“Just enough time. I’ll be ready,” Mia said.
After they hung up, she packed a few more things into her bag, like her book light to read at night, and the bar of chocolate she’d picked up on her lunch break. She almost added the paperback she’d been reading, but then decided she’d read while she waited for Lilly.
Time would fly if she was reading. It always did.
In the shower, as she washed her hair, her thoughts turned to their weekend plans.
Lilly swears this is the most fun I’ll ever have in my life. But she tends to exaggerate.Apparently, there would be jousting between six knights on horseback.
The people working the Ren Faire will all be in costume and we’re going to wear them so we can blend in. Hopefully, it will be like Lilly said, we’ll just walk around and enjoy ourselves. If I don’t have do any forsooth type of speaking, or answer questions, it should be fine.
After she showered, she dressed in her softest jeans with a yellow T-shirt which said, ‘book dragon’ and had a picture of a little green dragon wearing glasses while reading a book.
Mia got a glass of ice water from her kitchen, and then, taking the glass, and her book, she settled into a chair by the front window, where she could see out. The book, set in medieval England, was about a heroine who’d run away from her upcoming arranged marriage with an old man she wasn’t attracted to. Instead, she would find her true love and marry him for a happy every after, Mia’s favorite kind of story.
Real life often did not hand her a happy ending, so she insisted there be one in all the fiction that she read. For Mia, it was romance or nothing. Kind of how she felt about her real life. If she couldn’t have romance with a man, she would rather be alone.
She was done with settling.
The hero in the book would’ve made Mia swoon, if she’d met him in real life. She was quickly caught up in his world, while waiting for her best friend to arrive. She loved to escape into a book and this long weekend she would escape into the Renaissance Faire.
Friday had always been Mia’s favorite day of the week, for two reasons. First, if she had Saturday off, it meant she had twowhole days before she had to go back to work. She was happy to work inside the telephone company, answering calls. Well, not exactly happy. Telephone customer service could be stressful. One call after another coming to her ears via the headsets, wasn’t easy. Headaches were common, and she averaged three or four a week. But she tried not to think about the stressful parts of the job. It paid the bills and most of the time she didn’t mind talking to people and helping them. It’s just that she did that hour after hour until clocking out.
Escaping into a book allowed her mind, ears, and mouth to rest after a full day of work.
The second reason was because a weekend might bring some exciting adventure.
Though usually, she ended up at home, doing laundry, fussing around, and wishing that something, anything out of the ordinary, would happen. Maybe someday it would.
Something exciting could happen this three-day weekend. She felt it deep in her bones.
It was what her grandmother called ‘a knowing.” Such things couldn’t be explained. You just knew, and then, when you were right, it helped you trust a ‘knowing’ the next time one happened. This time, the feeling she had was strong. So, she was part nervous and part excited.
She glanced at the carved wooden owl on her fireplace mantle which had also sat on her grandmother’s fireplace mantle. Worn smooth from years of being touched, she sometimes took it down just to hold it, as she’d done as a young child. Though now she did it when she was remembering her grandmother. A tactile way of remembering.
Last night she’d had that dream about an owl. She wondered what her grandmother would have said about it. Her grandmother had died right before Mia went to high school, so Lilly had never met her. Now that her parents had passed, therewere few people still living who remembered her grandmother and she missed having that connection with someone who did. There were days when she missed her grandmother very much, as her grandmother had raised her while her father worked. Today was one of them.
Instead of taking the owl down and holding it, Mia turned her attention to her book and began to read, forgetting everything but the story of the medieval world she was immersing herself in.
Soon she would be in a real-life medieval world, or as close as you could get to it in a modern age. And she couldn’t wait.
A sound outside drew her attention away from the novel.Lilly.
Mia peered out the window as Lilly’s car pulled into her driveway.Good. She’s here.
She dropped the paperback into her handbag and was out the door with it and her overnight bag before Lilly could make it out of the car and up the walk to ring the bell.
Lilly rolled down the passenger side window and grinned. “Excited?” Lilly asked through the window, laughing, because she already knew the answer.
“Yes!” Mia opened the car door, got in, and swung the door closed. She turned to face Lilly. “Tell me more about the Ren Faire, and about your cousin. I know people usually pay to attend the Faire for the day and evening, and then go home when the Faire closes. But I don’t know much about the people who work those events. And I met Finn for all of two minutes at your grandfather’s funeral a few years ago. I don’t remember much about him.”
“We were just kids, so no one would expect you to,” Lilly said. “Finn was always the one in the family who would joke around, make people laugh, play pranks, and get into trouble. But he was quiet and well behaved at grandpa’s funeral, so you didn’t see that side of him.”
“What does he do now?” Mia asked. “Other than this summer job, what else does he do?”
“For the past two years, he worked for the circus, as a fire breather and flame swallower. Circus people go to Florida in the winter and practice down there, before touring starts up again. But he wanted to try something different this summer, so he accepted the Ren Faire job.”
They had an hour and thirty-minute drive to get to the Ren Faire, so they went to a fast-food drive through and got two hamburgers and two chocolate shakes. They ate on the way, instead of stopping, as both were anxious to get there before dark. If the Ren Faire food turned out to be expensive, at least tonight’s supper wouldn’t be. They’d drop their stuff in Finn’s tent, and find the costume lady to pick out dresses, without having to worry about supper as well.
