He guys here ya go. Thank you to all my loyal reviewers, and If you haven't yet please tell me what you think of this story, and maybe pop in to read my G.I. Joe, I could really use some feedback on it. I only own Aisling.
Chapter 9: Neither. They Dance
My eyes sparkle in the firelight of the small tavern. I spin on stage while I sing, my eyes and face lit with a smile, but my heart aches. This song always makes me think of him.
"Is the girl you left behind out there tonight romancing? Makin eyes at someone else? Is she singing is she dancing?" The two skirts I'm wearing fly up around my knees, getting me whistles. I'm clad in a black skirt of light material over a new light green see through skirt from India. I'm wearing a black corset with green lace around the top and dark green ribbon holding it together tied off in a pretty bow. Around my hair I have that beautiful green cloth flowing down my back and holding my just as long red hair. Around my neck is a cool silver choker matching the silver and gold bangles on my wrists. Around my upper left arm I have a golden snake bangle. My feet are bare and the wooden stage is cool under my toes as I dance around to the song.
"You'll find the girl, You'll find the girl you left behind!" I finish with a great smile and a lone tear down my cheek. I bow for the whistles and calls, and I walk off stage, stepping outside for a breath of air. It's winter now, this will be the second winter since I saw them. I always wonder what happened, if they were okay. If he was okay. I beat myself up with guilt because I don't spare a thought to Anna. It turns out that wasn't truly my cousin, she was home waiting for me, and there was no way she could have beaten me back.
My chest tightens, I had departed with such words of anger, sorrow pain. If only I could see that wide smile, with the crinkled eyes, one last time. I move over as a figure comes out to join me, he's cloaked and he sits in the soft snow.
"That was a lovely song miss" his accent is strange, but I'm to far into my own thoughts to listen closely.
"Thank you" my voice cracks slightly but he doesn't seem to notice. I wipe the tears from my eyes with the soft material of the cloth around my head. I miss him more with every day, life seemed to slow down, I feel like I'm going through the motions.
"You're welcome lass. Speaks true. I left a girl behind some time back." I figure he's drunk so I listen half heartedly. "I wish I could find her again, but she's so damn hard to pin point even with all her odd traits" I sigh and decide it's time to go back in.
"Well, I hope you find her." I tell him and I turn, and curiosity gets me. "Where's the girl you left behind?" I ask him, and he just shrugs. I miss his answer as I walk through the door back onto the stage for another song, this one of Faeries.
While I sing softly, I notice the figure come in, and sit in the front row. Something about him bothers me, but I'm not sure what. I clear my mind as I almost stumble on my own words. My heart is screaming to my head that it's him, it's finally him. I'm anxious and when he moves to lower his hood, black hair rests over his dull brown eyes. It's not him. I let my sadness out through my voice, and when my song is over I walk off stage and out into the snow.
Tears run down my cheeks and I'm to disappointed to care. I'm so stupid. How could it be him? How could Felson find me, here of all places? He's probably dead. I chastise myself and this only make smy heart grip tighter. The icy wind pulls at my skirts but I don't mind. I walk through the light snow to the stables, the warm hey is a welcome to my poor toes.
I walk by the stalls, greeting all the horse when one catches my eye. I stop, my breaths slow and I stare wide eyed at Powder. My heart leaps and I open the stall and hug the creature around the neck. He's happy to see me, rubbing his chin against my back. I draw back and stare into his eyes with a grin. I hear a cough behind me and I see that hooded figure I thought I had talked to outside the tavern, who I thought had gone inside and watched me sing.
"Where's the girl you left behind sir?" I ask him softly, not daring to let my mind think what I feel is hiden under that hood.
"Singing and dancing somewhere in Ireland, that's what the captain of this ship called the Sea Wolf said." my heart beats faster, it wasn't his voice, the hood hides his face but that was the ship I had taken in my heartbreak. It had been hard without Felson, I had missed him so, but I tried to move on. Men came in and out of my life, but none could persuade me to share my bed with them, they weren't him. They weren't funny, nice, charming nor did they smell like him. I take a tentative step forward.
"And where did you go after that?" I ask him, and his shoulders shake with a chuckle.
"Took this here horse with me everywhere, real moody thing. He wants to find her as much as I do" It has to be him, he knows powder, but that's not his voice. My heart is in my throat and I have to keep my voice from cracking, oh let it be him.
"So where is she?" I ask him finally, stopping a foot away from him. Hands go up and pull his hood down, but it's not Felson, it's Kay. My heart stops, but I was so sure. He smiles at me, a wide smile of happiness, but doesn't move otherwise.
"She's standing in front of me and doesn't even realize it." My body freezes, that's his voice, but it can't be. It can't be, how can it? I turn and there he is in all his smug glory, that smile that makes his eyes crinkle plastered on his face. I want to smack it off.
"Felson…..this has to be a dream" he steps closer to me, and glances over my shoulder. Movement tells me Kay has left.
"No, it's the ending of a nightmarish two years I spent searching for you. For all your traits, you're one hard person to find" his smile never fades and I don't realize it but I'm crying. I leap into his arms, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist. His arms circle me heavily and threaten to crush my body, but I don't care. I'm surrounded by his smell, he smells of the sea, the woods, and his own musky scent. I rub my face against his tunic and I cry. I had missed him so, and now he's here. He's really here. I had only dremt of this, where we would meet and I would beg forgiveness. This makes me sniff and pull away, looking into those deep beautiful blue eyes.
"Felson, I'm sorry. I know now that it was Anna who tricked me." His eyes seem to darken at this but he shakes his head.
"I was the one who let you walk away. I should have chased you" his sentence warms my heart but his smile is back "Would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble finding you" I hit his arm playfully and he picks me up, spinning me around in his arms.
"Now, let's go get a drink and I'll tell you everything you missed" I'm over come joy. He forgives me. He leads me back to the tavern, where Kay is sitting alone. He smiles up at us and we join him.
We sit and talk well into the night. Behmen's life was lost, as was Anna's. She wasn't a witch, she had been possessed while on her travels. I shudder as they tell me the gruesome details, and as the night wares on, we all drink more and the mood lightens. Kay excuses himself to bed, so Felson and I are left alone, talking and drinking. His arm is slung around my shoulders, and I can't stop giggling at how he makes fun of the people around us in whispers.
Many women come up to him through the night, but one glare from me sent them all running. I had him back, I wasn't letting him go. Well into the morning hours of the day, the tavern owner finally makes us leave. So I put on a pair of warm fur lined boots and we walk out into the snow together, giggling like children at the smallest of things.
My heart soars all night, not wanting to come down. We walk together, stumbling only slightly. We make it to a tree sitting on a hill, where a blanket is laid out with some apples and meat. I laugh and fall on the blanket, looking to the fire nearby.
"Just like old times huh?" I ask softly and he nods, his mind somewhere else.
"Just like old times" he picks up a piece of meat. "I'll tell you what miss know it all. You answer this right, and you can eat. Answer wrong, well we'll get to that in a minute" his eyes crinkle and I laugh.
"Does the Sun follow the Moon, or Does the Moon Follow the Sun?" he asks and I laugh at my own question that I had asked him so long ago. It's amazing how attached I had become to him in such a short amount of time.
"Well I don't think I know" I say smugly with a smile, wondering what the other option was.
"Well" he says as he pulls me up again and into his arms, placing a hand on my waist, and holding my other hand. "They chase each other, always looking for the other's company but never being able to find it" his words are soft and I'm taken aback by his answer. It's so different then what mine was. His words send warmth through my body, but what he did next sent my mind up into the sky on the wings of my heart.
He leaned down and placed a kiss on my lips. His lips are rough to the touch, but gentle and non-threatening. He doesn't want to scare me away. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer, making him lift me up and push my back against the tree next to us. The kiss is hot, passionate and wanting, needing.
My arms circle his neck, and his beard tickles my face. I'm lost in a world of pleasure, fireworks sparking behind my eyes. When we pull apart he looks down at me, and seems confused. I tilt my head to the side and he wipes my cheek. I had been crying and before he can say anything I hug him tightly, hopefully silencing all of his fears.
I feel his fingers under my chin, and I look up at him, his handsome smile with his eyes crinkled at the sides. "Your eyes stole the heart of a poor man. They stole his heart before you almost drowned in that lake, but when he saved you he knew he could never let you live alone" his words pull at my heart and it's like a story, sweet and soft. We sit down together and before I know it his lips meet mine again, with more passion then before. He rolls over me, smiling down and he grabs the green cloth.
"I knew it was you when I saw this. I wasn't sure, but when I watched you walk back inside I knew it." He shows me a small emblem embroidered of a hog's head on the corner and I laugh and shake my head. His hands gently comb through my hair, making it look wild and loose.
"Felson….you wont leave again….will you?" he seems taken aback but kisses my nose.
"No, I won't leave. Took me all this time to find you, I'm not letting you go love" his words, for the tenth time in the night, make my heart soar and I kiss him on both cheeks.
"I love you Felson" I wisper softly, and his lips are on mine again, this time gentle, and I hear him mutter against my lips softly, something that earns him a slap in the chest.
"I love your lips." The words make me move, and I hit him in the chest, but I'm unable to hold back my laughter. I know he loves me, he followed me across a sea and half a land.
"I love you too trouble" he kisses me again.
I look down at the pages I had written and smile softly. I slowly finish writing, the end of my story, Anna's story.
That night was the first night I had willingly let a man into my bed, and it was something new. It was pleasure beyond all else, he was gentle, caring, and after we lay together in his cloak, that heavy cloak that smells like him.
I touch the clasp of the cloak around my shoulders and I look up at the window, it's almost night. I sigh and wipe away a stray tear. Oh how I miss him. I close the book, and decide to write the rest later, deciding that I can't handle his death after writing the beginning of our life. I walk to the front room of the small cabin to see a pair of young boys racing two proud horses with a roan tinge to their coats, one more brown, the other more tan. The boys both have striking white hair.
Nearby a man with black hair, with silver lines of age through it, stands with an even older Powder, watching his two young stallions proudly. They have his spirit. I smile softly at the man and he waves.
"Kay, bring the boys in it's almost time for dinner!" I call and the wind pulls a still perfectly red strand of hair into my eyes. He nods and whistles to the children. I turn inside and go into the cook room to find a beautiful woman with long brown hair in a braid cutting some carrots. She smiles up at me and I smile back.
This is how it has been since he died. Kay and Elizabeth come and help me with the twins every night, now both 17, and looking so much like their father. I take a spot beside Elizabeth and we cut in comfortable silence. Today it's been 5 years since he had been gone. I let another tear roll down my cheek as my mind is filled with memories of him.
There ya have it, the final chapter ;) Hope everyone enjoyed this! I did. Now, I'm not sure if I did Aisling's age, but when she met Felson I'm saying she was about 22, and then when he found her again she was 24, and at the end she's 41. The Twins are 17.