“I’d fuck you first?—”
“But her?” I shook my head, looking to the side. “Why would I run? Forget that I have nowhere to go, but what would I be running from?”
I turned to look at him again, seeing the answer in his eyes. Him. The punishments. The parts of this village that were a little harder to bear.
“Well, whatever.” I wiped my forearm across my nose. “I wasn’t running. I won’t run. Because again, I have nowhere to go, okay? Happy? This village is my home.”
Alexander lifted his hands, his eyes wide. “Wow,” he said slowly. Then, “Are you on your period or something?”
I dug my fingernails into my palms. “Fuck off,” I said, turning and slamming the door in his face.
“Fine, but we still gotta get flowers,” he said through the door. “How long you gonna be?”
I ate and cleaned up,wanting to take my time to annoy him but also wanting to get out into the forest and look for those flowers. The longer I wasted in my cottage, the less time for the flower hunt.
After packing a few random supplies, like a canister of water and a bit of dried fruit and nuts in case the night ran long, I grabbed my lantern and swung the door open. Alexander sat on my top step, looking out at the lane. Pati from up the way was passing by. Usually she’d glance up when I came out of the cottage and spare me a tight smile, but this time she hunched and looked down at her feet. Her shoulders were tensed, her whole body rigid.
“You’re a big favorite around these parts,” I said, stepping out and closing the door behind me.
He got up slowly, staring after her. “I had to pay her good-for-nothin’ mate a visit the last time I was here. He was trying to smuggle out some—“ He slid me a side-eye. “More to follow after you suck my cock.”
“I’d better not. Small items are a choking hazard.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Like you can talk, anyway,” he said, following me. I knew exactly where I planned to start looking. “Anyone giving you the time of day in this village is only interested in one thing, your skinny little pal Xarion included.”
“My witty banter, is it? My hilarious jokes?”
“Spreading your thighs. That’s the only thing you’re good for.”
“Lovely. But untrue, right? My work gives you a job. My ingenuity affords your lifestyle.”
He ignored me. Alexander was only good with his fists. When it came to sparring mentally, he didn’t have any weapons.
“Shit detail, this,” he finally said as we cut through the village. No one looked our way, their gazes directed downward.“Hunting for fucking flowers in the trees?” He spat. “Why we going this way? You have flowers near your hovel.”
“My hovel?” I huffed. The guy lived in a shanty not far from Granny. Was he really throwing stones? “Because the Moonfire Lilies tend to group together and I want to go to the place I found the last one. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a few that way.”
He grunted and thankfully fell silent.
We reached the path that would lead us toward Granny’s cottage. My lantern glowed in front of me and he stayed back a ways, not needing its light. The trees once again crowded in, leaning overhead, branches tangled along the sides. The longer we walked, the harder it became for the moonlight to reach the path, until it disappeared altogether, my lantern now the only light I could see by. It didn’t take long for emberflies to drift in, sensing we weren’t danger and dotting the path and between the trees with pricks of light. Too bad they didn’t glow any brighter or maybe they could’ve filled in where my lantern struggled.
Halfway there, and not yet at the place where I’d had that vivid hallucination, I veered left, holding my lantern high so that I could slip between two slim trunks.
“It was somewhere around here,” I said softly, scanning the ground.
“I ain’t never seen as many of these bugs in one place as I do around this village,” he said, his voice too loud for the serenity of the night. “They must like your stink.”
“Or maybe they don’t like yours. Hush now. I’m working and you can help.” I described the pulse of the flower and where exactly to look, quickly mentioning that if he helped, we wouldn’t have to be out here for as long. I knew that would shut him up. “If we wander, you’ll know the way back home, right?”
“How do you not know your way around?”
“I do know my way around... when I can see more than a small ring around my feet. Otherwise, I have to rely on my directional sense.”
“And?”
“I don’t have one.”
