Cody

"Good news, Codester! I've found you a wife!"

I pull a face, blinking my eyes. I'm sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table, and I've just taken the first bite of my warm farm-style breakfast. I blink my eyes again, trying to make sure that I'm actually awake.

My grandmother seems to be really pleased with her news. She also seems to be completely oblivious to my obvious confusion.

"Uhm," is all I have to say to that.

I've been following the doctor's instructions on phasing out the medication very carefully and precisely. I've been lowering the dosage gradually every few days and am currently taking only a quarter of one tablet once per day. I'll soon be weaned off them completely. The hallucinations have stopped... at least I thought they had... or are the meds now somehow interfering with my hearing?

I'm about to ask Gramma to repeat what she'd just said, but I don't have to.

"She's perfect for you! I don't know why I didn't think of this before! Going to the festival without a bride would be simply too depressing, don't you think?"

The festival! Right!

Sometimes, my brain is still a little slow at processing information. The town of Someone-Passed-Through-Here-And-Decided-To-Call-It-A-Town (the name is always escaping me, and I have to call it something) is having a festival. In my mind, I've dubbed it the Festival of Weirdness. I've never heard of a town having a festival to celebrate fertility and prosperity and family values, with people pretending to marry each other and then participating in all kinds of crazy competitions and activities for an entire week.

To make it even more of a weird-ass festival, it doesn't even matter who or what you marry! If you're serious about winning the silly competitions, you can marry the best partner for the job, even if it is your brother, your teacher or your cow! After all, it's not the festival of romance; it's the festival of fools!

What BS!

I wasn't planning on actually attending the festival. I was just going to help build what needs to be built, clean what needs to be cleaned and paint what needs to be painted. Now that I'm able to walk without the crutch - most of the day - I'll be carrying heavy things for Gramma and doing whatever chores she needs me to do here around her farm and for the stupid festival.

I want to help ensure that Hole-In-The-Ground has the best weird-ass festival the whack-a-doodles living in it - and on the farms around it - have ever had. But actually pretending to marry one of the villagers and taking part in the madness is going way above and beyond the call of duty. I am not interested.

"Gramma, I-"

"I know what you're going to say, Bun, but don't knock it until you've tried it. Who knows, you might... God forbid... actually have fun for five minutes! You're allowed to have fun, you know?"

Am I?

I turn my face away from Gramma's scrutiny. I still don't want to talk about that. None of it. I'd been living with her for more than three months now, and she'd been giving me my space.

She patiently helped me navigate through the cluttered house with the crutch I had to use for my first month and a half here. She nursed my wounds and dried the flood of tears that became unleashed after that weird day when I woke up in the field and wouldn't stop running for days. She fed me my medicine and all the best food she could find. All of which I really appreciate, but this last week or so, she started pushing me to talk, little by little, as if being able to let go of the crutch means that I can let go of everything else too.

She wants me to open up and tell her what's on my mind and in my heart. I know she's afraid that I'll have a relapse. I want to comfort her fears, I really do, but I can't deal with it yet. Not with that.

My body is healing fast. I have the fact that I used to be really fit to thank for that. I think it might be time to leave and go home... But I can't go home. I cannot return to my life. Not now... perhaps not ever. I don't see the point of my body's miraculous healing powers. I really don't see the point in anything.

I glance at the leather straps tied around my left wrist and sigh.

Every night I lie in bed, studying the fairies on the top I found in the field near the woods a while back. I know each one of them by heart now. I could probably name them... but I'm not crazy. The material still faintly smells of Lily of the Valley, but the scent will be gone soon. I'll be sorry when it's disappeared. When Anara used it, I couldn't wait for the bottle to be empty. It smelled different on the strange girl and on the top. I now love the fragrance.

I don't want to think about Anara.

As the fog started to lift from my mind and I became more and more lucid every time I adjusted the dosage, I decided that there probably really was a girl with me that day. I'm pretty sure, though, that she was not as colourful or as pretty or as strange as I thought she was. I've met most of the girls in Well-Without-Water, and no matter how cute some of them are, none of them is as eccentric looking nor as interesting as the one in the field near my grandmother's house had been.

The top looks exactly as I imagined it, though, but that hardly means anything. Frustrated, I rub my eyes.

"Buddy," Gramma says, stepping to the side of my chair. She places a cool hand on my forehead and holds my head tightly against her hip for a while, then she touches my cheek, pinches my chin and leaves me to my breakfast.

I toy with my fork, my sketchy appetite completely gone again now. I seriously don't want to attend the crazy festival, and I'm 19 years old; I definitely do not want a wife.

~~~