Author's Note: Golly gosh, has it been awhile. I plead pressure of assignments, etc. etc. Hope you enjoy this one. :-)
The light was warm on Holly's face. Not sunlight as such, but light nonetheless, a warming, comforting presence that shone crimson through her closed eyelids. Sleepily, she turned her head away, but if anything, the light was stronger from that direction. She must have forgotten to close her curtains last night.
The elf's eyelashes opened a tiny crack. The light was coming from a large window beside her bed. Hang on... she didn't have a window beside her bed. Holly opened her eyes fully and looked around. She lay in the centre of a tousled nest of dark blue bedding. There were windows running almost the whole length of the wall on three sides of the room, through which streamed the glow of the sun strips overhead. Beside the bed stood a chest of drawers and a small stack of books, whilst the far corner housed a desk and a somewhat decrepit armchair, the former overflowing with paper, the latter with tangled laundry. It seemed that Trouble had lied just the tiniest bit about having a spare room.
Rolling over in the bed, Holly caught her head a glancing blow on a hard object concealed beneath the pillow. With a muttered curse, she reached a hand behind her and extracted a small silver pistol. She laughed softly to herself. Maybe it wasn't a curry-smuggling ring Trubs was operating, but an illegal weapons cache. Technically, of course, the People weren't allowed to possess guns, or to carry them without authorisation, but Trouble had always been a weapons nut. Julius had mostly turned a blind eye. After all, officers like Trouble Kelp were hard to find, and there was no way he'd ever let his precious weaponry fall into the wrong hands. Holly's smile was tinged with sadness. She missed Julius.
The decor of the bedroom bore evidence to Trouble's various obsessions. Several large gun racks were mounted upon the walls, glittering with a variety of highly polished lasers, rifles, and blasters. There was also a pair of Centaurian throwing knives from the time of Chiron, an Atlantean longbow, and several tarnished sickle daggers of the old fey. There even seemed to be a corner dedicated to antique human weaponry, including a silver blunderbuss from Cerro Gordo and a Nepalese khukuri.
The remaining space on the walls was occupied by a series of rather beautiful framed photographs. Trouble was a keen photographer, and Holly had to admit, he knew how to frame a shot. She rolled from the bed and stretched languidly, then crossed to examine the images more closely. A snarling Bengal tiger; the opening curl of a fern frond; a tiny golden tree frog, gleaming as if lacquered. She paused before an image of a mountain chain seen from the air, which she recognised from a training exercise in New Zealand back in the early 70s. That had been a good trip. She grinned reminiscently. Trouble and Major Arbles had somehow managed to get buried up to their armpits in a snowdrift, and she had had to haul them out by the epaulettes.
More photographs plastered the lop-sided noticeboard at the foot of the bed. These were pictures of a different kind. Trubs and his retrieval boys, on a night out; Foaly, caught in an attitude of overly theatrical despair, semi-masticated carrot spilling from his mouth; Trouble and Ash jousting with makeshift javelins, mounted upon a pair of startled Przewalski horses; a group of cadets in Academy jumpsuits; Julius, purple-faced and apoplectic, his dress uniform splattered with a fetching design of shocking pink... She recognised herself in several of the photos, and grinned at the memories they evoked. Eating ice cream with Trouble and Mulch outside Spud's Emporium, posing with the rest of the Crunchball squad, and a slightly embarrassing shot of herself, Lili and Vinyaya dancing on a table at her Academy graduation.
Her eye was caught by a picture near the top corner. Foaly again, wearing an expression of ridiculous smugness, with his arm around a plump roan Centaur. Caballine, Holly realised. And the satin sashes about their girths must mean that this had been taken at their hitching ceremony. Holly's stomach churned with guilt. She couldn't believe that she'd missed Foaly's hitching.
When she began to examine the picture-board in more detail, she noticed a number of other things that she had missed. Pictures from the recent past. Trouble's recent past, not hers. There was Grub, with his mother, a shiny new set of Lieutenant's acorns pinned to his lapel. A stocky young female gnome that Holly did not recognise, wearing a Recon jumpsuit and an expression of extreme pride. Several photographs of Trouble himself, looking exceedingly handsome, and not in the slightest like a flyboy. Holly frowned. Since when had Trouble learnt how to wear his dress uniform as though he belonged in it? For that matter, when had he learned to iron the collars of his shirts? In many of the photos, he was accompanied by a lean, athletic looking elf with a clever, pretty face, and a long chestnut ponytail. A girlfriend? Holly felt her head beginning to whirl with the sheer insanity of it all. Time had moved on while she was stuck in Limbo, and she wasn't sure that she liked it.
Holly turned away from the noticeboard, and caught sight of herself in a mirror on the wall above Trouble's cluttered desk. She stared. Her hair appeared to have been cut again overnight. A split-second later, she realised that she was looking at herself, not in a mirror, but a picture frame. It was only another photo. But the worst photo of all. It was a picture of herself, taken four years ago. She wore her recon jumpsuit, and a fearless smile. Below the picture were words in flowing gnomish script. Holly Short, 1919 – 2003. A service sheet from a memorial. They had had a memorial for her.
Holly stumbled, and sat rather heavily upon the un-made bed. She felt almost as though she were going to cry. No wonder Trouble had shot her. A memorial . . . She had been declared legally dead.
