This?
It sounds likenothingI’ve ever heard before.
But even I am not stupid enough to try to make him release my girl right now. So, I stand watch, listening for anyone else approaching, trying to stay alert to potential threats despite emotionally reeling over this latest development.
“I’mnotcrazy,” she whispers. “I’m not crazy. I forgot you, but I’mnotcrazy. Ididn’timagine you. You’rereal.”
“Of course, I am real,” he tearfully says in accented English. “My sweet, darling Eilidh. There has not been a single day I have not missed you and thought about you and longed to hold you in my arms again. My sweet, sweetMazbushka.”
I let this continue for a good twenty minutes, trying to compartmentalize that a) we are no longer in Wales, and b) this man apparently knows her, and c) weARE NOT IN FUCKING WALES at this moment in time.
But the night is also thinning, and either we need to move someplace safe for me, or we need to return to the hotel.
To the hotel infucking.
Wales.
Because Iwillbe turning into a flaming pumpkin if we do not. Life just got extremely interesting in incredibly incomprehensible ways, and I’d like to stick around for a while longer and see what happens next.
Especially with Eilidh.
“Beg pardon,” I say, my old Scottish accent returning somewhat in my shock, “but who the bloody hell are ye, man?”
He smiles up at me, apparently completely unconcerned by my presence. “Zeuzehn.Oh!” He grabs his satchel and pulls out a small package of what looks like waxed paper and opens it. “I suppose it’s been forever since you had these, my little one.”
He pops one into her mouth and her eyes widen, then drop closed as she slowly chews and happily moans, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Rhozhencandy!” she mumbles, laugh-crying as she leans against him, her head on his shoulder. He protectively drapes an arm around her again, holding her, his face pressed against her hair.
Part of me wants to feel jealous and part of me is terrified because we’renotin fuckingWales.
The rational mind that’s kept me alive for longer than one of the world’s major religions has existed says I need to wait this out, as long as I’m keeping an eye on the time.
The rest of my mind is freaking the absolutefuckout right now.
There are literally dozens of questions I want to ask this man, the first and foremost one being where the bloodyhellare we, but…
Eilidh.
I’m terrified if I’m this shaken how upset she must be feeling right now.
Okay, correction, thereisa question that takes precedent above all others. “Are we safe here?” I whisper.
“Yes,” the man says, smiling as he feeds her another candy. “We are perfectly safe here.”
“All right, then.” I drop to the ground and sit next to Eilidh, my hand on her thigh, willing to wait this out for a little longer.
She removes the ring from her finger, pulls the necklace off, uses a lark’s head to loop the chain through the ring, and puts it on again.
Then she tips her head against the man’s shoulder and contentedly chews another candy he pops into her mouth before he kisses her forehead and smiles.
I should be jealous.
I should be ripping his throat out.
But this is Eilidh raw and real and emotionally bleeding. Yet she also looks more contented in this moment than I’ve ever seen her.
Although, technically, once againhereis someone who has apparently known my girl longer, and, in some ways, knows her better than I do.
