I am close to giving this story up. Well, at least here. It seems no one has taken an interest in it, and I don't know if I can blame them. However, if there are those of you who are reading and do not wish for it to lay dormant on the cutting room floor of my imagination, review and tell me so. Supply and Demand you know. My Jane Austen stories are much more popular and though not as challenging to write, claim fun in their own right.

Elaine woke up to the mumbling of voices close at hand. Slowly lifting her lids, she glanced across the barn to a bulk of hay and the man snoring atop it. He lay on his back, his generous girth expanding and retracting with each breath, his greasy yellow hair matted to his pink face. Elaine might have huffed her disgust with the man had she not been under more pressing circumstances. But as it was, she was quite sure that the small barn in which she and her traveling companion had suck refuge from the sudden snowstorm was now surrounded by intruders. Or rather, the intruders who had sheltered themselves in this barn were being detected. She decided not to wake Cassius. Rather, she reached quietly for the small pack that lay no more than a foot from her shoulder. Carefully opening it, she pulled forth a rather long and shiny dagger, and hid it beneath the voluminous folds of her cloak and skirt.

The barn door creaked open and a gush of cold air barraged Elaine's senses.

"What 'ave we 'ere?" said a low, melodious voice. "Seems we've been beaten to the plunder, Raj."

"Yeah, but they can't be that great a thieves, Camlo. They seem ta 'ave fallen asleep on the job." The second voice was not as low as the first. This was no man, but a boy, though his voice too rang like song in the air. The sound of both voices caused Elaine's eyes to fly open. She sent a pray out that Cassius would not wake, then popped from her prone position within her own pile of hay.

The intruders, both with dark hair and eyes and swarthy skin, gazed intently at her. The man was perhaps the most beautiful she had ever seen. If she had not been so in love with her own husband, the mere sight of him might have caused her to fall instantly in love with this stranger who regarded her with a calm look of almost complete disregard. The younger one, who's muscle had not quite filled out his height yet, stared at her in open mouth horror.

"Ela?" he stammered. The color of his face paled beneath the dark wavy locks that fell across his forehead. "No. Bavol-engro. Beng!" He rambled, his voice becoming fiercer. "You are dead! You are not she! Be gone witch! Leave me, ghost!"

"Raj!" exclaimed the elder boy, grasping his young partner by the shoulders. "She is no ghost. She is real. Calm yoursel'! Tell him woman! Quick, before the sight o' you frightens him to death!"

But Elaine could not speak. She stared helplessly at the young boy. Cassius, who had awakened to young Raj's screaming, was the next to speak.

"Who the bloody hell are you two?" he demanded groggily. He, obviously, was not a morning person. His mornings had not boded well since he had woken up in the screaming princess's bed, and now the young boy was screeching at the top of his lungs. It simply would not do.

"Apparently, the best question to 'ave answered 'ere is who exactly is that lady over there!" Camlo seemed as if he would be enjoying this scene if it weren't for the extreme agitation of his young friend.

Elaine seemed to have found her tongue, and with her first proffered words, Raj's shouting stopped. "Rajco?" she asked silently. Though she knew the answer to her question could not be in the affirmative, she dared enough to ask. "It cannot be you. I watched you die! I held you while you bled!"

Cassius looked dispassionately towards the ceiling of the barn and fell roughly back into the hay, heaving a deep sigh. "Not a damned reunion!"

"Not I! I did not die. You were taken! Slaughtered by your mother's men!" Color had returned to the boy's face and pulled his shoulder's from Camlo's grip.

"No! I was not! The men came and killed the entire camp. I fled…" She closed her eyes and held back the memory. But the scene that should have been faded with age was fresh from her nightmares of two nights ago, and they flooded in as if she had never constructed any sort of wall against them.

Suddenly, she was wrapped in a gangly pair of arms that completely knocked her over. "Ela, my sister, we all thought you dead! Everyone else was. Except for Camlo and Harman. Harman did not last a week though. And I've got scars from the arrows, Ela. And Camlo too. But he was not hurt very badly at all, and helped me get back my strength!" Raj sat up and gave Elaine room to breath and sit up herself. The lounging Cassius and semi amused Camlo were entirely forgotten as she looked into the very much alive countenance of her adopted brother. He was grinning from ear to ear, and it was infectious. She grinned too, and decided it was her turn to wrap her arms around the boy. After squeezing the breath out of him, she stood with him and turned to face the forgotten man standing in the barn doorway.

"Could you close the door Camlo? It is horribly chilly out there and I know you do not wish to be caught in the act of stealing whatever it is you were planning on stealing."

He smiled a devastatingly handsome smile and shoved the door shut behind him without even turning around. She smiled back as she advanced quickly on him and wrapped him too in a hug. "It is so good to see you," she said. "And alive too!" She laughed with all the joy she felt in her body and he pulled her from him.

"That is most certainly not the way you felt towards me last time we met." His smile was mischievous. Camlo certainly remembered, and he was sure that Elaine, Ela as his people had always called her, did also. They had both been seventeen, and the young gypsy boy had always had a crush on the dark haired beauty that had taken to traveling with his clan. She had been shy though, and aloof, and seemed to like no one but the young boy Rajco and his widowed mother. She had had a strange fascination with stories; listening to them, telling them, creating them. She never seemed to even notice the handsome boy that strutted proudly whenever she was near. That day, he had tried to kiss her, and she had acted as if she'd never had a clue as to his desire for her. She had been affronted, offended, and completely shocked. She had slapped him across the cheek, and then slapped him across the other cheek when he ducked his head to kiss her again. Not willing to suffer yet another indignity upon his person, Camlo stalked into the woods, an action which very likely saved his life.