My Midnight Love

Chapter something or other i forgot to check...

They lifted the glamour from my mother as a condolence present and as much as I appreciated the effort she didn't seem all that different. She had barely shed a tear over the last few days, not even at either of the funerals. It was like she was too tired to bother with mourning, maybe she was. But even though I was frustrated she didn't seem at all bothered I couldn't take it out on her because she didn’t seem quite right. She would sit for hours just starring off into space completely still like a stone statue, a fair few times I had to go and shake her just to prove to myself she was still in fact alive. As much as I would of liked to blame them, blame the glamour, for her condition. I couldn't for two reasons, the first being that the glamour had been necessary at the time and the second being that glamour had never had side-affects on anyone before.

Instead of worrying over her, or grieving over my father, or facing all the sympathetic smiles of my friends and new family I tired to block it all out. I wanted to go back to how it had been before all the mayhem and chaos, before my parents had come home or the war had begun or Aelfric had became human. As much as I loved that he had made that sacrifice for me and I would be willing to make for him, it was so much easier before when it was just him and I. On our own. In my parents house. At the beginning. But I was in it too deep now, no going back.

I felt Aelfrics watching me almost every moment that we were together, he was tentative about speaking to me, like he thought I was made of glass and a single word might shatter me. But I was doing all right by myself, I was moving on, getting on with things. As I had confined myself to distraction I spent a lot of time in Aelfweald itself learning all that I could about how they lived.

School was non-existent, the children learnt anything they needed to know from there families whether it be reading, writing, fighting or maths they learnt it all from there parents, siblings and occasionally friends. It was far less about the theoretical thinking and more about the vocational, they were practical people, why waste time teaching the children things they didn't need to know. A blacksmiths taught his son or daughter how to be a blacksmith and then other basic life skills, they wouldn't need to know how to be a fisherman or a miller. One thing that was very new to me was that there basic life skills included study of humans so that they would never be caught out, my guess was that Aelfric had skipped that particular lesson. Then again none of the kids I spoke to knew what a whisk, a hoover or a computer was so it seemed they learned how to speak and look human but not about modern objects.

Food was different too for although they had watched humans for many an era they had never ventured to live among us and therefore knew little of how we cooked. Of course I was already used to the food by now, it was good and healthy too. I was the leanest I had ever been while I was living with Aelfric. But at times I longed for a bite of pizza or a leg or southern fried chicken. Aelfric tired recreate the recipes I craved and they were good, but they just weren't the same.

As my visits to the town itself became more frequent I began to recognise certain faces, the baker who always gave me a loaf of bread on my way, the young builders who always liked to stop for a chat, anything to keep from working, the young woman named Audra who went wherever he younger siblings wandered. And everywhere I went I was followed, I quite enjoyed Elvina and Laurens company but Loveday was tedious and jealous. She'd spend entire days pinning after Aelfric, telling me how wonderful he was, how she thought he liked he, who he had acted toward her that day. As time wore on I began to catch Elvina and Lauren shooting anguished glances at her, I wasn't the only one who found her grating.

Only a few days after the funeral Audra drew me away from the others, amongst the trees. “She's quite a bore, isn't she?”

I laughed gently and nodded. “You could say that.”