At last! My little stepdaughter was safe and sound. I sprinted into the clinic to meet her.I was going to ask where Sara was, but Denny pulled me by my collar. "Room Nine."
We pulled back the curtain and found Sara fidgeting and rubbing her butt on the bed. "I think I got a 'squito bite on my hinny." She looked at me and blushed. "Um, not good way to say hi." I shook my head at her. I didn't have much to say about that except only my daughter thinks that it's physically possible to get a mosquito bite under your clothes.
It's funny to think that I raised her from newborn to now. She used to be so quiet and lethargic, but she became a squirmy little bugger once she turned ten months old. I'm not sure if she got stronger over time or if she was messing with me. She's now...almost two years old and she seems to have now developed a few fine motor skills. I mean, I would assume that the drawings on the table of grizzly bears and her mother were her doing. And she's able to catch her new toy from four feet in the air as she absently tosses it.
Not only that, but now she's saying intelligent things. She used to only say little sentences aboard the ship. No not even sentences, but self-centered phrases like "I is hungry" or "Gotta go poop." Then again, maybe that's all we paid attention to. She used to babble while we talked with other parents. Maybe that babble was really jumbled talk that she has un-scrambled now. For all I know, she has no idea where her hinny really is.
Denny gestured toward a young woman wearing a short dress and headband with a witch's hat attached to it. "Vaughn, This is Viveka. She's been keeping Sara company over the last week. Viveka, this is Vaughn, Sara's stepfather."
"Nice to meet you. You should really keep an eye on your kid; she's got quite the mind." I blushed, once again humiliated.
"This mean," Sara said as she caught her stuffed bear again, "we go home? If you alive and I alive, maybe Mommy alive and land here."
I patted her head. "That's probably not going to happen. It was a longshot that I landed here with you. Mommy's most likely to wash up on some other shore. She's probably fine, but not here."
She slumped and pouted her lips. "Or she could've drowned-ed."
I sighed. Again, not likely. Celeste was afraid of the water, but she knew how to swim. If anything, Sara would've sunk like a stone. Why was this kid such a downer? Did Celeste spit out atheistic nonsense or something when she went under?
When she went under. Why do I say that; I just said she could swim. Because she was holding Sara. You can't swim with one arm. If she let go of Sara, the kid would have been shark-bait within seconds. Instead, she must have floated on her back with her laying on her stomach. Her clothes must have weighed her down and...
This girl saw her mother die under her and get swallowed up by what she feared most. Of course that's going to scar her.
I held my face in my hands. My chest felt tight and my breath staggered. Crap, I was crying in front of my own little girl. Sara saw the signs and grabbed my shoulders in an attempt to hug me. "No! No, I no say that! Mommy alive. Don't cry! If I alive, she alive. She say I her life, so she gotta be okay."
I laughed through my sobs and her close to me. "Thanks, Mom." She snickered too. Celeste held her the same way when she cried. She used a similar tone of voice when she was trying to calm someone down. This girl was the chibi version of her own Mom!
"Vaughn," she whispered.
"Yes, honey?"
"You smell like a douche."
My eyes flipped open. Did my daughter just say the word 'douche'?! I swear, in all my twenty-some years I have never used the word. Judging by her carriage, I would assume that Celeste never used one. Wait, this was a clinic; women come here with their problems. So it was this damn doctor's fault.
Vivi turned a bright carmine and Denny concealed his laughter in his bandanna. He then winced. "Damn, it does smell like a~"
"Don't repeat it," I seethed, "Her mother shouldn't even know that word!"
I heard footsteps approaching our room. "Sara...are you in here," a male voice called.
My breath caught in my throat. Denny blanched to the point of passing as white. Sara clung to me. "It's the thief man!" We knew that things would not turn out good with this headhunter around.
"Who?" Vivi asked.
I waved her off. "No time."
Denny looked around for an escape and found a window at the top of the room. He pulled a swivel chair underneath and climbed on. "Pass the munchkin to me, quick!" I handed over Sara. They climbed out the window. "Hang on to me, sweetie." I turned back to Vivi. "You saw nothing." After I heard the thud of them landing, I followed them and leapt onto the road.
I would like to have said we made a clean getaway, but, there were two more unexpected visitors to the clinic that day...
Gale's POV
What on earth is going on out there? I hear yelling and knocking every other minute-goddess knows I can focus on my reading with that going on. Maybe they found more survivors washed up on the shore. Perhaps they're Sara's folks. I could introduce myself, say my goodbyes to the little one, and finally forget about this little ordeal.
I come out of my home and almost knock over a woman who was leaning against the door. She glares at me with narrow black eyes. Her long jet hair is adorned with loose jade beads Her red qi pao was shredded at the edges and soaking wet. She appeared to be missing a glove.
"Xiǎoxīn zǒulù," she shouted, swinging a fist at me.
Apparently she wasn't from around here because she didn't speak any native languages. I think she was speaking Cantonese-I wasn't sure because so few people I've met speak any Asiatic languages. My vocab there was not very fluent, but I was able to speak in basic sentences.
((I don't speak Chinese. I speak English and Italian. If you're going to curse me out, at least let me understand that I'm being insulted.)) Okay, I'm intermediate.
She blinked at me. "Wow, for not speaking Chinese, you sure know how to speak Chinese." She laughed and brushed back one of her bangs. "Sorry for trying to cave your face in. I'm used to men attacking and harassing me." Sad truth, isn't it? "My name is Lily Suiren. I'm a treasure hunter."
She stepped closer to me. She smelled faintly of vanilla, soot, and blood. You kids have read the memes; that kind of thing screams 'uncanny valley girl'!I blushed and stepped back into my home. "I...I'm the...town's wizard. Sorry to have scared you, signorina."
She clicked her tongue. "Shy one, aren't you? It's okay, I don't bite. I was actually hoping you could tell me where to find a witch named Celeste Feritali."
A shiver ran down my spine. I thought of baby Sara at the clinic. I didn't see the connection between the two of them, but I didn't like the odds that our new citizen would get hurt.
"I'm sorry, signora, but I do not usually fraternize with witches. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a riot to investigate." I slid past her and strode toward the source of the noise.
She trotted alongside me. "A riot, you say?"
"Yes. All afternoon I've heard men shouting outside. I want to check out the issue before it escalates. From my intuition, I have a feeling that that Celeste person you mentioned just now has something to do with it."
"Yes, perhaps, but there's another explanation. I hear that the phantom thief Skye is in town."
I'd heard of this man before, the phantom thief anyway. He was a charming young klepto who lured his victims out of their houses with a curry-scented potion. He even had the nerve to warn his victims ahead of time, a very bold move on his part. He didn't seem the type to need any help, but as I've never met him, I'll take Lily's word for it.
"I heard them shouting about a girl named Sara. Rumors have been floating around about a child washing up on shore. She is said to be Skye's illegitimate child. Her visitors have even said that she has-"
"-his flashing Peridot eyes," we said at once.
"And is this Celeste perhaps her mother?"
She gasped, "Yes." Oh, joy.
It was possible that Sara wasn't thrown overboard by accident, but to escape someone. Being the mistress or lovechild of a criminal can bring you all sorts of trouble. No matter what happened to Celeste, the important thing was hiding Sara.
As we approached the clinic, I saw the window near the roof open-the window to Sara's room. A dark-skinned man popped out with Sara in his arms. She was clinging to him as he leapt out and landed right in front of me. He noticed Lily and I staring at him and stood there with a horrified expression. "I can explain myself." For the sake of his life, I would hope so.
A few seconds later, a white-haired cowboy jumped out the window and caught sight of us like his partner. He gasped and kept glancing between the two of us. "My Goddess..."
Soooorryyyy! Iz so laaaaazzzzyyy!
Not really, just focused on school and reading. I tried to create a sense of an ill-timed coincidence. Just popped up in my brain, but I had to continue somehow.