Page 103 of Down and Dirty

Girl talk… same thing through the ages…

Britta sat with Madrene and Hilda in Tony’s Bar & Grill where they laughed till they cried, then they cried till they laughed. The fact they were drinking pitchers of mead did not help the situation.

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Britta glanced at Hilda. “I still cannot believe you lived in a place called Hog Heaven.”

“How about me? I lived in a bloody harem for two years. Me? In see-through gunnas, with rouged nipples!” Madrene was a far-famed shrew — a nice shrew — who had a talent for nagging.

Britta and Hilda put hands over their mouths to stifle their giggles. Britta could not imagine Madrene being subservient, which would surely be required in a harem. Or that she would stand still while someone painted her nipples.

“And you both believe you have time-traveled?” Britta asked. “I cannot credit any sane person accepting such nonsense, and yet… ”

“Most of us have concluded that it is a miracle of some type. A God-ordained thing,” Madrene said.

“But mostly we try not to think about it at all,” Hilda added. “Searching for logical explanations is a futile exercise.”

“Tell me why… how… you decided to stay here in the future,” she urged them both.

“I no longer had any family there. I had no desire to go back,” Madrene said. “Except for a need to avenge myself against that evil Steinolf, but then my brother Torolf took care of that.”

“’Twas different for me,” Hilda said. “I was drawn two ways, wanting to stay here but believing I was needed in the past, at The Sanctuary.”

“And what decided you?”

“Love,” they said as one.

Britta’s heart wrenched at that message. Partly because she suspected she was falling in love with Zachary and partly because she feared he only lusted for her. “I am so confused. I do not want to go back, but I keep having these strange dreams. My father and brothers are attacking the abbey in some of them, and there is so much blood. But in other dreams, it is the nuns who are attacking my father and brothers, led by some warrior nun, and the ruthless men are the ones lying in their own sword dew. Either way, I feel almost a physical pull to return to the abbey.”

Madrene and Hilda stared at her. It was a compelling dream… and obviously different from their own experiences.

“Dost think the warrior nun is you?” Hilda asked.

“Nay. She has coal-black hair. And unusually vivid blue eyes.”

“How does Pretty Boy fit into all this?” Hilda asked.

“Like a thorn in my backside.” Her flip answer garnered grins from her friends. Then she added, “’Tis his fault I am here. I think. He wish-prayed me here.”

“My father believes he was wish-prayed here,” Madrene told her, “and look how well things turned out for him and Angela at the vineyard.” Madrene’s father, Magnus Ericsson, was married to a woman who owned Blue Dragon Vineyard somewhere here in California.

“You say that you blame Pretty Boy, but you aren’t unhappy to be here, are you?” Hilda inquired.

“I am content to be here. Mayhap I was destined to travel here to learn these new military tactics, as I originally thought. But what if Zachary is the reason for my being here?”

“Would that be so bad?” Madrene asked.

“Yea, it would. Who would I be then, except an appendage to some man? I have always identified myself as Britta the Warrior. If not a warrior, what would I be?”

“Lover, wife, mother… or any job you choose,” Hilda said. “This really is a remarkable country for women.”

“Lover? I am already that. I think. But wife… or mother?” She shook her head decisively. “Ne’er did I expect to see myself in those roles. I always considered myself too big and unfeminine, with none of the maidenly graces.” Although an image flashed into her mind of her holding Sammy earlier that night.

“I don’t know.” Hilda grinned. “Pretty Boy does not seem to have a problem with your size or femininity.” She turned to Madrene and told her, “Pretty Boy was smitten with Britta from the start. Could not keep his eyes or hands off her.”

“Pretty Boy?” Madrene glanced Britta’s way. “Pretty Boy does not chase women; they chase him. You must have something.”

“Well, I do let him perform perversions on me,” she admitted.

Both women choked on their glasses of mead.