You've Got Another Thing Coming

Liam was astonished.

Flabbergasted.
Practically stupefied, if truth was to be told.

He was standing on a meadow with his arms by his side, and he was surveying a tall, blonde fairy that was going berserk at a small tree.
Cherokee was kicking, screaming, raging and being ultimately unfriendly towards the young tree, which was barely more than a branch as it were. Any aggression the fairy had ever harboured – and Liam suspected that the number of these were ridiculously high – was being let loose on one single, unlucky object.

It was probably all the pent-up worry that had caused Cherokee to go spare, Liam reasoned. After all, if Cherokee hadn’t fretted himself out of his mind and gone bananas, the two of them would have never made it out of the Queen’s bedroom in the first place, let alone would they have left the castle in one piece. Or, two pieces, as it were, if one was to be physically correct.
Liam drew a breath. …And what an escape it had been, indeed.

It had started off with Cherokee constructing up a mental wall of anxiousness by repeating the words “she’s gone, she’s gone, ohshitohshit she’s gone” and pacing around in circles.
Then, Liam recalled, Cherokee had resorted to burst out randomly and knock over a couple of toys which bounced around and made farmyard noises, which resulted in Cherokee becoming irritated and embarrassed and knocking down a couple of more toys just for the hell of it.
After the anxiousness had been taking care of, Cherokee had moved on to the guilt. He had almost torn his own hair off – and Liam’s as well, but he wasn’t sure Cherokee was aware of doing it – in his maddening remorse, and after the guilt-trip there was no other way to go but to curse like crazy and hope for the best.

Depending on the way you chose to look at it; ‘the best’ soon knocked on the door in the shape of some poor guard who had been handed the dutiful task of Corridor Watch. That was when the wheels sort of slipped out of place, Liam mused, and Cherokee had bore down on the defenceless man like a ton of bricks.
The unfortunate guard had had nothing to shield himself with except for an iron shield and a large sword, which both came in un-handy when Cherokee kicked him in the lower regions and charged at him with a manic fairy. The guard never stood a chance...

Next, if Liam remembered correctly, he had practically flown down the corridor and through the halls after the metaphorical corner of Cherokee’s even more metaphorical skirt. The few ill-fated basta- ehm, noble men, Liam silently corrected himself, who had come in Cherokee’s way had also come in harm’s way, and the idio- oh, err, the fine aristocrats who had experienced life under the feet of a fairy going berserk did not experience it for very long.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, thought Liam, pleased.

At a speed that would have given a cheetah a heart failure the two men had exited the castle and the castle grounds without interruptions, as bad news do not follow the normal restrictions of sound.
Guards stood down in the face of immediate death, as would anyone who has ever seen a whirlwind of vengeance come straight at you, as did the other people in the castle who were normal and didn’t really care to face their own mortality in the shape of a madman.

And so, quite uneventfully, they had ended up in the meadow, Liam concluded. As he himself had have to have a lie down to make the world catch up and force air down his lungs, Cherokee had gone from moving like a tornado to moving like a very angry, deeply upset man. Hence his current occupation, Liam added, and looked at the pitiable tree.
He softly shook his head and another stream of profanities escaped the lips of Cherokee, who grabbed the tree with one hand and hauled it right out of the earth.

Cherokee stopped mid-motion and stared at the reduced stick in his hands. A little bit of sanity crept into his eyes as he unclenched his fist and let the remnants of the tree fall to the ground with a pitiful thump.
He directed his lilac stare to Liam, who stood at a safe distance and raised an imploring eyebrow.

“You finished?” Liam wondered casually, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Because I really do think we should get on with finding this girl you’re too busy obsessing over to actually look for.”

Cherokee straightened himself out in the presence of eye-watering sarcasm. He absent-mindedly shook some dirt off his hand.
“’m not obsessing,” he mumbled defiantly. “I’m just a bit worried.”

Liam hauled his eyebrow even further up his forehead, but reluctantly kept his mouth shut in case of another tree-threatening situation.

It didn’t matter, though, because Cherokee had caught the look in his eyes. His temper suddenly flared up again.
“Look,” he growled and walked closer to the soldier, “I made a vow to keep that utterly useless idiot of a girl safe! I’m not about to break that vow, and so what if I tend to worry a bit, huh? It’s a damned vow! They’re supposed to be taken seriously!”

Liam just stood there, staring at the fairy as he made a long, dreadfully boring – but nonetheless excruciatingly passionate – speech about not breaking vows and how it was important to keep each other safe, even if it was just a rule-breaking, rude, selfish teenage girl who thought way too highly of herself to ever become even slightly likeable.

When the last syllable had died out and Cherokee took a slight pause to breathe, Liam raised the other eyebrow and, quite straightforwardly said:
“I see. And, how long did you say you’ve been in love with her?”

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“North, north,” I repeated under my breath as I ran in the direction generally associated with polar bears, mountains of ice and a big, fat, red guy with millions of children at his mercy.

I jumped over roots, I ducked under branches, I carefully avoided running into things as I sprinted along to the colder regions of this world. The thought of Liam and Cherokee still being in that tree caused my stomach to turn, even more so when I thought of how they would, technically, be under water by this time.

The memory of Cherokee’s frightened face as it stared up at me with the gooey liquid as a background played over and over again in my mind’s eye, and the turning of my stomach became a downright this-is-a-knee-and-it’s-hitting-your-gut-in-a-very-accurate-way kind of thing.
It was highly uncomfortable.

“Cherokee,” I moaned painfully as I thought of what kind of a fate I’d left him to. “Liam, gods, Liam!” I remembered and saw the image of his behind on a branch over my head.

For some reason this caused my thoughts into other directions entirely, and I only noticed I had stopped when my own behind hit the ground and my forehead ached with telling accuracy. I glared at the tree ahead of me.

“Thanks a lot,” I growled and pushed passed the tree, once again gaining speed and hopping through the woodworks on my way to the north.

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“In love with her?”

Cherokee’s perplexed features contorted into distaste.
“In love with her?”

Liam nodded, serious.

“In love.” Pause. “With her?”

Cherokee looked so taken aback that Liam actually took pity on him and patted him on the arm – in a very manly way, of course.
“It’s the way you talk about her,” he tried to explain to the gobsmacked fairy. “How you always describe her as-“

“A deceitful, selfish little brat with nothing but her own interest in mind?” Cherokee filled in, his voice suddenly working again.

“Exactly,” Liam conceded and gave Cherokee a friendly shove.

Cherokee just continued to look utterly bewildered.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said earnestly, staring at Liam. The solider simply shrugged.
“You’ll see it soon enough,” Liam comforted. “Sooner or later you’ll realize that I’m right.”

Cherokee stared a little more.

Liam sighed.

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North, north, north, north, NORTH, dammit!

Cherokee and Liam – Liam and Cherokee. Their faces spoke to me – well, at least Cherokee’s did. We shall not discuss which part of Liam anatomy I was focusing on, but I can tell you that it was definitely worth a little attention.

North, the troll had said, and I was heading north. But for as much as I knew, north in this place might have just as well been east. Damn all things to the deepest pit of hell! I thought.
Tired of hopping over the roots, I now simply stumbled over them. Instead of ducking under the branches I caught them on the nose and had it done and over with.

“Damn it,” I huffed, too out of breath to be able to conjure a real pissed-off tone of voice. “I want my fairy and my cute-bottomed warden, and I want them NOW!”

And so, the world disappeared from underneath my feet.

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“Look, I’m not in love with her,” said Cherokee convincingly. “It’s practically impossible to be in love with Callie Johnson!”

Liam had now heard this too many times to actually care, and chose this moment instead to turn around and stare at a distant cloud with the approximate shape of a muffin.

This caused a very important realization to dawn upon him:
“Gods!” he exclaimed to the world in general. “When was the last time we ate?”

“Dunno,” said Cherokee. “But I bet Callie would know. Her stomach is like an alarm clock.”

Silence ensued for a brief moment.

“But it doesn’t mean I’m in love with her!”

Liam let his arms fall down by his side and hung his head. He’d never live this down, he knew…
“That didn’t even make any sense,” he told the fairy, and glared at said fictional character. “Just because you know how her stomach works doesn’t mean you’re in love with her.”

Cherokee stared back at him, wild-eyed.
“That’s what I just said!”

Liam just shook his head, for the umpteenth time during the last hour.

“Look,” Cherokee held up a finger, “If I were to be in love with her, then I’d be running around like a madman, doing stupid things without thinking about it.”

“By Gods, can’t you just be reasonable, man?!” shouted Liam, too irritated to be able to stand any more. “Just look at that poor tree! Does that prove anything to you?”

Cherokee looked at the tree, glanced at Liam, looked at the tree again and allowed the wheels in his head to spin frantically.
“It was being rude to me?” he tried, and Liam came so close to punching him in the face that it scared them both.

Liam then counted to ten under his breath. When it didn’t help, he counted to twenty. When that didn’t work, he shouted the numbers one-to-forty and felt slightly better.
“Why, oh-why, do you insist on denying your infatuation?” he then asked Cherokee, who was now looking at the soldier in a funny way.

Cherokee decided to try the logical reasoning again.
“Look,” he said once again and held up the finger, “if I were to be in love with Callie Johnson, then wouldn’t I be shouting and screaming her name?”

He recoiled ever-so-slightly at the burning glare Liam passed him, but took little heed. “I mean, wouldn’t I be doing like this…” he continued and extended his arms, stood up and bellowed towards the skies:
“Callie! Oh, Callie, come to me! Callie, co-!”

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The world stopped spinning and stopped being black. I had a peculiar sensation of being carried by an oven, and looked into the astonished face of Cherokee.

He was holding me, for some amusing reason dictated by fate and chance, and he was looking at me funnily.

“Well, that just about proves it,” said the deep, wonderful voice belonging to my favourite warden of all times.

“Proves what?” wondered Cherokee, still gaping down upon me in his arms. I gaped back.

“How the hell did I end up here?” wondered I, but no one took any notice. In the little silent part of the void that was my head I catagorized this incident as 'some-kind-of-magical-mumbo-jumbo', and decided to leave it at that for the moment. Some times it's just easier to ignore reality.

“My theory,” answered Liam, and came into view by lifting up my head and turning it towards him.

“What theory is that?” wondered both Cherokee and I, though Cherokee sounded threateningly knowing, to my own surprise. I glanced up at him, since lying in a pair of arms either has you dangling in a slime-kind-of-way or having five chins. I’d decided on the option of the multiple skin-layers.

“I’m so sorry,” said Liam, and sounded so sincere my skin crawled and my attention snapped back to him. “But I think you guys have to get married.”