I awoke, grabbing for my knife. “Can’t fool you,” Somyellia larked. Years navigating the Bustle does bear fruit. She was on the edge of our mat with a bag on her lap. Her hair always took on a cooked straw effect in the morning, before mirrors and little pink jars and her ritual of locking herself in powder rooms. This game of hers, moving my knife while I slept, brought her more mirth than a seat at the front of a good theatre. She said she loved seeing the “whip and flash” of how I snatched it, and how I never missed, whether moved from our left side to our right, or stuck in the floor behind my head. For me it only brought a jolt to the heart and a lump in my throat, but it also woke me as absolute as Pelat coffee. Convincing myself this was the reason for her dropping loose boards or screaming in my ear helped me fight back a second reflex that sometimes came after I’d wrapped my fingers around the handle.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, the knife was tossed and I fell back into my sheets. “I better return all this leather,” Somyellia said to herself with a yawn. Looking across my chest and between my feet, familiar portions of last night’s ensemble were sticking out from her bag. There was a cool breeze, and angry crows squawked somewhere in the rafters. “Or have my hands dipped in oil.”
“Would they even notice?” I said.
“I am so hungry. Do we have anything left?”
“No,” I said, rolling onto my side.
“Oh. No bother, I’m going to pick up some things on the way.”
“See you tonight?”
“Not tonight. There’s some bachelor party for a Lotgard that starts at dusk and is going to last for three days.”
“Yeah, I need to go home anyway,” I said, having learned well to mask these mild disappointments.
“Well,” she exhaled in a patronizing tone she’d come to perfect, “I promise to meet you here as soon as the festivities end,” tickling my exposed side, “my beast.”
We departed with a kiss. She turned to go back to her nest, as I began the long walk back.
The sun came out late but made up for its tardiness. By the time I stepped onto the first dirt road, I was sweating in the gleam. I rounded a bend that I had rounded many times before, viewing the red-topped roof of The Great Fuckity House of Oleugsby.
Now, when I tell you that I felt something was off, I don’t mean that under the perfect reflection of memories retold. I don’t mean to say that looking back I felt something was wrong merely by knowing what happened next. As I met the wooden fence that separated our yard from the road, there was a cold in my gut.