CHAPTER#124

"Think so," Tink replied. At least, he thought that's what she said. It was hard to hear around the mouthful of waffles. He patted her on the head and sat down next to her. She was busy filling up his online shopping cart with decorative wood.

"Has anybody seen Dana?" Mike noticed that she wasn't at breakfast. Even though she didn't eat, she had been there every morning.

"She said she left you a note." Sofia pushed some sausages from her skillet onto his plate. "On the table by the front door."

"Ok, thank you." He put some butter on his toast. "Hey, do we have any-"

Sofia slid some scrambled eggs onto his plate.

"Thank you." He ate quietly, watching Tink scroll through six different websites to find what she needed. He cringed at the amount of syrup she was getting on his keyboard, but stayed quiet. He barely had time to use the laptop anymore, and he had passed on several of his clients to other web developers already. Mike's days of working a normal job were nearly over.

"Mmm!" Tink licked her fingers clean then slid off her chair and disappeared around the corner. He figured she was off to go fix something important. He slid his laptop over and gave it a quick wipe down with a damp paper towel before doing some shopping of his own.

His phone rang on the counter. Sofia handed it to him.

"Hey." It was Beth.

"I'm on my way back right now," she told him. "I will probably be there in just over an hour."

"How did it go?"

"We had some trouble, but nothing we couldn't handle." He could hear the smile in her voice through the phone's speaker. "I got everything I needed, so we are headed your way now."

"Stay out of trouble." He hung up the phone then finished his eggs. He helped Sofia with the dishes then walked out into the front room. He noticed immediately that the grandfather clock was gone. He looked around and saw that a large white envelope with his name had appeared on the mantle.

"Uh oh." He approached the mantle and opened the note to read its contents. He let out a sigh, then tucked it in his back pocket. There was nothing he could do about it now. He walked to the back door to see that Zel and Tink stood by the fountain, scrutinizing a diagram that Zel had drawn. He didn't feel like getting involved yet, so walked out the front door of the house to be alone.

Well, almost alone. Cecilia was on her swing, watching the front yard. He gave her a wave, then walked down the steps to where the sundial was. He gave it another twist, setting the defenses in place for twenty four more hours. He didn't feel the need to wait until it was almost done before resetting it.

"Did you sleep well?" Cecilia asked him when he stepped back onto the porch. He shrugged, then sat down next to her.

"I did, but not enough."

"I have always wondered what it would be like to sleep. Sometimes, if I sit long enough, my mind wanders to old memories."

"It can be like that. I used to dream a lot about my childhood."

"You don't anymore?"

"Not like I did. Those dreams weren't very good, but I quit having them not too long after I moved in. Our dreams are a place where our greatest desires or worst fears can find us. They can be chaotic or detailed, logical or just plain weird. I had a dream in college once that I became a pizza, and the other kids in the dorm were eating me and I got really upset because I was afraid I would miss my finals."

"That... is really weird."

Mike laughed. "Yeah. It didn't make sense. I guess the best way to describe dreaming would be if your memories blurred together and you ended up remembering things wrong or different than they actually happened."

"I see." A small grin appeared on her face. "Do you ever dream about me?

"Why dream when I have the real deal?" Mike affectionately ran his fingers through her hair, shivering when the cold sparks jumped to his hand. He was about to say something else when he noticed a flash of red beneath the strands of white. He used his fingers to pull it free.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know." A long streak of her hair was now a deep red. "Your hair. It's a different color here."

"I was wondering." A shy smile appeared on her face. "Ever since our time in the cave, I have felt a little bit different. It's almost like a small part of you got left behind, a warm part that keeps me company in the wee hours."

"I think the same thing may have happened to me. When I was trapped in Baba Yaga's school, my soul had a white tuft of hair, and the sparks were there when Ratu and I had sex. What does it mean?"

"I'm not sure. My kind was never built to be with your kind, and maybe this is the price."

"It would have to be more than that." Mike thought about what Naia had told him. "Part of my soul is a nymph's soul. Did we do the same thing? Did part of my soul swap with yours?"

"My kind do not have souls, not in the sense that you or Naia do. But I wonder - nymphs perform magic through sexual acts. If you are part nymph, then that could mean that you perform a similar kind of magic through sex. Something happened to me in the cave, something wonderful. For a little while, I felt the cool air on my skin and the wind in my face. So many emotions ran through my being, I couldn't process any of them."

"When the magic was done, I thought it was temporary, wild magic as a result of our coupling. But some sort of spell has been cast, and I think it means that I will carry a part of you with me forever." She leaned into him, sliding her arm around his and holding it tightly. "I would gladly pay such a price again."