“I eat when I’m stressed and your situation makes me very stressed.”
“Yeah, me too. Not sure though, I’ve only gotten saltines to go down so far.” I pulled a cookie from the bag and sniffed it.
She said, “I put extra salt on top. Tell your tummy it’s a cracker and eat up, you’ll thank me later. Pinch of orange zest. You look weak, you need sustenance.”
“Orange zest is sustenance?” I took a tentative bite, and chewed, then a bigger bite. “You’re right, that’s perfect, thank you.” I ate the whole cookie in a few bites and took another, a glimpse in my mind of Torin eating the last of our food after sharing half with me to keep me going.
She took a cookie. Then sat back on the other end of the couch, facing me. “Let’s start at the beginning, I haven’t heardthe whole story because I had to go teach the monsters, missing everything.”
“You love them.”
“I do, but still monsters. What happened, how long were you gone?”
“Like five days, something like that, maybe six?”
“So weird, you were only gone from here for like twelve hours. So tell me about it. You were kidnapped, begin there.”
“Torin and I were in a hovel, he was beaten pretty good, everyone smelled like shit, and Dude was there. It was pitch black dark.”
“Damn. What did you do?”
“Our wrists were tied up, so first we got out of our bindings, and then we waited for the men to get drunk to escape. Getting away was easy, actually, but then we were in the woods and Torin decided we needed his weapons and horses. He left me there, in the dark, alone, in a medieval forest,” her eyes grew wide, “and went back.”
“What did he do?”
“I guess he killed everyone, or at least most everyone.”
“Shiiiittttt… that’s not… that’s not normal.”
“Yeah,exactly.But he got two horses, and that’s the way it works back there. The worst most insane thing happens and then you’re like, ‘we almost died but we got some bread, so we won!’”
“Sounds bleak, and doesn’t sound like you at all. Weren’t you terrified? You’re not a thrill seeker.”
“I was totally terrified, the only thing that kept me from losing it altogether was Torin.”
She nodded sagely.
I continued. “So then we were just riding horses through the mountains.”
“Youwere riding a horse?”
I nodded. “Ferrari and Lambo.”
She chuckled.
“I was mostly on Torin’s horse. Sharing a saddle…” I thought about the swaying horse as it plodded under us, and Torin’s embrace, holding me balanced in my seat, and how I had grown so comfortable with him that I had slept on his arm while we rode.
She scrutinized my face. “Sounds intimate.”
I nodded. “It was.” I breathed and started on the third cookie. “I also got a terrific case of chapped-ass in the dark ages. I had to smear a concoction that was in a carved horn bottle with a cork on it. It belonged to one of the creeps who kidnapped us, that Torin killed.” I grimaced. “And he used it and who knows where his fingers had been. It smelled like something from a swamp, but Torin made me smear it on my rashy butt.”
I pulled the blanket off and checked my rash. “It’s almost gone, most of it.”
“That spot on your left leg is looking inflamed.” She dug in her bag.
“You have medicine in your bag?”
She pulled out a small plastic box, popped it open, and pulled out a small packet of antibiotic cream and a bandaid. “I’m a school teacher.”
