IT LIIIIIIIIVES!!!!
'It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.'
~ Lord of the Rings
There's a certain type of sunset that occurs at that very rare point in mid-spring when the world has awoken to the calm lush of tentative rebirth, when flights of fancy seem only a shy handclasp away and the very earth is caught up in the intenseness of possibility. It's a delicate process as we watch the day-lilies slowly seem to yawn and close their petals from another exhausting day of the business of pushing forward through life, and the animals rest their heads in warm and careful bowers with those whom they have found. While the green in the grass grows deep and still, and as the last few peach washes of the sun's rays kiss the birds goodnight in their nests, there is foresight from the unearthly tang of orange silk sky draping itself over and about pink clouds that seemed to curl up closer in bliss.
Alice slowed to a stop and turned on her heel to eye the route she had just traversed. The pebbled path stretched out behind her and melted away into the woodland, devoid of any travelers other than her. She wrinkled her sun-pinked nose and ground a toe into the gravel while her mind dithered somewhere between exasperation and relief. He had been so inescapably insistent on seeing her safely home after the book shop was shuttered for the day. A pack of rogue momeraths have been seen in the area, or so he said…and there was always, always the imminent threat of a bear attack. Bears, he emphasized, were godless killing machines and a dire threat to every good and wholesome creature in the realm. As to how he planned to ward off an angry ursine went unexplained; she could only assume that it would somehow involve tea and a great deal of coat flapping.
It had all come to naught. They hadn’t seen hide or hair of anything larger than the lone lavender hedgehog that had trundled sleepily across the path. Certainly no bears, not even of the harmless variety known for wearing red shirts and masquerading as rain clouds. This was (presumably) a good thing, she mused, considering that her self-proclaimed ‘protector’ was nowhere in sight. He had been gamboling along at her side a scant five minutes ago and now...well…he wasn’t. It was only a temporary respite, of course. She watched the path expectantly and began to count softly under her breath.
“Five…four…three…two…”
The sound of galloping footsteps reached her ears.
“…one.”
“The TREES! They’re GREEEEEEEEEEN!”
Reginald roared out of the trees and bore down at her full tilt, a veritable orange tornado of happy delirium. He sprinted past her as if she had fallen invisible, her skirt and hair whipped by the breeze of his passing. She had a fleeting glimpse of his face, flushed as it was with joyous hysteria…and then he was past her and gone, careening ahead to vanish around a bend in the path.
She sighed inwardly and continued along the path.
Alice stifled her amusement and glanced upward, her attention diverted. Something was shifting heavily in the thick green tree foliage above their heads. The trees are indeed very green, she wearily noted. A smattering of dislodged leaves fluttered down to dot the earth around their feet with fresh color.
A branch snapped. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Reginald scramble to his feet. Everything proceeded to go terribly wrong after that.
It was over and done in a handful of seconds but in Alice’s dumbstruck mind the passage of time seemed to slow down to a laboring crawl. She seemed to have a limitless cache of time to realize that he was reaching for her - no, that he had her, hands latching onto her forearms with disquieting strength - and was pulling her toward him in one sharp, decisive movement. She had far too much time to recall what had happened on the dance floor three weeks previously...or namely, what had nearly happened. She had enough time to deduce that he was probably going to attempt the same again, now...and this time there weren’t any disruptive pirates in the vicinity to save her.
What was a lady to do in such an undesirable scenario? A good firm shove might ward him off, yes? She could possibly achieve the same effect by simply launching herself backward at high speed. Failing that, perhaps a good kick to his kneecap would halt proceedings. Or maybe she should…
An evocative voice piped up in the back of her mind. …or maybe you should do nothing. Maybe you should allo -
WHAT?
She turned her mental eye toward the wheedling little voice, rattled to her core. It was wrong, so completely and unconditionally wrong. It had to be wrong because the tickling heat crawling up her spine couldn’t be anything but a by-product of disgust, because she couldn’t possibly want -
The voice squealed in unequivocal glee. Too late!
The force of his pull jerked her cleanly off her feet. She crashed into his torso and heard him grunt from the impact, her nose planted squarely in the center of his collarbones. Her senses were instantly flooded by two warring elements that threatened to short-circuit her brain into some sort of contradictory fit.
The first and foremost of these cataclysmic elements was olfactory. The obnoxious little voice in her head was happily pointing out the indisputable fact that he had something of a pleasant scent to him. He smelled like brushed leather and spicy-sweet tea leaves curing in the sun - two simple, persuasive notes tied neatly together by a trace of nuanced musk that was distinctly and undeniably male. Her mind sputtered and stalled out in a way it hadn’t done since the very first time she stepped into the warm, fragrant air of a chocolate shop.
The second element was auditory: a shocking, thunderous crash followed by a cacophony of splintering wood and tearing felt. She wrenched herself free from his grasp and retreated to the far side of the path, distancing herself from not only the threatening racket but from him, away from that unnerving scent. The voice was laughing at her now and she turned her thoughts against it, shouting at it to be quiet, shut up shut up shut -
“One must be careful out here.” His voice clapped an iron lid on her thoughts. “The trees are fruiting.” He sidestepped and gestured smugly toward the cause of the entire fiasco. There, on the footworn path - precisely where she was standing all of five seconds ago - was the twisted wreck of a fallen pool table. Several multi-colored billard balls dropped out of the tree to clack off the fractured wood and scatter across the earth.
The red ball was the last to fall. It bounced three times in rapid succession and came to rest against her booted foot with its crisp white #3 turned upward like a glaring, accusatory eye.
She didn’t seem to notice.
She didn’t seem to notice the weighty piece of sports equipment that had almost landed in her lap, either. Her attention was fixated on him, rather. She had the drowsy, transfixed stare of an animal pinned by the blinding headlights of a car. He took note of this - his eyes touched with a knowing twinkle - and struck a valiant pose. “Surely..” He airily gestured toward the heap of broken wood and torn green felt. “…that earns me a kiss.”
Alice spent the next thirty seconds flicking her eyes between him and the ruined pool table like someone at a demented tennis match. Comprehension was not long in coming. Oh….so that’s why he…did what he did. His intentions were innocent. Well that’s certainly a relief….
….and a disappointment.
“It is not!” She caught herself sharply, properly chagrined. Speaking one’s thoughts aloud (let alone shouting them) was an unwise course of action regardless of the situation.
Reginald accepted her random outburst without comment. He did nothing, said nothing...all he did was stand there among the fallen billard balls with that distressing air of knowing in his glacial eyes.
A cold flutter of panic sent her thoughts careening around in her skull like a flurry of hard-thrown ping pong balls. He knows, he knows -
She scowled inwardly. He knows nothing! Besides, what is there to know?
…do you want the short list or the long, dear?
The sudden flush of anger was directed at herself alone…or more specifically, at that damnable little voice in her head. It spurred her out of the daze that had held her captive thus far and burned the anxiety out of her feeble attempts at rationalization. She straightened her spine, lifted her chin and fixed him with a stare that she sincerely hoped to be appropriately disdainful. “I’m afraid that I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request, sir. Save me from a rabid bear next, and then we’ll see.”
She immediately regretted her choice of words.
