There. That was a sensible, well-balanced approach. She was sure it was nothing, but better to be safe than sorry. If nothing else, she had Fillmore’s wellbeing to look out for!
Speaking of…
“Hey, buddy,” she murmured, picking him up and holding him like a baby so that she could look into his mismatched little eyes and rub his belly. She knew that a lot of animals didn’t like being held like that, but Fillmore apparently couldn’t get enough. “Since all that I desire has been denied me, where should we go from here?”
Fillmore panted and wriggled, and so she let him down, following him wherever he wanted to go until he came to a stop and looked back at her expectantly.
“Key lime pie? Good choice.”
Itwasa good choice. Something sweet and citrusy sounded perfect right about now. And the line was relatively short and moving at a rapid pace, the stallholders working with brisk assembly line efficiency as they each performed their individual tasks of taking money, cutting and plating the pie, and finally passing each slice to the customers.
She joined the line, doing a bit of idle people watching as she waited. Most of the people here seemed like typical residents or tourists, but there were definitely a few people who seemed a bit more on the…eccentricside, in the way that mountain towns just seemed to invite.
Not that she had a problem with that – the opposite, in fact. She considered herself a bit boring and run of the mill, but she had always loved traveling so that she could see how other people lived.
The idea of a small town hiding a secret was something she had always found interesting and exciting. Not anything dark like something out of a David Lynch series, but just something a bit unusual. She certainly couldn’t see somewhere like Girdwood Springs having any actual skeletons in its closet!
She took the opportunity to snap a few photos while she waited, the deep green of the abundant plant life, bright colors of the bunting, and stark white of the distant mountain peaks seeming even more brilliant against the vivid blue of the sky.
The bunting fluttered in the breeze, a little more noticeably now than before, and she watched the swaying of the frangipani flowers that decorated the stall selling pina coladas. A shiver ran through her – even though it was sunny, itwasstill early spring in the mountains, and the wind carried a touch of ice.
A sudden gust,muchstronger, almost knocked her off her feet, and she staggered for a moment, barely managing to heed the shouted “Look out!” in time to throw herself to the ground and shelter Fillmore with her body before an enormousumbrella flew over her head, crashing to the ground right where she hadjustbeen standing.
Her heart pounded in her throat as she pulled Fillmore even closer to her chest, whispering frantically to him that it was okay, he was okay. He was panting a little, eyes even wider than usual, but he seemed unhurt.
“Oh my God! Are you all right?”
Several people crowded around her, and she forced a smile, pulling herself to her feet and half-heartedly dusting herself off with one hand while clutching Fillmore close with the other. Luckily she had managed to avoid doing herself any actual injury – the skin on her hands was a bit red and sore, but unbroken.
“I’m okay, thanks,” she said, her voice only shaking a little. “Nothing damaged except my pride.” And her jeans, and possibly also her camera, although hopefully it was just cosmetic. Not that she really cared – it was insured, and it wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things – but she really wanted to make sure that she had some good photos for her article. Not that she cared about it quite so much in this moment as she had before.
A thought passed through her head fleetingly – about how safe she would have felt if Henry had been there, and how it almosthadfelt like he had been there somehow, shielding her and making sure she got down quickly – before she squashed it down under her metaphorical heel.
Don’t even think about these things. Nothing good will come from thinking about him. He’s clearly not interested.
She forced thoughts of him and his smile from her mind and instead checked herself over one more time, making sure that she was otherwise intact.
I woulddefinitelybe covered in syrup right now if I’d managed to get the gulab jamun. Maybe I should consider myself lucky.
Actually… no. Definitely unlucky. Today kind of sucks a little. What a shame – this really did seem like a dream assignment.
Not that it was awful by any stretch of the imagination – she had had far worse. Like being stuck in a foreign country after her passport was stolen, or getting the world’s worst case of Bali belly.
She watched detachedly as the giant umbrella led the strapping young men from the hot dog stand on a merry chase down the road, teasing them, letting them almost catch it before it bounced back out of their grasp. Eventually they managed to subdue it, hurling themselves down onto it, before hauling it back to the deeply apologetic owners of the pina colada stand.
Luna assured them again that it was okay, that it was just a freak gust of wind and these things happened, and turned down the offer of a free drink. She had to drive back to the B&B later, via winding mountain roads, after all – and to be honest, she was starting to feel a bit festivaled out for the day.
Obviously it was her job, but her editor would understand if she needed to have a bit of time out after almost getting assassinated by an airborne umbrella. And besides which, it seemed like things were starting to wind down a little for the day. It made more sense to head back to the B&B, check her camera over to see if it was still working, and go over her notes for the day so she could start working out how she was going to approach writing this article.
It took her a moment to realize that her phone was buzzing again, and it was with a sense of growing trepidation that she reached into her pocket.
Luna was really starting to hate this phone. If onlyithad gotten crushed when she fell.
DO YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU IGNORE ME? DO YOU THINK I JEST?!? YOU WILL FEEL THE FULL FORCE OF MY WRATH, AND TREMBLE IN YOUR DESPAIR!!!!
She looked around wildly, but… nothing. No nefarious figure hunched over his phone, no villainous cackling. Just people enjoying themselves, plus a few good Samaritans watching her with slightly worried looks on their faces. Maybe they thought she’d hit her head when she fell.
She gave them a wave and her best reassuring smile, and started to head back to where she’d parked her car, tucking Fillmore inside the front of her jacket and zipping it up until he was just a little doggy head peeking out the top. His warmth and the movement of his ribs with his breathing were soothing, although she also felt a fierce protectiveness welling up inside her. She’d been able to wave the text messages off as something silly, but now Fillmore had been placed in danger, and suddenly things felt a lot more serious.
