(no subject)
Beltane again. There's not much of it, but I wanted to let you know that I'm not entirely useless and have actually been writing. Once I finish it, you get a story about people as pets. Dee is to blame for that one too.
Also a horse stepped on me and it hurts.
“I can’t believe you,” muttered the brunette, her voice muffled as she pulled off her pajamas. Belladonna watched impassively, until the other straightened. Then she purred slightly, drawing a snort from Cass, who remarked, “I didn’t get to watch you strip. You were already dressed in that ridiculous earth-mother get-up when you yanked my covers off. That’s not exactly fair.”
“You’ll get your chance.”
“Mm.” Cass pulled a pair of long shorts from the dresser and tugged them on. Bella examined them, then pointed out,
“Those aren’t your shorts.”
“Nope. They’re August’s; I stole them because he is very skinny and foolish enough to let me do his laundry.” She hooked her bra into place and put on the first shirt that came to hand, a dark blue fitted tee. “Ready?”
“More or less. I put your bike in the trunk, so that I can head right to work if time runs short and still see you home okay.”
“You’ve been up for quite a while planning this, I see.”
“No, not really. I wrangled it in last night, while you were up to your elbows in flour with Coli, telling dirty stories.”
Cass, who had been searching for her flip-flops, paused. “That bike,” she said slowly, “weighs upwards of sixty pounds, even stripped-down as it is. How in the world did you manage by yourself?”
“Didn’t,” replied Bella, sounding as satisfied as a cat that had just come home bearing a small dead present. “The boys owed me a favor, and they paid me back in part by helping and in part by keeping it quiet from you. You weren’t to find out until I let you, so’s it would be a surprise.” She grinned that grin again. “I like surprises.”
“So I’ve found.”
They were halfway down the stairs by now, Cass having found her shoes. The house was filled with the dusty quiet of all old houses everywhere at six-thirty on a sunlit morning; they were the only ones stirring. Belladona was swinging an old cloth knapsack by one strap, idly; in it was a blanket, a few towels, and a candle (“We have to have something that makes it look like a ritual,” she’d insisted when Cass raised an eyebrow at the contents). They picked their way carefully through the kitchen, still in a mild shambles from Cass and Coli’s attempt at cooking, and out the back hall, cluttered with hats and boots. Outside, in the sun, the weather was warm for spring, with a breeze that tugged at Bella’s braid and whipped Cass’s hair into her eyes.
The car only coughed twice before starting, which both of them took as a truly excellent omen, and then they were on the way with all the windows open. Their house was already on the far outskirts of the town, and Belladonna headed, on a slightly circuitous route, towards it. The small auto grumbled slightly under the added weight of the motorbike in its trunk, but Bella was experienced in coaxing it to do things it didn’t really want to do. When they were just over the halfway point in relation to the town center, Belladonna pulled off onto an unpaved sidestreet and parked in a dirt lot. There were no other cars at this hour, which was not surprising in the least.