Under The Rainbow

"Don't just stand there, lass. Speak up. I haven't got the whole of the day, you know."

Irish. He was Irish. She could hear it now. She stepped further in, a bit cautiously.

"I'm sorry - I didn't hear you. Did you need something?"

"Save me." She heard him exclaim, under his breath. "I have precious little time and a lot to be done today. If you'll just get on with it, I'll be going then."

"Get on with what?"

He stepped closer and she smelled...flowers? No. Fresher. Like newly mown grass or the breeze over a creek. And his eyes were green. Very, very green. All other thought seemed to have fled out of her head.

"You've seen me fair and square. Now I'll be granting your wish and we'll be parting ways, if you please."

"Wish? Grant my wish? What are you, a genie or something?

He snorted in disgust. "Is it because I'm in the desert, then? It's true, we're not out here much. I suppose without anything green around you wouldn't make the association, as it were."

She stared, dumbfounded. "You're a leprechaun?"

He gave a cheeky grin, touching his fingertips to his head in a mock salute. "Top o' the morning to you."

"Aren't you supposed to give me a pot of gold or something? And isn't it supposed to be three wishes, not one?"

"I should have cards made up with all this upon it so that I may hand them out instead of endlessly repeating myself. It does get tiring. Now, listen closely. One wish. One. The pot o' gold and the extra wishes were all the product of stories, inflated and passed along through the centuries. Someone wished for a pot o' gold, and one of us complied. Someone bragged that he got three wishes once instead of one - which was a lie, and that's a fact - and there you have it. Myth. Legend. Bunk, on occasion. So what's it to be for you?"

"Aren't you supposed to be small?"

He looked good and pissed now. "We're not six feet but I'd hardly say we were tiny. Fergus was the shortest, and he's the one they remember. Drunken, stupid, dancing Fergus. Gave us all a bad name."

Caren found herself laughing, shaking her head as if to clear it.

"I'm dreaming. I must've slipped and hit my head. Or I drowned in a flash flood. This is nuts."

"I haven't all day, lass. Do you have a wish, or don't you?"

She stared at him thoughtfully, deciding at last to just go with it. What did she have to lose, after all?

"I do."

"Is it riches, then? True love? A fine house? Don't be asking me to raise the dead, though, unless they're only just passed. They come out looking rather moldy otherwise."

"I want you."

"Beg pardon?"

"You. I want your hands on me. I want you on me. I want you."

He gazed at her, wide-eyed and wary. "Oh lass, you don't know what you ask."

"I do. I have no husband, not anymore. I have no one. I'm facing an illness that may very well kill me. Who would have me now? I haven't been held, I haven't been touched in so long, I don't know that I remember what it feels like. If I only get a few moments of the warmth of your body and mine, that's worth several pots of gold to me. Do you understand?"

Strangely enough, he did. Her loneliness called to him on some fundamental level. Immortality, for all its plusses, was a solitary thing when all was said and done. Affection was fleeting, and more so in the context of a life without end. He stepped closer, feeling a pull to her that wasn't entirely empathy. The storm raged outside, and it felt as though a current were passing between his body and hers. He pulled her close, wrapping his hand in her wet hair, tilting her head back to look her full in the face.