Hunting the Fairy Tale

Chapter 43 - Taking the Sky

I was wrong; my skin has apparently not exhausted all the possible shades of red yet.

"What?" Hunter frowns, and then his terrible choice of words finally registers with him too. "That's not what I meant, you pervert!" He flashes a look at my mortified face, and his frown turns into laughter. "Wow, Missy, and I thought you were so innocent."

"I didn't say anything!" With an exasperated grunt and what I hope are deadly looks aimed at each of them, I turn away from the two laughing idiots to run up the steps and into the house.

♫

Hunter

"I get what ye mean," Dex chuckles, watching Willow slam the front door behind her. "She's really cute when she gets all shy and gobsmacked like that. Ye do know that we're bastards, right?"

"Yup," I grin. "I better go find her before she crawls into her closet and disappears into Narnia or something." Dex is giving me a confused look now, so I shrug and try to explain. "Haven't you seen her bedroom? It looks like the entrance to Lothlórien."

He laughs, shaking his head at me. "Narnia is not a town in Lothlórien, Dude. Ye're mixing yer fantasy adventures again. How do ye even remember that name? Ye can barely remember the names of our own country's biggest cities, and yer always calling prescriptions "piscriptions" and ye cannot say the word binoculars if someone holds a gun to yer head and..."

"Dex."

"Aye?" He stops talking and gives me a questioning look.

"Ara be whist."

"Aye, that I will," he laughs. "Ye and Willow go free yer bird, and I'll go for me swim. See ye later." 

I watch him walk down the narrow stone path between our house and the garage and vault the low gate at its end.

"Hey!" I shout just before he disappears from view. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"Thanks, Buddy, but I'll be gone by the time ye return. I'm on cooking duty tonight."

Now, which one should I appease first? The bird in the cage in my clinic or the one that stormed into the house just now?

I decide to get the parrot settled in my mother's car first. Covering the cage with an old towel does the trick, but I suspect that it's going to be shredded to ribbons by the time we reach the swamp because the little monster is going nuts, plucking tufts of thread out of it.

"Hey, ready to go?" I cautiously ask when I finally find Willow in the dining room, cutting pieces of cloth with paper shapes pinned to them. Looks a bit messy to me.

"Yes, let me just finish cutting this one piece, and I'm there."

She is definitely getting used to us now. She's not hiding in her room or wearing a box on her head to hide her face; she is calmly working on the dress she said she was making for Paisley. I hope she'll never get too used to us; I'll miss her uptight reactions and the scandalised looks she's always giving me.

"Sure," I say, lounging against the piano, watching her work while I wait. I've changed my mind; it doesn't look messy at all. She's working fast, and she knows exactly what she's doing. It reminds me of Saturday when she was cleaning Tanner's face. Willow always seems a little uncertain and at least mildly frightened until she tackles something she is good at. Things like removing make-up, fixing costumes, and apparently cutting fabric to make a dress. 

When she's doing something she enjoys, she loses that insecurity and becomes quite formidable. Every day, I see a new side of her. Willow is not just an uptight, high-strung girl who dresses like a cast member of Pollyanna and likes to play with dolls. She is all that and so much more.