but that gets buried under anger for the next line. “I told him where I was going.”

“But why?” I whisper, starting to believe. “Why would he do that?”

“He’s my heir,” Rhisman responds tightly. “If I don’t have children, then they don’t come between him and the earldom. I thought he cared enough about me for that not to be important, but it seems perhaps I was wrong.”

The feelings inside me defy description. Part of me is ashamed I may have fallen prey to an enchantment. Part of me worries I’m falling for an enchantment now. And part of me is so blissfully happy to be near Rhiseman again that it doesn’t care about either what happened before or whether he’s lying to me now.

“How can I prove myself?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I whisper back through my emotions. I think about it and my mind catches on one thing bothering me. “Why are you here? If you thought I vanished and didn’t know about Nora, then why come here?”

“I spent a year trying to find you,” he says. “Then I spent five years trying to forget you, something I failed at most spectacularly. And then I started looking for you again. Only this time I had the sense to hire a professional to help me.”

I pull back. “And then you coincidentally showed up on our daughter’s birthday?”

He winces. “I can tell you don’t believe that. But, yes. I can’t control how long a crossing takes. I left the elven realm two weeks ago, but just appeared in your world now.”

Swallowing, I try to judge the answer. It’s true that crossings take however long they take and no one can time them. And he seems to have just gotten off an alvantog, implying he did just arrive in this world. The trains come into our realm, go to one place, then go back home. They don’t chug along a series of stops, so he couldn’t have gotten on at an earlier station in the human world.

He looks me straight in the eye as he says, “This is the nearest business that was open, so I came here thinking I’d ask if anyone knows you. I didn’t expect you to be here. And I certainly didn’t expect it to be our daughter’s birthday because the investigator never told me when that was, just that he’d found you and you had a half-elf daughter just the right age to be mine. He said that much and I left for the portal to the human world. He had to send a messenger after me to tell me what town you were in.”

Matching smiles form as we look at each other and I realize I believe him. Maybe it’s only because I want to, because for the first time in nearly seven years, I feel complete, and I don’t want anything to shatter that.

He speaks, his voice heavy with a variety of emotions. “I’m so sorry I left you alone for so long.”

“I’m sorry I was so hard to find,” I tell him. “And I’m sorry I didn’t have more faith in you. That I didn’t realize you wouldn’t have said those things.”

His eyes sparkle. We’re both crying, but our tears are gentle ones of relief. “Just never leave my sight again. Not without telling me where you’re going.”

“Deal.”

We draw together into a kiss. It’s like coming into your house after a long day at work and finding everything exactly as it should be. It’s like looking at a textbook for a class you don’t understand and realizing it suddenly makes perfect sense. It’s like waking up in the morning after the best sleep of your life and knowing that you have a perfect day ahead. It’s familiar and new and calming and thrilling and completely amazing.

“Mom!” a horrified voice calls from behind me. “What are you doing? Who is that?”

I turn with a smile, my hand clutched in Rhiseman’s like neither of us is ever going to let go again, and tell my daughter, “I have a birthday present for you.”

The above image is Night Train by Erinn Komschlies. You can find her work for sale at https://www.etsy.com/shop/artworkbyerinn.

The image was offered as a prompt on my writing prompt project Wording Wednesday, more information about which may be found at https://wordingwednesday.blogspot.com/

In Sunlight or In Dark

Content warning for references to rape… And for references to people killing rapists. References are not graphic, but could still disturb some readers.

Sometimes when I pass by my sister’s room, I can still see Samaytha sitting by the window at her little table, a cup of half-drank tea and some untouched breakfast foods laid out. She’s angled toward the sea as the sun rises above it, but her eyes are lidded as though what she’s looking at isn’t what’s actually there. That was how she spent every morning or her last week of life.

I know now what she was doing, but I didn’t those last few days of her life. In retrospect it was obvious why she stopped eating, why she grew increasingly pale, and why she sat in the morning light but stopped leaving the house during the day. And I should have known, although it was already too late to change anything, so what’s the point in beating myself up for not catching on to the obvious signs?

Even if I had known and followed the dots back to the Lystenian household, I would have pegged the tall, muscular yet graceful, and witty-to-a-fault Lamar as the one to turn her to the dark, then been jealous that he chose her instead of me. Because while I obviously wouldn’t agree to wed a vampire, being asked by one as attractive as Lamar would have been nice. Of course, I would have been wrong about him targeting my sister. Or her targeting him. No, it was the beautiful, intelligent, and poetic Estra who won Samaytha’s devotion. Which just goes to show that there was more than one thing about my sister that I should have realized but didn’t. The two most eligible women on our island marrying each other rather than “suitable” husbands would amuse me in any context that didn’t involve vampirism.

For centuries, my family has slain vampires. To marry one is, quite simply, not something one of us should ever have considered. And converting to become a vampire oneself? It’s unthinkable. My parents won’t even say Samaytha’s name any more.

But I can’t pretend I never knew my sister. I know her too well to believe her evil, or to think that she could possibly love someone who is anything other than good. And the Lystenian’s have been nothing but kind and gracious to me. Their servants have nothing worse to say than that sometimes they throw big gatherings without hiring enough extra help. And the new wing of Smitton Hospital is being financed almost entirely by the wealthy siblings. So I stand in the doorway to the what is now a guest room studying the ghost of my only sister and wonder if perhaps it’s my family that’s evil.

“Rhetta!” Mother yells from downstairs, startling me from my thoughts. Yartha told me when she delivered my breakfast that my parents wanted to see me, so I shouldn’t be surprised that my mother was listening for my footsteps.

Wistful, I run a hand down the side of the door frame to my sister’s room, a room she’ll never be in again, and walk down to find my parents in the planning room.

“About time,” Father says. “We have to get going soon.”

“Going where?” I ask.

“The Lystenian House,” Mother answers. “They’ve been turning people and now one of their fledglings have killed a man.”

The news hits me like a sheet of sleet. “Who?”

“Bartle Karthy,” my father answers, either misunderstanding my question or honestly thinking I was wanting to know who the victim was. Although as the dead man is Bartle Karthy, I question who the victim was.

The word “Good” tumbles from my mouth before I can stop it.

Both of my elders stare at me. My father’s voice is frozen as he asks, “How, exactly, is the death of one of the most respectable men in town good?”

He knows. I know he knows, because I told him. But he either didn’t believe me or thought Bartle’s money made up for the fact that he tried to force himself on me. And for the fact that every girl in town knows to avoid being alone with him because most girls don’t have my skill set. I hate myself more than a little bit for the fact that I merely broke his arm rather than killing him myself. What he did to Layla Otheridge feels partially my fault because it happened after I spared his life. And when Layla told the police, they informed her she’d slept with far too many men for them to believe anyone would have to rape her, so he’s going to do it again. Or he would have if my sister, the vampire, hadn’t punished him. I wonder if he grabbed her in an alleyway before she killed him in self-defense, or if she hunted him down and attacked first.

My mother decides to intervene. “I know you had a misunderstanding with him, Rhetta. But he didn’t deserve to be treated like food.”

I don’t see why not. He clearly believed that women don’t deserve to be treated like people, so why shouldn’t I return the favor?

There’s no point in arguing this again though. We went through all of this six months ago, so many times I can recite every argument my parents will make about how I misinterpreted the situation. As if it’s possible to misinterpret someone ripping off your clothing while holding a knife to your throat. I should have killed him. Looks like my big sister did it for me. As far as I’m concerned, the town should throw her a parade. But that’s not how things work. They’ve issued a Writ of Slaying instead, a legal document blessing my parents to murder their eldest offspring as an abomination to God and a threat to civil society.

“I need to change,” I say. WIthout further comment, I rush up to my room to remove my skirts and replace them with the leather tights and fitted tunic that serve as my slaying uniform.

I don’t go back to my parents though. Rather, I check that no one is in the garden, then leap from my window and drop to the ground two stories down. I glance over my shoulder at the window I landed in front of. As it should be this time of day, the dining room is empty, so no one has seen me. It’s possible someone will see me sprint across the expanse, but I’m not too worried about it. My parents are probably either still in the planning room, which is on the front side of the building, or in the armory in the basement. And if they haven’t told the servants to watch for me, it’s unlikely anyone will report my dash to them. And even if someone does tell, I still have a head start.

Fast as I can, I run across the back green, jump the hedge, and run down to cross the stream at the back of our property. A few moments later, I’m in a neighbor’s pasture borrowing a horse to ride bareback to the Lystenian’s place.

I arrive quickly, thank the horse before sending it meandering back toward its home, and rush up to the front door. “Carlsben!” I yell, naming their butler. I know him from the ball I attended here when the Lystenian’s were new and we hadn’t yet realized they were undead. He caught me hiding in a closet and took me to the kitchen for snacks like I was a little kid. Everyone there was so nice, even overworked as they were that night. And not a one of them seemed mezmorized, either then or on my later calls. If we hadn’t gotten word from the city the Lystenians had left about their nature, it might have been a long time before we realized what they were even though they somehow never made it outdoors on sunny days and only invite people over in the evenings.

After several seconds of banging, a serving girl I don’t know opens the door. She runs wide eyes over me. “Are you the new mistress’s sister?”

I nod. “She’s in danger.”

A laugh comes from a doorway, through which strolls none other than Lamar Lystenian, tall, dark skinned, and oozing appeal. My heart does a stupid little flip, but I seriously don’t have the time to analyze my ongoing, perhaps even increasing, crush on the guy. Who is now my sister’s brother-in-law, anyway, and thus family even if he wasn’t a vampire. And one doesn’t have fantasies about family, even more so than one doesn’t have them about vampires.

“Close the door, please, Elise,” he says. The servant does this, removing the natural light from the room and leaving me staring at Lamar by torchlight. Damned if fire doesn’t make him look even better. He pins me in place with an intense gaze that absolutely does not make my body scream for physical attention from him. Because this is so not the time for my body to be doing that, a fact which I’m certain it knows well. “Samaytha hoped you’d come without them,” Lamar says. “She hopes you won’t take up arms against her.”

“For killing a serial rapist?”

Lamar nods slowly. “She said you would see it that way. And that your parents would not.”

“They don’t.” I take a step closer to him. His breath seems to catch and I wonder if it’s because he thinks I’m going to produce a weapon to stab him with or if he feels the same attraction I do. “They’re coming. I don’t know when. They’re probably on their way already. If not, they will be the second they realize I’m gone.”

“Well, they won’t find Samaytha,” he says with annoying calm. “She left hours before I dumped that scum’s body somewhere people would find it.”

My eyes widen. “You dumped the body where people would find it? Why? And did you kill him?”

He studies me for a moment, his deep brown eyes unreadable. “He tried to hurt someone I care about.”

“Estra?”

His head moves ever so slightly from side to side. “No. Someone who broke his arm but should have done more. And could have. Because potenitally lethal is actually a quality I look for in a woman.”

All of the breath rushes from my lungs. “Me? Did Samyatha tell you that?”

Against, his movement is tiny, but this one is definitely a nod. His eyes haven’t budged from mine. “I don’t know the woman in question nearly as well as I want to, but there’s a decent chance I’m on the cusp of falling in love with her.”

“You’re my brother,” I whisper.

“Not really.” His lips tick up. “And is that really your objection to me laying my heart at your feet? That our sisters love one another?”

“Well…” We move closer to one another, although I’m not certain which one of us took a step. Maybe we both did. “There is a question of the heart not beating.”

His eyebrows quirk before he slowly reaches out to grab my hand. He guides it to his chest, where he presses my palm against muscles I have a deep desire to touch. A thump moves against my skin and my eyes leap down to stare at the connection. Another thump. And then a third… His heart is beating. If it weren’t for the fact that my slayer’s blood come with a resistance to mesmerization, I’d assume he was controlling my mind. But he can’t be, so this has to be real.

His voice is soft and quiet as he tells me, “There are many things you do not know about us.”

I want to look at his face, but terror keeps my eyes on my fingers and the warm silk beneath them. “I want to learn.”

His chest moves with an exhale that sounds relieved. “Good,” he says, amusing playing on the word. “First lesson… Our hearts stop when we turn, yes. But they start up again. Within a few years, they beat as regularly as anyone’s.”

“Wow.”

“Sir?” Calrsban’s interruption reminds me all of a sudden that we aren’t alone. That we haven’t been alone this entire time. I feel my cheeks heat up and hope the lighting is dim enough no one notices the redness I’m sure is coating my face. “They’re approaching the house.”

Lamar lets a breath puff out his nose. “And I can’t kill them. That would be a really terrible terrible courting gift for their daughter here.”

He moves toward the door, grabbing my hand to guide me along with him. I look down to our entwined fingers. In better lighting, his skin is an earthy brown, but in the current conditions, it’s dark as coal. My paleness contrasts in a way that somehow seems perfectly balanced.

“What are we doing?” I ask quietly.

“Lying our asses off and insisting my sister and I are not vampires,” he whispers back. “So, the first thing you learned today is that vampires have heartbeats. The next thing you’re going to learn is that unless we turned in the last five years or so, we’re perfectly able to walk in the sun.”

I stare up at him. “Seriously? We’ve been hunting your kind for centuries. We’d know if you were lying about that.”

The corners of his mouth slide up. “Would you?”

“Um… Yes?” Suddenly, I’m not so certain. We were wrong about their hearts not beating.

“We don’t like sunlight,” Lamar says. “It’s very uncomfortable and when I come back inside, I’m going to want to bathe in oatmeal and apply a lot of lotion. But when you see me this evening, you’ll realize I did in fact survive the brightness of the day star.”

The wording startles a chuckle out of me. “You’ll survive the day star, huh? Well, let’s see about that.”

He smiles down at me. “Let’s.”

His hand goes to the door, but then he pauses. “Unless you’d like to be kissed first?”

As his head turns so that he can look at me for my response, I summon a boldness I’ve never possessed before. Going to my tiptoes, I wrap a hand around his neck and bring our lips together. And, oh my God, if that’s how vampires kiss, I can’t blame my sister for running away with one at all.

Lamar pulls back with visible reluctance. One hand still clutches mine while the other is on the doorknob. “More of that later?”

“Much more.”

He smiles again, then opens the door. I go first, drawing him out after me into a shaft of sunlight. My chest relaxes when he fails to fall to the ground in agony and we walk out into the front garden, me leading him in the light. And later, I am honestly beginning to believe, he will be my guide in the dark.

Image is "Sunny Breakfast" by Vladimir Volegov. It and other works by the artist may be found at  https://www.volegov.com.

It was offered as a prompt on my writing prompt project Wording Wednesday, more information about which may be found at https://wordingwednesday.blogspot.com/

The Goat's Transformation

Sometimes a person comes across a moment in time that makes her stop and contemplate the life choices that got her where she is. I’m in the midst of such a moment myself walking across a field as I try to figure out how the heck one gets a goat out of an abandoned vehicle.

The only real choice I made, though, was in not complaining when my mom got custody of me after she divorced my dad ten years ago. I was only seven and Dad had spent at least half my life on business trips, so it seemed like the right call at the time. But then Mom met Hailey at a Bi-Pride event.

I was happy. Mom had been alone for years, and her finding love again seemed like something she really deserved. And they’ve always been super-cute together. I just wish that maybe Hailey was a little less… Hailey. Less the type of woman who thinks quitting her legal firm and moving to a farm in the middle of nowhere to raise goats is ever a good idea.

My first instinct when they told me about The Farm Plan was to call Dad and ask if I could live with him. I never actually asked though, because his wife answered the phone. I like her and could imagine happily living in her house, except for the fact that the house is filled with half-siblings. Or… Okay, “filled” is an overstatement. But there are three or them and they’re all under the age of five. As they all yelled in the background of the phone call, I realized I’d be better off spending my senior year of high school with the goats.

So I guess that was a second choice, but it was really just a repeat of the first one.

And, technically, I did chose to do as I was told when Mom told me to go fetch Lyle. Lyle’s the goat. He’s the big troublemaker in the herd, to the point that whenever something goes wrong we all claim it was Lyle’s fault, even when that something is it raining on a day we wanted to grill on or a traffic jam holding us up on the way home from a farmer’s market. But I kinda like Lyle, and he certainly seems to like me more than Mom and Hailey. The first time I spent the afternoon cleaning the barn, I saw him trying to dance to the Ramones. It was pretty much the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, so how could I not be charmed? Since then, I’ve given him a little more than his fair share of treats, so it’s no wonder the feeling is now mutual.

The goats all have trackers in their collars, so it wasn’t hard to find Lyle. And once I realized which field he was in, it really didn’t come as a surprise that he’d climbed into the rusty engine-less truck. I’ve never liked the truck, but the estimates for removing it were unexpectedly high and Hailey says it adds a certain je-ne-sais-que to our land. Sometimes I worry Hailey’s a little bit insane, but at least she’s insane in a mostly harmless way.

Lyle watches me as I approach the truck. He sits in the front seat peering out of the driver’s side window like he’s contemplating abandoning the farm and becoming a cab driver.

“Really, Lyle?” I ask. “Where do you think you’re goin?”

“Ideally?” he answers in an upper-class English accent. “London.”

My lips separate as I stare, desperately trying to come to terms with the fact that not only did a goat just speak to me, but told me he wants to go to the United Kingdom.

“The city in England,” he adds. “Not the town in Connecticut.”

“I figured,” I say dimly. Hailey’s sanity is clearly not the sanity I should have been worrying about. It would appear mine’s gone on vacation. “Besides, I think the one in Connecticut is called New London.”

“Ah, yes. You’re right.” He nods. “But either way, it wouldn’t be the London I need to get to.”

“Clearly,” I agree. Because if you’re going to lose your mind, you might as well do so agreeably. That’s what kept Alice going in Wonderland, wasn’t it? “But why do you need to go to London?”

“Because I live in London.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I’m not really a goat.”

I move my eyes slowly over him, noting the hooves and the horns and the fur. “You look like a goat.”

“Obviously,” he snaps. “But that doesn’t mean I am one.”

Okay… “So what are you, then? A were-goat?”

“Were-goat?” He shakes his goat-shaped head. “You yanks and your obsession with shapeshifters. No, I am not a were-goat. I am a wizard who was cursed into the form of a goat while on holiday.”

“Why?”

He narrows his beady goat eyes at me. “Not that it’s any of your business, but there was a misunderstanding wherein my girlfriend became erroneously convinced that I was cheating on her, at which point she cast a transformation spell.”

“Oh. When?”

His sigh is deep, moving his whole body. “I don’t know. I actually think I’m a goat most of the time, and goats are not very good at keeping track of time. It was before you arrived, though.”

My eyes widen. “Yikes. So at least three months.”

He nods. “Yes. And it had been some time before that, so most likely I’ve lost at least half a year.” He leans against the window ledge, looking as miserable as a goat could possibly look. “And the worst part is that when I leave this truck, I may go back to believing I’m a goat again.”

“Why?” I look down the length of the truck. It’s old and rusty and barely holding itself together. “Is there something special about the truck?”

“Not really. Or not about this specific one. Anything with sufficient amounts of metal would work. It disrupts the magic, you see. Modern cars have too much plastic, though.”

“I see,” I claim, even though I don’t really. “So we need to figure out how to get you to England without you leaving the truck? But you can’t teleport because the truck disrupts magic.”

“That and because teleportation of living creatures is impossible.” He pauses. “Or it is if you want them to remain living, at any rate.”

“Well, I assume you want to arrive alive…” I frown. “And you can’t break the spell yourself, or you would have already.”

“Indeed.” He shifts, his nose sniffing at the air. “Did you know that goats are always hungry?”

“I suspected. I mean, they’re always eating…” I remember stuffing a granola bar into my jacket pocket. Taking it out, I unwrap it and offer it to Lyle.

“Thank you,” he says before inhaling it.

“Is your name really Lyle?”

“No. It’s Neville.”

“Like Neville Longbottom?” I blurt.

The glare I receive makes me realize why some people think the Devil is a goat. “You do not want to get me started on the subject of Harry Potter and the completely disrespectful approach to magic that horrid series takes.” He snorts. “And quidditch. Absolutely ridiculous. She took airball, put people on brooms rather than having them levitate like reasonable human beings, and then added something that when caught gives you fifty points. Fifty! In a game where three-four would be considered a high scoring match!”

“I did always wonder about the snitch,” I admit. “It seems unbalanced.”

“Exactly!”

We pause for a breath before moving on.

Neville tilts his head at me. “Have you ever tried to cast a spell?”

“Of course.” I smile. “What little kid doesn’t. I used to grab a stick and run around the playground yelling all sorts of spells at things.”

“That was play,” he says with an eye roll. “Have you given it a serious effort? And have you done it recently? Having magical abilities before puberty is nearly unheard of.”

“Oh. Then, no.” On the edge of the field is a section of trees. “Should I grab something to use as a wand?”

Neville’s eyes close as he takes a breath. “No. That’s not really something people do.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No reason you should,” he tells me as opens his eyes again. “You have the aurora of a wizard about you, so I think it’s worth trying. Untrained, you probably can’t manage more than one casting a day, so we’re not going to experiment. I’m going to climb out of this vehicle. Then I need you to grab hold of me and think really hard about turning me back to my real form. Imagine it in as much detail as you can.”

“But I don’t know what you look like.”

“You’re not casting a transformation; you’re uncasting one. So don’t think about what I look like. Just think about me shedding my goat body and revealing the truth.”

That sounds a little less daunting, and I nod to show my understanding. “Alright. I’ll try. Do you want me to put you back in the truck if that doesn’t work?”

“If you can, then yes, please.” He takes a deep breath. Then another. And then he leaps through the window.

He takes a few steps, looking a little confused, then stops to regard me with a hopeful expression before bleating in the tone goats use to ask for treats. Guess that means he’s back to being goat-brained.

Slowly, so as not to startle him into running off, I get on my knees and wrap my arms around his neck. “Neville,” I whisper. “Be Neville.”

Lyle bleats uncomfortably and wiggles in an attempt to free himself. I hold tight though, turning my imagination into reaching inside the goat and trying to touch the heart of his essence. Against expectation, I feel a tingle along my skin.

“Be Neville,” I repeat, envisioning Lyle breaking open to release the human trapped in his form. The image is gorier than I anticipated, but I hold onto it as the tingly intensifies, growing first warm and then hot. I imagine the heat leaving me to wrap itself around Lyle and melt away his shape.

“Be Neville,” I say a third time.

The universe cracks.

Lyle expands and contracts, then finally settles into the form of a man standing on all fours.

“Neville?” I whisper.

He turns his head to give me a remarkably Lyle-esque look of exasperation. “Of course it’s Neville. Who else would I be?”

Laughing, I let go of him and fall back onto my rear in the grass. “And I really just did magic?”

His gaze softens a little. “You really did. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I smile at him for a moment. And then I realize he’s completely naked. “Clothes,” I squeak. “You need clothes.”

“Oh.” He looks down at himself as though he can’t feel the air on his skin. “So I do.”

He stands up and I put all my energy into staring at his feet. Between one breath and the next, a pair of jeans appears and some canvas sneakers appear, at which point I allow myself to look up.

Neville is younger than I expected, probably on the same side of twenty as I am. He has soft brown hair that flops over hazel eyes, a pair of copper rimmed glasses, and a t-shirt featuring the cover of the Clash album London Calling. I wonder at the shirt…

Maybe I should leave it be, but I have to ask. “Are you wearing that because you like the Clash or because Lyle’s heard me playing classic punk tunes often enough for you to know that I like the Clash?”

He laughs and holds down a hand to help me up. “I own all of their albums on vinyl.”

“Really?”

His head cocks roguishly to the side. “The albums are in my room if you wish to verify their existence.”

Laughing, I shake my head. “I’m starting to see how you wound up as a goat.”

Without comment, Neville starts to stroll across the field with all the confidence of someone in a familiar park. I trot to catch up. “So… Am I a wizard?”

“Gods no!” He catches my look of disappointment at the outburst. “I mean, it takes more than talent. It also takes training.”

“Does it?” I ask. “Because no one trained me to break that curse.”

“Breaking a spell is easier than creating one, same way breaking a vase is easier than blowing the glass.”

“Oh…”

We walk on for a few paces. “I could recommend you to my school,” he says. “As a first year, I shouldn’t have much say, but my grandfather is in charge to the place, so…”

I blink. “Schools of magic are real things?”

“Oh, yes. There are several in the United Kingdom, actually. My school, Hyde College, was opened by the first Queen Elizabeth and a fellow named John Dee.”

“That’s cool. I don’t think I could afford to go to college in England though.” I don’t have any idea how much a school of magic in another country costs, but my guess is that it’s considerably more than the public university I was expecting to end up at.

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” Neville tells me. “My family is quite wealthy and I fully expect my parents would be more than happy to cover your tuition in exchange for rescuing their baby boy.”

I blink. “Seriously?”

He nods. “Oh, yes.”

“Well, damn, Neville…”

“One thing though.” He turns to look down at me, the greens and browns seeming to dance in his eyes like flames. “I despise being called Neville. My mum’s the only one who uses that name. Everyone else calls me Nix.”

“Okay… Nix it is.”

I smile up at Nix, who grins down at me. My stomach gives a little twist as my heart assures me that, no, it wouldn’t be crazy to follow a boy across an ocean and study magic. Not crazy at all.

Above photo is by Irit Elazar Cohen and prints can be found in her Etsy shop.

It was offered as a prompt on my Wording Wednesday group on MeWe.

She Came from Space

I guess the developer assumed I’d stay where I was and wait for the alien to come to me from where she has inexplicably parked in the surf, because as soon as I step onto the bridge of rock leading the the mid-twentieth century idea of a spaceship, I sink straight into it. So far, the preview of this erotic fantasy sim isn’t impresing me. I’m not really here to be impressed though. I’m not really much into sex sims in general and alien fantasies even less. Call me a prude, but I like my partners to be from my species.

My silky robe slides off my shoulder, causing me to sigh and pull it back up again. Oddly enough, it’s pooling on the rock like the program thinks I’m sitting on the thing. I shake my head at the obvious cheapness of the coding; was it done by high schoolers or just people too incompetent to be paid decently?

The program didn’t offer any attire options beyond male or female. I chose female to reflect my real-world body, but here I’m a tall and slender blond with unusually large breasts and an apparent tendency to wander the outdoors in lingerie rather than a short and plump hispanic girl with the sense to dress herself properly.

While I wait for the alien to appear like Janet insisted I needed to do when she sent me the download link for this silly thing, I look at the ocean. It’s not flowing quite right and the waves in the soundtrack aren’t anywhere close to synced with the video. I can’t smell a thing and there’s not even a hint of a sea breeze on my skin. The developers couldn’t even find a decent stock beach setting?

Words appear in the air between me and the spaceship. “She Came from Space, Then Came on Earth.” Good lord. My eyes roll so hard it almost hurts.

Cheesy elevator music begins to play and a door appears on the closest side of the spacecraft. With luck, a ridiculous alien will appear soon and I’ll be able to tell Janet I stayed long enough to see the silly thing. The demo will undoubtedly cut off before she does anything terribly interesting anyway, so I may as well leave as soon as she shows up.

A walkway glides from the still closed door down to the rocky outcropping with all the rush of an exhausted snail. I walk toward it, hoping to somehow move things along faster by doing so. My body continues to be bisected by the ground, but at least the place is badly programmed enough for there not to be any sensation from that.

The door finally begins to open, sliding up from the bottom with glacial slowness. A pair of shiny silver boots appear. Their three inch stiletto heels are all the rage off planet, I’m sure.

I stop trying to approach the craft and just wait as the door goes up. The boots reach nearly to the alien’s knees, ending with a swath of light green skin. A moment later, I see the hem of a silver miniskirt. This could take a while.

As the door continues to creep up, I open a window to check my messages. There aren’t any new ones, so I move on to the weather. Looks like there’s snow in the near future. When a glance up shows that the door has made it up to the alien’s overly abundant boobs, which are clad a tight silver spandex, I pull up the news headlines. Apparently the President is still an idiot, Congress is still inept, and people are starting to think about the start of baseball season already.

My eyes flick back to the alien to see if she’s been fully revealed yet. Not only has the door opened, but the alien has taken several steps down the walkway toward me. Holy shit.

“Stop program!” I yell. “Exit!”

The artificial world falls away, leaving me on my bed. I yank my immersion helmet off as command my house management program to call Janet.

Sitting up, I wait for Janet to answer. When she appears on my monitor, she takes one look at me and skips saying hi in favor of blurting, “You saw it?”

“I saw it,” I growl back. “What the hell is my doppleganger doing in a low budget porno?”

Technically, the alien hadn’t been an exact copy of me. Her chest was at least twice the size of mine and her waist was smaller. And, of course, her skin was green rather than my light brown. But the face was identical.

“I’m not sure,” Janet says. “But my money’s on Craig. He’s still really pissed about your break up and Joe says this thing is all over their dorm.”

“Oh, god.” I lean forward, my stomach quaking with nausea. “I’m going to be sick.”

“The host said they would take down, but you had to be the one to complain.”

“Ok…” I nod to myself. I can do that. “Then what? They’ll arrest him?”

She gives me a pitying look. “That’s beyond the scope of Your Fantasies Online, babe. That’s more police or FBI territory. But I asked my brother, AKA Super Cop, and he doesn’t think you’d get an arrest because the level of proof you need that he was being malicious is so high.”

“You asked Thomas?” I squeak. “About me being in porn sim?”

“Well… Yeah.” Her breath catches. “Don’t tell me you’re still crushing on him. I thought you got over that already.”

I moan. “This just keeps getting worse.”

“It’s clearly against student guidelines, though,” Janet changes subject to state. “I bet we can get Craig expelled.”

“Assuming we can prove it’s him,” I grumble. “But first, I need to contact the hosting site. I’ll call you back.”

~*~

Hours later, Janet and I peer at my video screen as we try to figure out the data tags embedded in the sim program. All of it’s above my comprehension level and I quickly realize I’m going to have to call someone else in. Unfortunately, the only someone I can think of is Nina, the girl I dated my senior year of high school. But she virtually breathes computer code, already knows lots of embarrassing stuff about me, and has seen me naked before, so she’s a better choice than anyone else I know. And we parted on good terms, only breaking up three years ago because I chose to go to college close to home and she elected to attend Caltech.

Nina whistles when I call her up on video and tell her the story. “Wow. You’ve got great taste in women, but crappy taste in men.”

“Yeah, you may be right. I certainly can’t think of anyone to hold up as a contrary example.” To either half. The men I’ve dated have all turned out to be jerks. And the women… Nina’s the only one, but she’s the smartest person I’ve ever known and claiming she’s hot as hell would be underselling her. I never figured out how I managed to win her after crushing on her since middle school, so it wasn’t too bad a shock when I lost her, but she did spoil me. Now every woman I meet gets compared to her, and while she wasn’t perfect, she was close enough that no one ever does well in the comparison. Somehow it’s easier with men to ignore the obvious fact that they aren’t Nina. Of course, I’m not going to get into any of that out loud. “But you’ll help me?” I ask.

She smiles, renewing my belief that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. “Always. Send me the file.”

~*~

The next morning, I wake to a notification of an incoming video call from Nina. A glance at the clock shows that it’s ten thirty, which is earlier than I usually wake up on a weekend but later than she ever sleeps. Quickly, I rake my fingers through my hair in a weak attempt at becoming presentable while I drag myself from bed and move to in front of the screen. With a deep breath, I press the screen to accept the call.

Nina’s smile widens to a grin when she sees me. “Sorry,” she says. “I forgot you like to sleep all day.”

I grunt. “And I forgot you were a morning person.”

“It’s nearly lunch.”

“Only if you’re a freak, Neens.”

She laughs, the sound sending a completely inappropriate tingle through me. I always did love her laugh. “I sent you an email with information you need to show your dean highlighted. So hopefully that will work.” She pauses. “And there’s something else, but I can call back later.”

“Something else?”

Her face looks uncertain all of a sudden. “It can wait.”

I shake my head. “No. I’m up already. What is it?” My mind rushes to guess what it could be. “Does he have a channel full of pornographic versions of me?”

“No. Um…” Her tongue is visible for just an instant as it touches her lips, bringing up memories of what she tasted like. Dammit. This is why I stopped talking to her after we broke up; keeping my thoughts chaste is just too much of a struggle. “I’m graduating early. At the end of the semester.”

“Seriously?” I stare at her. “You went to a harder school than I did and you’re graduating before me?”

She shrugs. “I was in a hurry.”

“Why?”

Her eyes stay on me as she answers. “I never belonged in California. There’s not enough rain here.”

Our gazes remain locked together as I consider the words. They’re innocent enough, but either there’s a subtext to them or I’m just a hopeless optimist. “Maybe you should come back north then. Washington still has plenty.”

“I think I may.”

~*~

Two months later, I sit in a pub near the edge of campus and nurse a cider while I try to stay calm. Nina should be here soon. She’s in town for an interview, a fact I’m still having trouble believing. If she was trying to get a job in Seattle, I would have put that down to it being the obvious choice for a recent tech grad wanting a job in the Pacific Northwest. But my town’s a lot smaller than Seattle, small enough that you don’t find a job listing for here unless you were specifically looking for one.

The door opens and I look over to see her coming in from the drizzle outside. I stand as she enters, my hands moving to smooth down my deep burgundy tunic as I give her a cautious smile.

“Mariana,” she says, my name sounding like that of a goddess when she says it.

“Nina,” I respond.

We look at each other for a few heartbeats before we start to laugh. Tension broken, we embrace and Nina claims the stool next to mine. She orders an IPA from the bartender, then has to drag her ID out of her wallet before he’ll go get it.

While we wait for her drink, I look down at mine. My nerves are returning and I’d like to take a sip, but that seems like it would be rude. “So… How did the interview go?”

“Really well. They offered me the job right then and there.”

“Wow.” I watch as the bartender returns with Nina’s ale. She picks it up as soon as he’s left and takes a sip. “Are you going to take it?’

She lowers the drink slowly. “That depends.”

“On what?”

Turning her head, she studies my response as she says, “On you.”

“Me?” I move my hand away from my glass, afraid my suddenly trembling will make me spill the liquid in it. “What do you mean?”

She takes another drink before she answers, looking like she’s thinking. “I don’t exactly regret going to Caltech. But if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t leave you.”

Deep inside me, a wound I’d forgotten I had begins to bleed anew. “But you did leave.”

“Yeah…” She turns her head to look at me, her deep brown eyes full of emotion. “And now I want to come back. If there’s even the slightest chance of you letting me in your life again, then I want to be here.”

“I…” My breath leaves me and turn on the stool to just sort of gape at her. “You want to get back together?”

She nods. “Yeah, I do. I never stopped loving you. I don’t think I ever will.”

Part of me wants to tell her that’s her tough luck, that I left her in the past and don’t want her in my present. But I’d be lying. “I love you, too,” I admit.

“But..?” Her whole body moves to face mine.

I shake my head. “No but.”

“Really?” she asks, her eyes begging me not to dash her hopes.

“Yeah.” I take a second to grin at her, then lean in for a kiss. It’s sweet, but with the promise of things not remotely innocent. And it brings with it a sense of quiet rightness that I’ve never found with anyone else, like this is the one person in the world I’m supposed to be kissing.

When we pull apart, we’re both smiling. Then a thought strikes me and makes me laugh. At Nina’s curious expression, I ask, “Would you have called me up if I hadn’t contacted you first?”

“Eventually… Maybe. It might have taken a while to think up a good excuse.”

I laugh again. “Then we should send Craig a thank you note for hurrying things along.”

The most beautiful woman in the world shakes her head at me even as she beams with happiness. “As long as you’re not planning to invite him to our wedding.”

“Wedding?” I snort. “I agreed to date you woman, don’t go thinking it will be so easy to get me to marry you. You’ll have to work for that.”

But I think we both know that, eventually, I will.

The above image is a creative commons offering from Pixabay.

It was provided as a prompt to my Wording Wednesday group on MeWe.