The corners of my mouth tuck into my cheek.
Is she allowed to do that?
I flick my stare between her and the guard, but he only glances at her for a split second before he looks away, disinterested.
She snaps off part of the Twizzler and, with a darting glance over at a pool near the river, hands it off to the woman beside her.
That woman is the younger one I saw back in the town, and I placed her in her early twenties.
She tucks into herself, shielding the chunk of Twizzler behind her hand, and hides as she nibbles.
My frown is for more than the obvious sneakiness of sharing a sweet. It’s her—the mousey girl.
Mousey hair, mousey nose, mousey demeanour.
She reminds me of Erin.
Friends have always been in short supply for me. I never had an abundance, sometimes never cared to, sometimes I did care.
I met Erin in school, and I swear we got along back then, when we were just teenagers, but our friendship lasted… and lasted… and lasted far beyond its expiration date.
Then she got on my fucking nerves.
Always wanting to do something, like go to fancy restaurants we couldn’t afford for the Instagram pic, take photos of her cocktails that tasted like ass but looked good, she would laugh louder when guys were around, and that would give guys the audacity to approach us, to think that I would tolerate their company, theirexistence.
Ugh, she would always twirl her hair before tucking it behind her ear, and she had this toothy smile that would appear whenever she was trying look all sexy.
And I could tolerate that in a compromise, because that’s friendship, but there was no compromise with her.
Never wanted to do anything nice, like camping or hiking, or something fun, like a trip to the zoo or the museum. If we went on a trip, she needed it to be party-focused and would sleep off the booze all day.
One thing we agreed on was music.
When she wasn’t being basic and performative, we vibed on tracks.
Oh shit, we have those tickets for Bob Dylan.
That concert was supposed to happen at the end of the year, and I would be back from this holiday from hell…
It has been around eight months since this all started, three months since I first saw the fae marching by, so yeah, we’ve missed that concert.
And Erin is probably dead.
A breath whooshes out of me, too loud. I forget for a moment that I’m meant to be quiet and frozen in the presence of predators.
Boots tug me out of my spiralling thoughts, the soles slipping over the smooth rocks, and a muttered curse in Spanish.
I throw a look up as a captive comes over the rocks to this pool, balancing his steps, wobbling from the waist up.
I know the word he uttered.
It almost lures a smile to my face, a faint almost memory of a song flooded with a variety of Spanish curses to add to my vocabulary.
I doubt many of the fae know what he said.
I wonder if they would understand me if I spoke Welsh. Are they restricted to English?
They don’t seem to know Spanish, because the guy gets away with it and, with his Timberland boots planted on the rocks, he gathers the discarded leathers crumpled on the boulders.
