The
Sprite
Part
7
Neena stared up at the wall near cushion she
rested on, searching out the many imperfections in it as she threw a rubber
ball at it, catching it on the rebound. It had been two days since her dramatic
encounter and she was still at a loss to explain what had really happened. Turlock and his wife
Naomi had been nice enough to watch the children themselves when she’d come
home that night, still magically shaken up so badly she could barely fly. Naomi
had realigned her magic for her, causing half of the pain to stop immediately
and rest to ease away with the day’s rest. Turlock had let her rest without questioning
her that night or today, allowing her to rest without getting the usual lecture
on safety. She knew an inquest was coming, though. He’d watched and waited, not
asking questions, noting the fact that she hadn’t been human sized in quite a
while but not saying anything to her. He was biding his time and she knew that
time was coming. Not only that, he had this fatherly way of asking questions
and knowing the answers before you even said anything.
Unfortunately, she still had questions for
herself that she couldn’t answer. How was she going to get her amulet back?
What was Turlock
going to say when she explained what happened? WAS she going to explain what
happened? What HAD happened? Was she really carrying a torch for a fairy
hunter? Did he really think she was sexy? What the HELL kind of name was ADRIAN???
It occurred to her that sitting here
bouncing a ball against the wall wasn't helping her answer any of these
questions.
And besides that, she thought, fluttering up
determinedly, I've been sitting around here for a day now and he's spent a ton
of time out there setting traps! I got a LOTTA time to make up for!
With that in mind, she fluttered to the
hiding place under the bed where se kept her gear, slung her pack over her
shoulder, then slipped out of the room. She paused in
the hall near the front room where Turlock
sat polishing huge claymore, then landed and walked to the giant front door so
as not to attract attention. She crept under the crack in the cabin door and
closed her eyes with a relieved smile. She knew where he'd set up, so it was
just a matter of doing what she always did. No guessing what he thought of her,
no trying to figure out any complicated relationship information or anything,
just disarming traps. She headed toward where his camp had last been, only
slowing down when she got within 500 paces of it, knowing a good hunter would
establish a good perimeter of traps around himself, but not close enough to
scare off sprites from coming near enough for capture.
After checking about and finding 5 set traps
lying about, not far from his camp, Neena was beginning to wonder about him. Adrian was still here,
obviously; she recognized the insignia on the traps. Apparently, the other
hunters were gone or just not using any of their traps (she congratulated
herself for screwing them over so royally).
For someone reputed to be the best, however,
she noticed he didn’t seem to be putting the effort into his traps that even
the lowliest of hunters did, allowing for easy trip ups and escapes for the Fae caught in them. She knew she was good at disarming, but
even on of the little wild sprites that never paid much attention to learning
how traps and humans worked would have been able to find her way out of the
last few traps she'd sprung. This, like the wall her ball had been rebounding
off of earlier, had parts that didn't fit into the smooth exterior. Was he
really that bad or was he purposely messing up? He had to be good, she knew, or
Turlock
wouldn't had bothered mentioning him to her. But if he
was, then why was he doing it? Was it FOR her or just BECAUSE of her? She
didn’t want to think about the possible reasons why just yet. The idea that a
man who had made his way in the world by capturing magical folk like herself
hardly made him date material.
Besides, she reminded herself, I'm not supposed to give a
crap about him right now. I'm working. Of course, he DOES have my amulet
and I need that…maybe I should check on him to see what he's up to.
Before she could think about it any further,
she headed inward from the traps toward the camp. She didn't really want to
admit it, but she knew she was actually a bit excited at the idea of even
catching a glimpse of him…
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