Chapter 14 #2
“I’m sure you’ll be fine, I imagine that there’s going to be a healer somewhere nearby.” I help her step back into her pants and then her boots, trying to be less flirtatious this time. I can tell I’ve worried her now.
“Let me grab something to wrap your hands up, hold on a minute,” I tell her as I go to my horse and grab some material out of the side bag.
I rip it into strips and wrap it around her hands, then I grab the last piece and bring it back to my horse, Mabel, to clean the blood off her neck from Penny’s hands that I noticed earlier.
“All right, come here and let me put you on Mabel. Be careful not to use your hands.”
“Indy, it’s fine, I have to use them a little bit.”
“No, you don’t. I can be your hands.” She rolls her eyes at me as I grab her around her tiny waist and lift her up onto Mabel. She swings a leg over, and as soon as she’s settled, I leap up behind her, my arm circling her waist to draw her in close.
I turn Mabel in the direction of the Havenridge and we walk slowly in that direction.
After a minute, Penny pipes up, “Uhh, Indiana?”
“Just Indy.”
“Is there a reason we’re going at a snail’s pace, Indy?”
“After that run, Mabel needs a rest.”
“Oh, okay.” I don’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t exactly want to tell her that I wanted to delay our arrival so that I could spend more time with her. If her mates were waiting for her in that village, I will probably never see her again.
“I feel like we sort of glossed over the fact that you’re from another realm. Do you want to tell me more about it? What’s it like, how you ended up here, why you ended up here, do you have to go back?”
“Sure. I have to say, though, you’re taking this really well. I mean, is magical stuff like that common in your world?”
“Common? No.” I shake my head. “But everyone knows it exists, it doesn’t really surprise me that there could be other realms. Although I’ve never heard anything of them before.”
“So, basically, my best friend, Ria, went missing a year ago. The last time I spoke to her she had a little card slip under her door that said something about ‘if you want your greatest wish to come true, then call this number.’”
“Number?”
“Oh, right, you don’t know about phones.
Let’s just say it told her to get in contact with a certain person.
So she contacted them and I haven’t seen her since.
But I couldn’t find the person she had contacted, so I couldn’t figure out where she went.
Where I live, there’s a lot more people than…
actually I have no idea how big your villages or towns are here.
But the town I live in has hundreds of thousands of people, so it’s not like I could ask every person who lived there if they’d seen her. ”
“Hundreds of thousands? Wow.” I couldn’t even imagine that many people.
“Yeah, in my realm, the human realm, as the woman called it, there’s like seven billion people that live there.”
“Billion?” I ask in amazement. “That’s unbelievable.”
“So portal travel is believable, but seven billion people isn’t?” She laughs.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Yeah, so, anyway, I’ve been looking for her for a year, like I said, and one day I find the same note under my door.
I got in contact with the person and she told me that both Ria and I were lost souls.
That we were supposed to be born in Dyconia, your world, but because we had identical bodies being born in both realms, our souls got mixed up.
Ours went to the human realm by mistake, and the ones meant for the human realm ended up here.
This woman, who called herself my fairy godmother, said it was her job to switch us back, but she had to do it at certain times.
Ria’s was then, and mine was now. Well, two days ago. Or is it three now?”
I try to absorb what she’s told me. She was always meant for this world? I wonder what it felt like to be in the wrong one. “Does that mean there are two of you running around Dyconia?” I ask her curiously.
“No, the one from here was sent to Earth before I came through.”
“But what about her family, her friends?”
“I… I don’t actually know. I may have accidentally walked through the portal before she finished explaining everything.”
I shake my head and laugh. “Why am I not surprised, Sugar?”
“Well, whoever she was, she was entered in the mating hunt. That’s where I was when I arrived. I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“You didn’t like the idea of the strongest men fighting for your hand?” I ask curiously. Many women saw it as a great way to find the best protectors.
“A man fighting another man to claim me, a woman they’ve never met and don’t even know, as their prize? No, thank you. A man fighting another man to protect me because he cares for me? Sign me up!”
“So it’s not the fighting you’re opposed to? It’s the reason for it.”
“I just want to be wanted for me, you know?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”
She’s silent for a minute before she speaks again. “Indiana?”
“Just Indy.”
Even though I can only see the back of her head, I swear she smiles at my response.
“Whatever woman looked at you and saw you lacking should have her eyes checked. I’ve known you all of an hour and I can already see what an amazing man you are. Any woman should be honored to have you as their husband.”
“Was that a proposal, Sugar?” I can’t help but tease her, trying to ignore how accurate her assumptions are. It was a rather painful encounter with a woman that had changed the course of my life, separating me and my brother for the past five years.
“What? Oh, uh… Indy…”
“Just teasing you, Sugar,” I lean forward and whisper in her ear, inhaling her fragrance, she smells divine.