CHAPTER 14: DAMN THE DAME
A DESERTED LAND, SOME OTHER YEAR
After walking almost a mile in silence, Nathan broke it with a flinching noise and words like: "Either she's here somewhere or it's mere coincidence." Nathan was thinking of Arabella—she used to always hang around with herself near their mother's grave.
To Sarah's elongated muteness, he spoke, "As far as I can dig into my memory lane, Mother's grave is someplace here. Can you feel her?"
"All I can feel is a head throbbing pain," returned Sarah, not sure if she actually knew who the subject was.
"Are you cold?" said Nathan.
Sarah thought she could sense a resistance. As though he was to say more, but had pushed the pause button. Although she was focusing somewhere else, Nathan's 'non involving' behaviour made itself conspicuous enough.
"I honestly feel hungry," Sarah returned.
"Alright. She'd have come if were here, so we can ask for a stay in one the houses up the lane."
Sarah looked up. She was so busy in following up the soothing and hissing sound boots made when they shove away a mount of snow, that she didn't see the four tiny wooden houses lined up in pair, standing opposite to one another. They all looked exactly the same. This made Nathan remember those Christmas movies where almost all the houses looked the same.
"There's an eerie symmetry in all the houses."
She moved away from Nathan and brushed her finger along the wooden beams of a house. Her fingers went through them as if the house were a projection. She smiled and looked sideways. "Hallucinations," she whispered. "Everything in this world could be a hallucination-- the trees, the houses, the sun, the rivers, perhaps even the people."
Nathan heard. "Perhaps even the people," he repeated, his voice not audible to Sarah.
Perhaps everything beautiful was unreal.
Or just everything unreal was beautiful.
"That one is real," Sarah pointed out the fourth house from their left. "Isn't it?"
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FLASHBACK
London, 8th August 1909
It didn't take long enough for the rums and whiskies to start pulling off the gracelessness posing between Ava and Will, however, they did look controllable. Until yet.
"I don't really talk so much, Ava," began Will. On a usual day, Will won't have ever confessed that because, well, he didn't talk that much. There was a certain way Will pronounced Ava's name, like he was laughing out the name.
"I know, I know. You are, well—"
A heavy, impatient and impertinent vocal intruded her: "Eh, I'm done with this packet. Now I want the lady."
So this was the scumbag.
Will cussed and said, "You're not getting her, mate. Go away."
"You gave your word." His face suddenly wore the mask of amazement in such a negative manner that perhaps the negative signs of maths themselves got offended. After all, Will was his one-hour-earlier-made brother. "It has come to my acknowledgement that respectable men like you don't take their words back."
Ava said, "Well, he does. Now," she clapped her hands together, "might I request you for your own benefit and survival, and in favour of my goodwill to expel yourself from this place?"
The other man came towards Ava only to start nudging her shoulder.
BAM!
As a result, this time not Will, but Ava, pushed him with her Terminal agility and style. He clashed almost a meter away into the wooden furniture and the glass sconces, probably fracturing both his elbows.
"Jeremiah, do you want me now?" mocked Ava. There was no trace of French accent in her voice.
"Always, love," he replied while trying to get up on his feet. His friends and few bar fellows now surrounded him. Maybe the whiteness on their faces would've been visible, had they been not so drunk.
"Leave her, she's abnormal," a guy called out from behind.
"So she can come to you?" said half-limping, Jeremiah. "I said she's mine, so she is mine." He grabbed a bottle of beer from behind the counter and aimed at Ava. "Last chance."
Eyes on the pervert, she said to Will, "In case you haven't realised, this is a really shady bar."
Will scoffed. "In cases you haven't realised, I'm prohibited from going to well-to-do places."
Jeremiah broke the glass bottle off the counter. "And now?"
"Listen," intervened a whisper of Will. "Fight like a human with their strength."
"What do you mean you're supporting this?" asked Ava, half flabbergasted and half pumped.
He glanced directly, for the first time, at her. "Afraid, are you?"
"Fright is the last emotion I feel."
"Also, don't cheat with your little mind games," he said and winked.
"Already switched it off."
Ava got a glimpse of every man standing against her. She smiled a smiled as if she'd broken the matrix and seen the future. "Commence boys, if not fearful," said Ava.
***
A DESERTED LAND, SOME OTHER YEAR
They stood on the porch. Sarah traced the rusted circular knob placed a little above than the modern knobs, before knocking. Reddish-brown powder tickled her fingers.
Sarah's headache continued to be a troublemaker. "Can time-traveling cause headaches?"
Nathan's shoes were tapping the floor continuously. "I let the process channel your powers and my energy. So, this shouldn't this bad to you."
"Ah," she inhaled. "It must be the cold."
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut. "Cold, yes, there's snow everywhere...of course, it'd be cold."
Sarah gave him a little shoulder-tap which meant to say- "It's alright."
The door opened. It stood ajar for a while until a silhouette appeared in front of their eyes.
It was a stranger with dark brown hair and freckles. She saw them through her long eyelashes. The most prominent attire on her was her picturesque blue apron-like velvet with mirrors and embroideries.
"Throw them out," howled a voice as the house shook.
Sarah blinked; Nathan continued to stand in his usual manner with his left eyebrow slightly raised.
"A thousand apologies for that, Sir and—" She stopped and stared at Sarah with her shining eyes.
Nathan mocked, "I think you're looking for the word 'Dame'."
Sarah turned green. She looked from the girl to Nathan and said, "Damn the Dame. I've to throw up." She motioned towards the grass.
"I'll just come in a second. She's a bit disturbed. Sorry. I meant apologies," he added, remembering this century's language. He didn't know what year this was, but knew that it was somewhere in the nineteenth or twentieth century.
As Nathan began to stride in the direction of Sarah, the girl spoke up. "I was waiting for her to come, Sarah Quinton."
Nathan's left eyebrow raised a little more.
***
Thank you so much for reading till here. It really means a lot to me.
Question: Have you ever seen a friendship between a badass and a silent person? Have you had a friends like this? I know you might be sick and tired but it feels really amazing when readers comment. So take your time and if you can, vote and comment ;)
Date for next upload (for me today is Tuesday, 15/06/21): Thursday, 17/06/21
Have a day better than dandelion and burdock (I hope someone got the context)!
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