long fingers over her head and through her ponytail and over the wolf’s tail dangling over her shoulder. “M’lady Holly…I need to speak with you.”
“You healed,” I repeat flatly, and then I’m sitting back down in my chair again quickly because my legs apparently no longer want the job of holding me up. Shelley noses at my hand with her long muzzle anxiously to be let outside, and that’s what brings me back to reality. My dog needs to pee. You can’t get more reality-based than that.
“Um. Just…wait a second, okay?” I tell the woman in armor standing in my living room . I get up ungracefully from my chair and make my way to the back sliding glass door, tugging back the curtains and then cautiously pulling up the blinds.
I’m cautious and uncertain about these things, because part of me doesn’t even really want to glance at my backyard. Because I’m not really sure what’s going to be waiting for me outside.
But it’s just my normal backyard out there, with its closely cropped grass, still glistening with the previous night’s rain. It’s stopped raining, thankfully, and the sunshine filters down into the backyard like a spotlight, highlighting the tall maple trees behind the fence in my neighbor’s yard. There’s some divots in the backyard, in the grass. I open the door, and Shelley bounds out happily, sniffing around in the damp grass, her white-gold tail wagging. I watch her prance across the lawn for a long moment.
“Holly, it is quite urgent that I speak with you,” says Virago, suddenly very close to me, staring down at me with wide, ice-blue eyes, her fingers gently at my elbow again as her hand curls around my arm. I stare up at her.
“I’m listening,” I murmur.
She nods, searches my eyes. “I need to leave immediately, need to find the creature, as it is my responsibility that it’s here, and if anyone is injured by it…” She swallows, and her eyes flash as she breathes out slowly, her jaw working. “I need to do right by this,” she finishes, voice strong and low. My heart begins to beat faster as she inclines her gorgeous head toward me. “I must thank you for last night,” she whispers, searching my eyes with her own. “It was you who startled the beast. Without your help—”
I swallow, suddenly going cold. There’s that word again. “Beast.”
“This is all just…very, very strange,” is what I manage to say then, hardly capable of getting the words out. “Um…your leg just healed ? Wounds don’t…they don’t heal overnight. What’s going on? Who are you? I don’t understand…” I trail off, searching her face, ready and waiting for her to tell me that this has all been an elaborate stunt for the Knights of Valor Festival that somehow went very wrong. That maybe they have a motorized “beast” that they’re going to start including in shows, and that it had, somehow, wound up in my backyard…
But I have a very strange feeling that this isn’t what she’s about to tell me.
Virago sighs, gestures back to my coffee table. “I have been looking through your books, and I think that it is safe to say that I am no longer in my world, and that what we attempted to do to detain the creature did not, in fact, work.” Her glittering gaze flicks back to my eyes and pins me to the spot as she straightens, drawing herself up to her full height and crossing her muscled arms in front of herself. “So to begin with, we must start at the beginning. I must know—what world am I in?”
“Earth,” I blurt out, before I realize in the next instant how absolutely crazy this is. What world she’s in? “Virago…” I splutter, “you can’t possibly…” I settle on the only rational thing that comes to mind: “I thought you were from the Knights of Valor Festival?”
She stares at me blankly, head to the side.
“I mean…just
“You healed,” I repeat flatly, and then I’m sitting back down in my chair again quickly because my legs apparently no longer want the job of holding me up. Shelley noses at my hand with her long muzzle anxiously to be let outside, and that’s what brings me back to reality. My dog needs to pee. You can’t get more reality-based than that.
“Um. Just…wait a second, okay?” I tell the woman in armor standing in my living room . I get up ungracefully from my chair and make my way to the back sliding glass door, tugging back the curtains and then cautiously pulling up the blinds.
I’m cautious and uncertain about these things, because part of me doesn’t even really want to glance at my backyard. Because I’m not really sure what’s going to be waiting for me outside.
But it’s just my normal backyard out there, with its closely cropped grass, still glistening with the previous night’s rain. It’s stopped raining, thankfully, and the sunshine filters down into the backyard like a spotlight, highlighting the tall maple trees behind the fence in my neighbor’s yard. There’s some divots in the backyard, in the grass. I open the door, and Shelley bounds out happily, sniffing around in the damp grass, her white-gold tail wagging. I watch her prance across the lawn for a long moment.
“Holly, it is quite urgent that I speak with you,” says Virago, suddenly very close to me, staring down at me with wide, ice-blue eyes, her fingers gently at my elbow again as her hand curls around my arm. I stare up at her.
“I’m listening,” I murmur.
She nods, searches my eyes. “I need to leave immediately, need to find the creature, as it is my responsibility that it’s here, and if anyone is injured by it…” She swallows, and her eyes flash as she breathes out slowly, her jaw working. “I need to do right by this,” she finishes, voice strong and low. My heart begins to beat faster as she inclines her gorgeous head toward me. “I must thank you for last night,” she whispers, searching my eyes with her own. “It was you who startled the beast. Without your help—”
I swallow, suddenly going cold. There’s that word again. “Beast.”
“This is all just…very, very strange,” is what I manage to say then, hardly capable of getting the words out. “Um…your leg just healed ? Wounds don’t…they don’t heal overnight. What’s going on? Who are you? I don’t understand…” I trail off, searching her face, ready and waiting for her to tell me that this has all been an elaborate stunt for the Knights of Valor Festival that somehow went very wrong. That maybe they have a motorized “beast” that they’re going to start including in shows, and that it had, somehow, wound up in my backyard…
But I have a very strange feeling that this isn’t what she’s about to tell me.
Virago sighs, gestures back to my coffee table. “I have been looking through your books, and I think that it is safe to say that I am no longer in my world, and that what we attempted to do to detain the creature did not, in fact, work.” Her glittering gaze flicks back to my eyes and pins me to the spot as she straightens, drawing herself up to her full height and crossing her muscled arms in front of herself. “So to begin with, we must start at the beginning. I must know—what world am I in?”
“Earth,” I blurt out, before I realize in the next instant how absolutely crazy this is. What world she’s in? “Virago…” I splutter, “you can’t possibly…” I settle on the only rational thing that comes to mind: “I thought you were from the Knights of Valor Festival?”
She stares at me blankly, head to the side.
“I mean…just
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