Lost Wanderer Awakened - Book One of the Airendell Chronicles (7 page)

“Cold?” he asks.

“No, of course not,” she replies. “You know I
never feel cold with you.” She wonders why she said that. Looking
up she searches his face to see if he thinks she’s weird for saying
things like that. But all she sees in his face is loving
acceptance.

They smile at each other. Lucian lets go of
her hands and picks up her coffee from the tray and hands it to
her. “Drink. I don’t think you are fully awake yet,” he softly
chuckles.

“I am just operating on auto-pilot this
morning. Sorry.” Deidra admits this with embarrassment coloring her
cheeks. She accepts the cup and smiles, he has added cream and
sugar, just as she likes it. It’s delicious.

Luca resists the urge to chuckle at her
tendency to blush. She has always blushed easily around him. “Did
you eat anything?” he queries gently as he raises one of his thick,
dark eyebrows for emphasis.

Deidra silently shakes her head no.

“I didn‘t think so. Well, there’s food on the
tray. Eat up. I am eager to hear more about your life.” She looks
at the yellow lacquer tray. There’s a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich
on it, and some mixed fresh fruit, cut up in a small glass
bowl.

Deidra snorts and rolls her eyes at him. “How
does he do that?” she wonders. She had been craving cantaloupe,
strawberries, and kiwi fruit for a couple of days. She had put them
on the grocery list on her fridge, but hadn‘t been shopping in a
while. Her appetite has been fleeting at best since the crash.

Then she asks him a question as another
thought occurs to her, “Lucian, why don’t we have these sessions
down stairs, in your offices?”

“Well, love,” he grins, “you and I don’t have
sessions. You are not my client. You are my friend. A very dear,
precious friend.” He brings her hands up to his lips and kisses
them gently. “Dee, you don’t need a counselor, you need a friend. I
have counseling sessions with my clients downstairs. But I spend
time with my friends in my residence. Make sense?” He leans in
closer and brushes a stray curl from her face.

Deidra looks into his gorgeous eyes and
decides to tell him the whole truth, as it pertains to his
question, anyway. “I’m glad you see it that way too. But still I
wonder why I am a friend. I know I am. I feel it, a connection, and
a bond that I have never experienced before I met you. I have
always felt it from the first time I met you, at the hospital. We
certainly have been connected in some strange way ever since you
and Seth started coming to The Shack for the pool tournaments. I
thought you were one extraordinary, remarkable, beautiful young
man. You always seem to get me, even when I don‘t understand
myself.”

“And then when my friend, Mike, talked me
into checking out that grief support group. I walk in and guess
who’s running the group?” Deidra chuckles at the memory, “I was so
embarrassed, but you wouldn‘t let me crawl off into my little hole,
would you?” He smiles and shakes his head no.

She pauses to think about their friendship,
and then says, “Lucian, it seems like you have taken it upon
yourself to bring me back from the brink ever since that night.”
The last part of her little speech was so quiet that most people
wouldn’t have been able to hear it, but Lucian did, and it makes
him smile.

“How long has it been since we became
friends? Three months?” she asks uncertainly.

“No, love, it’s been six months since we
became friends at Mike‘s place,” he reminds her gently.

There’s a long pause. That means it has been
eleven months since the crash. She wonders why she keeps losing
chunks of time. “I’m still losing track of time…” she whispers. It
really troubles her, and makes her feel totally out of control. She
takes a deep breath to try to calm herself before she resumes, “But
I don’t understand this connection between us. It’s so real, so
deep, so personal… Do you? Understand this connection, I mean.” She
asks Lucian softly.

Lucian smiles happily at the question. “Yes,”
is his only reply.

She looks at him, waiting for him to fill her
in. When she realizes he‘s not going to, she tries to prod him.
“Could you explain it to me?”

“It’s not really important right now.” He
replies and picks up the bowl of fruit and the fork and hands them
to her with a gentle smile. “In time, I am sure you will
understand. But until then, Dee it really doesn’t matter. What
matters is that we do have that connection and we are friends. And
we have some talking to do today. So eat up and let‘s get to
it.”

She eats in silence. Lucian settles into the
sofa, turning himself to face her with his left knee drawn up on
the cushion between them. He watches as she slowly eats the fruit
and sandwich while she sips her coffee. A smile curls his lips as
he wonders how many hundreds of ham and cheese sandwiches he has
watched her eat over the lifetimes.

As he watches her eat, his eyes devour her
features as a starving man would a steak dinner. Her wavy, pale
reddish-blonde hair is streaked with gray here and there. It’s
really very attractive. The gray appears as a lighter blonde to the
casual observer. Luca knows that she really doesn’t like the gray
streaks. She feels as though they don’t belong, that they signify
some sort of failure, something that has gone terribly wrong. He
knows that she doesn’t understand why she feels that way. But he
finds the gray streaks lovely. She recently had her hair bobbed in
a short cut that looks very stylish and requires little fuss. The
hair style looks very professional when she remembers to straighten
it, but it makes her look sweet, soft and vulnerable when she
doesn‘t style it. She is so hard on herself when she doesn’t “fix
herself up” as she puts it. This thought brings a smile to his
lips.

It makes no difference to him; she’s
beautiful in his eyes. She’s fairly tall, a little over six feet
and solidly built. He knows that she would cringe at that
description, but she is truly an imposing figure. Her body is
curvaceous and supple, and Lucian winces every time she tries to
hide it under those shapeless clothes she favors. Despite the
horrific injuries to her body, she moves with a latent grace, and
lithe power she doesn’t even recognize.

She is not beautiful in the classical sense,
but to him she is the loveliest of all women. Her captivating face
is somewhat angular in this incarnation. She has a rather long,
patrician nose, but it suits her well. Her rosy, soft lips are full
and inviting. Taken separately her features are ordinary, but taken
as a whole, he thinks she’s breathtaking.

There is a faint dusting of tiny freckles
across her nose and cheekbones that warm his heart. The faint lines
at her eyes and around her mouth testify to her strength, and all
that she has endured. The jagged scar running from her temple down
her left cheek signifies a failure on his part, to him anyway. To
her it’s a brutal reminder of everything that she has lost.

A few seconds pass before he realizes that
she is looking directly at him. She’s probably wondering what he is
staring at. He knows he should look away, smile or something before
she gets self-conscious. But he can’t look away. He’s trapped in
those beautiful emerald eyes. The same bright, lovely eyes that he
has followed through the centuries.

“Uh… I … guess I will take this stuff and put
it away. Be right back,” she says as she skitters away from the
couch to the kitchen.

“Damn!” he mutters to himself. “Fool, you are
going to scare her away if you don’t watch out.”

Lucian listens to Deidra as she putters
around his kitchen, cleaning up the remains of her breakfast. He
can hear her heart racing, and her breathing is slightly elevated.
If he could see her face he knows her cheeks would be bright with a
scarlet blush. But after a little while he can hear her heart rate
and breathing calm. He can picture her clutching the counter,
willing herself to compose her features and calm her racing heart.
She sighs in frustration over her reaction to him. Lucian knows
she’s very attracted to him and feels self-conscious about it.

He can’t help but smile, she certainly wasn’t
uncertain when they first met. She was a confident warrior and
Spell Weaver who was attracted to him from the first moment they
laid eyes on each other. He chuckles as he remembers that he was
the one lacking confidence, but she was patient. She waited for him
to come around and confess his love for her.

He’s brought back to the present when she
calls out, “I’ll be right out, I need to visit the ‘necessary. ‘
Okay?”

He chuckles over her use of the term
“necessary”. He is almost surprised she didn’t say “human
necessary” like the old days. She seems just on the verge of
returning. “Sure Deidra, go ahead. Take your time. I am not going
anywhere,” he calls out to her.

“Damn I hate that name!” he thinks to
himself. “But it is fitting.” The name means ‘lost wanderer’ in
Gaelic. “She is indeed lost right now. Soon she will remember who
she really is, who I really am. Patience, I just need a little more
patience.” He strokes his raspy whiskered jaw thoughtfully and uses
the time to compose his face into an easy, welcoming mask. His
smile is sincere, he really can’t wait until she comes out from
hiding in his bathroom. But the easy part is truly an effect. His
impatience and eagerness are becoming palpable things, fueling a
yearning, even stronger than the thirst that rules his existence. I
really should go hunting tonight, he muses, but she asked ‘me’ to
come back. I’ll just have to go nearby, south of Deer Creek.

A Big Piece of Stupid

Deidra walks into the living room hesitantly,
looking slightly embarrassed. “Do you really want to do this today?
I am feeling like an idiot at the moment, and probably should just
go home.”

Lucian stands and walks over to stand before
her. He takes her hands into his own, and smiles; “Dee, are you
trying to run away from the feelings, or is it me you want to get
away from?” Lucian demands gently.

“The feelings! Never you!” she admits quietly
as she stares at her hands in his. She is feeling more than a
little unsure of herself around him at the moment.

He gently pulls her back to the sofa. “Well,
the feelings should be dealt with. But if you really feel that
uncomfortable this morning we can just hang out. But honestly, I
think it would be a mistake. Don’t you?” Lucian asks softly.

“Yes, I know you are right. Crap! Where do
you want to start?” she asks reluctantly.

“You said you dreamt last night. One,
possibly two dreams, let’s start there.” He gently caresses her
hands.

“I am not ready to talk about the first one,”
she says as she strokes his pale, cool fingers and is again
surprised by their perfection. “I am not even sure it was a dream.
Maybe it was just a fantasy, I’m not sure.” She scoffs at herself a
little, before saying; “But it’s not something I want to share
right now, it’s too precious, too private. Is that okay with you?”
Her voice is barely above a whisper and she won‘t meet his
eyes.

“You know it is,” he replies earnestly. He
understands better than she knows. He has to struggle to not reveal
how happy her words have made him. “Just share what you can.
Okay?”

She nods, “Okay. Well, the darkness was back
in my dreams. But it didn’t come back until time to wake up. I was
searching for my kids again, but this time I found Rolan, or
rather, he materialized out of the darkness.” Deidra falls silent
for few moments, and she looks almost despondent. Lucian reaches
out and strokes her hair, and then draws her to him. His heart goes
out to her for her loss. She rarely speaks of her deceased husband
and he wonders what their relationship was like.

Deidra can’t seem to help herself, she
presses her cheek into his chest. She can feel the coolness of his
body through the material, smell his tantalizing scent, and barely
resists the urge to nuzzle. After a few moments, she inhales deeply
and starts to speak again. Her voice is very quiet; “He accused me
of not really caring about him and the kids. Why would he say
that?” Deidra asks in agonized confusion, but she doesn’t wait for
Lucian to respond. “And then he said they were just placeholders.
And I had been waiting for my real life to begin again. Oh God,
Lucian. What the hell does that mean?”

“I am not sure,” he says softly.

“Part of her knows this is not the life she
was meant to live, but she can’t let go of it because of her
children. Perhaps that’s why she seems to have a duality in her
awareness. On some level, she knows I am with her almost all of the
time,” Luca muses to himself.

He gently pulls her closer to him and lightly
holds her in his arms, as he hopes she doesn‘t pick up on his
uneasiness. “Remember love, it’s just a dream. Rolan wasn’t really
there accusing you of anything.” Luca is very confused by this
because he knows she wasn’t actually asleep. Her heart beat and
respirations made that clear to him. This had been a vision or
something, but not a dream… And he wonders what the vision means,
and its source.

The silence stretches out over the minutes.
The tears flow softly down her cheeks as Lucian places a silent
kiss on top of her head, and soothes her taut shoulders with his
left hand. “Did you find the kids this time?” Lucian asks quietly
after several minutes of silence between them. Searching for her
children is a common theme of her dreams so this is a reasonable
question.

Deidra starts to move away from his strong
arms that are stirring feelings in her that she really should not
be feeling. He smiles at her nervousness around him and says, “Come
here Dee, stop running away. Talk to me!” He draws her onto his
lap.

She inhales deeply of his scent and feels
lightheaded. She uses both hands to roughly rake her hair back from
her face, and then exhales slowly. “No, they are gone from me
forever. I don’t deserve them, I never did and they know that. I
think they are staying away.”