Skye came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist and chest, tucking his chin into my shoulder. Engaged and all, my face still flushed, my hands automatically cupping his elbows supportively.
"You're very lovely, you know." Skye's breath blew warm, almost moving the hair around my ears. Though he couldn't see my face, I rolled my eyes out of habit.
"Flattery…" I chuckled, stopping myself. "Well, I was going to say it'll get you nowhere. But I guess that's not true, since I'm marrying you."
He laughed and pulled me closer, silver hair falling into my line of vision around my chin as he moved to nuzzle my cheek. "You're also adorable." I leaned back into him, breathing deeply of his smell that had so quickly come to mean home, and love, to me. How had he crawled into my heart? I'd always thought I was a hard woman to win over, but in a year and a half he had become more dear to me than my own life. I was amazed that he seemed to feel the same way. Sometimes I could not believe my luck. I closed my eyes, thinking of how he had come to my house to steal my blue feather as if it had been meant for anyone but him. As if once I'd met him, spoken to him, I could think of any other man. Three days, I wondered to myself. Three days and we will be husband and wife. My stomach flipped and my heart beat faster at the very thought.
Sensing my ponderings, as he always seemed to, Skye pulled me around without taking his arms from around me, hugging me to his chest. He was barely taller than me, but somehow he managed to give the impression of being taller. "What are you thinking?" He put his hand under my chin, very gently tugging until our eyes met. He smiled, tilting his head to one side. "That is, if you'd like to tell me."
I sighed, staring at him like I could drink in the teal of his eyes. "I was thinking of how lucky I am," I muttered, wrapping my arms around his waist and up his back, pulling him closer to me. My hands came to rest on his shoulders like birds finding their perch. "And how we need to find you a decent job." That last was a worry that had been on my mind for a few seasons now, when I realized I loved him. He was a thief, someone who made his living by taking from others. When I'd met him, emerging from Lumina's mansion late at night, I'd been shocked that he could rob poor old Romana. That had been how we'd gotten to know each other; as he came into the valley each night, I'd intercept him outside of Vesta's farm and give him some trinket I'd dug up in the excavation site. I would make him swear not to take anything that night, and I'd walk with him to the Goddess Spring. Over the course of a year and a half, I'd grown to love him despite his occupation. Now, though, that we were going to be man and wife, I couldn't allow him to continue stealing from the people in the valley.
He nodded, laying his cheek on the top of my head. "If you say so," he murmured, but I could hear his disagreement in his voice. I knew how much money he made stealing, and I knew that he didn't want to give that up. For that reason, ever since I'd realized I loved him earlier that year, I'd been working harder than ever so that he wouldn't have to miss anything. I had ten ducks, ten chickens, two sheep, two cows, and two dozen fields of fall vegetables outside my farmhouse and I was churning quite a profit every day now. Looking back over the past year and a half, I had accomplished much. Still, Skye was not the sort of man who would be comfortable with doing nothing all day, and if I didn't find another job for him, that would be what he'd do. That, or stealing.
"Is there anything that you want to do other than steal?" I asked hopefully, and he chuckled; from the sound, I knew that he wasn't going to answer me seriously.
"I want to make you the happiest woman in the world," he purred in my ear, moving the tip of his nose up and down my jaw playfully. I sighed, half annoyed and half unbelievably content. How was I supposed to keep on subject when he was doing things like this?
I reluctantly pulled away, looking at my fiancé and biting my lip to try and keep my head. "I'm serious, Skye." He smiled the same cheeky, cocky grin as always, but I knew him well enough to read the gravity in his own eyes.
"So am I. And tonight, I want that to be all." I nodded slowly, accepting the unspoken compromise.
"Tomorrow, then."
"Tomorrow." His grin softened until it was only a small curve on his perfect lips. "I love you," he murmured quietly; I couldn't look away from his lovely eyes, and knew that I never wanted and never needed to.
"I love you, too," I told him just as softly, and I meant the words more than anything I had ever said in my life. There was only the slightest distance between our bodies, only a sliver of air keeping our bodies from fitting together like pieces to a puzzle. His smile slipped away, leaving only a look akin to hunger in his eyes, the sort of hunger that made my insides quiver because I knew that that hunger was matched in my own eyes. I stepped back into his arms, pulling him to me greedily. Our lips met, words dripping away because we didn't need them as we backed toward my bed, once so small that we had had no choice but to touch.
Not that we'd minded.
My heart was in my throat, pounding, pounding, pounding. I could not breathe and didn't want to, all I wanted was his lips on mine and miracle of miracles they were; even now I could not believe my senses, could not believe that there was such a thing as a soul mate and I was with mine. Skye's hands were wrapped around my face, fingers tangling in my hair and pulling at my ponytail. As my hair fell down around my shoulders, the backs of Skye's knees bumped into the bed and he fell away from me, down to the large mattress of the double bed I'd purchased last week. But where his descent should have stopped, where the springs should have bounced him back up just a little, he kept falling as if there was a black hole in the middle of the flowery bedspread. I had just enough time to see his eyes widen, to see his hands reach up for me, before he disappeared.
"Skye?" I cried, reaching down to where he should have been, but the bed was disappearing, too, the blankets and pillows fading suddenly out of existence, down to the floorboards, leaving only the original twin bed I'd kept only out of nostalgia. "Skye!"
The walls were moving, pushing themselves around my furniture, some of which was disappearing, too; my dog Triste barked ferociously as the room got smaller and smaller. I grabbed the dog around the middle, dragging him out the door, my mind whirring. What is going on? Some kind of earthquake? A trick from the Witch Princess? Where is Skye?
Outside, the sunny fall weather had changed black and thunderous; my cows lowed, alarmed, and the duck pond's waters whipped into churning white waves. Alegre, my cat, stood on the doghouse, hissing at the sky; backing away from my house, I blinked heavily, staring at my farm. The walls of my house, even from the outside, were compressing as if some invisible giant was squishing the walls together, and I shrieked with horror as I saw my farm animals, all those ducks and chicken and sheep and cows, were disappearing like my furniture, like my bed, like…
Skye.
I screamed, wind picking my hair up to fling it nearly painfully around my shoulders; in that moment, it was as if everything I had worked for, everything I loved, was leaving me, was being taken from me. My screams grew hoarse but I still tried as my life disappeared from around me. The effort of keeping my eyes open was suddenly strangely tedious; my thoughts were suddenly fuzzy. I fell backward, slowly closing my eyes with that last image of Skye falling away from me burned on the screen of my eyelids.
~~~***~~~
"Hey, wake up!"
I frowned, my eyes still shut. Who was waking me up so early? I never got up before eleven o'clock anymore, not since Mom died and stuck me with this farm.
But you've got to feed the animals and water everything, and you're going to be so far behind schedule!
I opened my eyes slowly, forehead still crumpled in confusion. Where had that thought come from? I didn't have any animals, and I didn't have even a houseplant to water. It must have been a dream.
Triste, curled up on my feet, was looking up at someone standing next to my bed. I sat up quickly, cursing. Why hadn't my dog, normally so alert, driven away the intruder? She was a tall woman with wild ashy hair, her arms crossed over her chest and red eyes narrowed at me.
"Good," she snapped. "Geez, you're lazy. Anyway, get up."
"Who…?" I began, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Witch Princess, something in my mind whispered, and I jumped a little. What on earth was going on?
"I'm the Witch Princess," stated the woman before me, smirking proudly, putting her fists on her hips; in her left hand she held a crumpled piece of paper. I wasn't paying attention to her introduction, though. All I could do was stare, thinking furiously as Triste gave a small dog yawn and laid his head on his paws. How did I know her name? I was sure I had never seen this woman before in my life, and the village my mother had stuck me in was small enough that I knew all its faces by now.
"What…" My voice cracked, and for some reason tears sprang to my eyes. I tried again. "What's going on?" The words were still shaky, but at least they were out.
"Well, um…" The Witch Princess looked sheepish, rubbing the side of her neck with her empty hand and not looking me in the eye. "Well, read this." She shoved the paper before her, under my nose.
I blinked, taking the paper hesitantly with a glance over my shoulder at my sleeping guard dog. If he was comfortable enough to sleep, I supposed this Witch Princess wasn't going to hurt me…and something in my gut told me she wasn't trouble. My eyes fell to the letter, which had my name scrawled at the top in spidery letters; my stomach shifted with a nauseating feeling of déjà vu, and I felt like I knew what the words would say.
After the moment it took me to read the letter, I looked back to the Witch Princess, who was now leaning on her broom and making faces at Alegre, who watched her disinterestedly. "So…I have to save the, um, Harvest Goddess by…finding Harvest Sprites?" The Witch Princess's red eyes flashed back to me.
"I guess. Apparently, it's your lazy fault." She shrugged. "Don't know why I have to tell you, but whatever. Good luck, I guess."
She stepped back and, in a flash of red smoke, was gone.
I snorted, confused. Why did all of this seem so familiar? Why had my pets acted strangely as if they'd known the Witch Princess, and how had I known her name? I sat down on my bed, staring down at my feet, and it wasn't until Triste whined and licked my cheeks that I realized I was crying.
Most important of all, why did my heart feel as if it was hollow and gone?
************************************************************************
AUTHOR'S NOTES
This story has a moral behind it, which I'll tell you now: never allow your seven-year-old cousin to look at your DS Cute game because she will delete it. I was about to marry Skye, and suddenly I have to start my game over! T.T And I really did have ten chickens, ten ducks, etcetera, etcetera. Anyway, once my mind had regained enough feeling for thought, I wondered what that would be like in Fiction-land, as the farmer, to suddenly have the game reset and all her work gone, which is where the idea for this fic comes from. I'm planning to make it longer, but we shall see. Please tell me what you think! Thank you for reading!
