You've Got Another Thing Coming

For one brief moment I thought I’d heard wrong.

After carefully setting me down on my feet, Cherokee stuck one finger in his ear and swivelled it around. He then looked up at the soldier with a polite smile on his lips.
“I beg your pardon, Liam?” he said so calmly the animalistic part of my brain carrying the survival instincts forced me to take two large steps backwards.

“Err,” answered Liam nervously, recognising danger in the way one might notice a ten feet wide red neon sign blinking irritably three feet from one’s nose.

“I must have misheard you,” continued Cherokee cheerily, his smile cracking and shoved out of the way by a maniacal grin, “because I am rather sure you just suggested that Callie and I should get married.”

Liam cleared his throat noisily. I wanted to turn my attention to him, but one eye was stuck on Cherokee in case he’d do something stupid, like try and kill us all by spontaneous combustion. I took another step back in order to get both men into my line of view, and thus avoid squinting like an idiot and getting an enormous headache. It always pays off to think ahead, people.

“Well,” said Liam, clearing his throat again as one tends to do when faced with a task that makes you slightly nervous and/or afraid for your life. “That was what I said.”

A cold wind blew through the meadow and made me shiver, but neither y-chromosomed human within our party seemed to notice such trivial matters like wind, rain or the Apocalypse.

“Ah,” responded Cherokee, his grin now practically reaching his ears. His lilac eyes seemed to shoot lightning, and his blonde hair sparkled in the wind.

Liam held up his hands defensively. “But, you see, there’s a reason to why!” he shouted, as the wind grew stronger. It carried his words over to the fairy opposite, which only persisted to grin insanely.

“Care to share with the rest of the class?” I wondered quietly, slightly put out with this very unreal scenario. I was beginning to feel left out, because it I sensed the boys weren’t telling me something – and I was also feeling somewhat uneasy because, well, Cherokee had that ‘I’m gonna kill you within three seconds, mate, and I trust me when I say I won’t loose any sleep over it’-look which I’d learn to know and fear.

Liam, however, heard me. He turned his gorgeous face and unmatchable body to face me.
“Well, it’s like this,” he donned a tutorial voice. “You’re carrying a load of magic that you don’t know what to do with – don’t deny it, it’s not like I’m stupid or anything! – and wherever you are from and whoever you are, your magic is disrupting the very fabric of reality!”

I gaped at him. How the hell did he know all that?

“Shut your mouth, Callie, you look unintelligent,” growled Cherokee, now gently seething. “Not that it makes much of a difference, but perhaps you shouldn’t advertise your lack of brainpower.” The maniacal grin had been replaced with the much-common frown, and I felt my shoulders relax.
If he was frowning he was thinking, I’d come to learn. Thinking is good. Thinking doesn’t kill anybody. My mouth snapped shut on its own accord.

“So why do I have to marry her?” continued Cherokee, now directing his frown at Liam, who still stood to mortal attention.

“Because her kind of magic isn’t our kind of magic,” explained Liam, and it struck me again how knowledgeable this man was, especially considering he didn’t know the first thing about my situation – as far as I was aware. “Her magic is ruining our world, because it doesn’t fit in!”

“So?” wondered Cherokee, his frown deepening. “We just have to get her out of here, and then everything will be all right!”

“And if we don’t have time?” shouted Liam, the wind picking up speed and tossing his luxurious locks into his face. He swept them away with a gesture that made my knees wobble. “Look, Cherokee; if we don’t make her a part of this, she’s going to destroy it all!”

“The why do so by marriage?” I grumbled under my breath, not really following their conversation, but still trying to be a bother because some strange, feminine part of my brain cried out for attention.

Again, Liam caught my words and tried to explain:
“Well, it’s legal, see?”

I raised an eyebrow at him, but the effect was lost as my hair blew over my face and hid it from the world.
Cherokee sensed my confusion. He was very perceptive in the way of tuning in on a baffled teenage girl who looked like a question mark personified.
“It’s like that in your world too, isn’t it?” he said, turning his lilac eyes to me. “You move to a country and marry a citizen there, and you become, also, officially a citizen of that nation.”

“Well, broadly speaking, yes,” I conceded. “But how will I marrying someone affect my magic?”

Liam shrugged. “Dunno,” he confessed. “But it’s worth a try if it’ll keep this world together.”

I mimicked his action, and shrugged. “I suppose so.”

His dark eyes bore into mine with an intensity that made my heart skip a beat. “So you agree to marry?”

I shrugged again. “Sure,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like it’s for ever. Just ‘till I get back home and that won’t be too long, now will it?”

Liam nodded happily and sent me a smile that would’ve melted ice. The wind wasn’t quite as ferocious as it had been a couple of moments before.

“It’s a vow,” rumbled a voice that I had, for the moment, put out of mind. Cherokee glared at us both. “You can’t expect people to make vows to love and honour each other for ever when it’s fake. The world will still rupture and die, and all because the parties didn’t love each other.”

Liam carefully avoided looking at me when he retorted:
“It’s still worth a shot, is it not?”

Cherokee didn’t answer, but looked to me instead. “Callie, you really don’t mind doing this?”

I tried to force the hair out of my eyes by viciously yanking at the horribly blonde strands, but gave up after the wind threw the rest up my nose.
“No, I don’t,” I answered honestly after spitting out a few hairs. I felt him glare at me and added defensively: “Well, like Liam said, it’s worth a shot! I don’t want to be the reason your world goes bananas, and if it means being married to you for a couple of days, then I’d gladly endeavour to love you for a little while!”

“Why me?” he asked, but to my ears it sounded way too much like the whine of a seven-year-old.

I crossed my arms over my chest and ‘humph!’ed theatrically.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that…” said Liam hesitantly, and looked over at me. I shrugged, for the umpteenth time.

“Your patriotic duty doesn’t stretch as far as trying to love me for a few days?” I suggested to Liam, pouting, and sent an evil side glare in Cherokee’s direction.

“It’s clearly a survival issue,” joked Liam, now carefully avoiding looking at Cherokee, for reasons best known to himself. “Marry you, or perish as the world goes down in flames…” He paused to contemplate the pros and cons, humming gently while doing so. “’s a tough one.”

“Okay, fine!” Cherokee threw his arms up in exasperation. He glared at me with the infamous ‘instant death is now wished upon you’ stare which he had honed to perfection the last couple of minutes. “I’ll marry you, Callie! Happy?”

Attempting to look down my nose at him, I muttered out: “Immensely.”

Liam beamed and clapped his hands together excitedly.
“Fantastic!” he shouted as the wind picked up again. “Let’s find some kind of lodgings, and then we’ll have the wedding reception there. Oh, and I’ll be the priest!”

“Do you have the authority to do that?” Cherokee looked momentarily surprised, and Liam huffed. “Of course,” he said. “In fact, I’m the Resistance’s Head Priest.”

“Well, your head’s certainly big enough,” grumbled Cherokee and shot the soldier/priest a dirty look.

A sort of numb feeling overcame me as I watched the two of them argue about the size of Liam’s head, the way to the closest settlements, the volume of Liam’s hair and what to wear to the wedding. My gaze fell on Cherokee, and I observed him as he gestured wildly. I could’ve done a lot worse, I told myself. For a temporary fiancée, at least.

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”Red!”

”Yellow!”

”Red!”

”Yellow!”

“Red!”

“Yellow, or I won’t go through with it!”

“Will you two just stop it!” hollered Liam, glaring furiously at Cherokee and I. “You’re acting like immature three-year-olds!”

I frowned. “Surely you mean ‘as immature as three-year-olds’?”

Liam huffed. “I meant what I said.”

“She started it,” grumbled Cherokee to no-one in particular, eyes downcast.

I threw him a dirty look. “Forgive me for refusing to carry red roses in my bridal bouquet,” I glowered.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s so old fashioned!”

“It’s traditional!”

“It’s predictable!”

“And what’s so wrong with that?”

Liam covered his ears and sighed. He leaned on the table and closed his eyes, trying his best to ignore Cherokee and myself as we bickered noisily.

We had arrived at the tavern some few odd hours after the two men had been able to agree to walk in the same general direction. It was nothing much, just your normal, everyday tavern sans witches. It was medium large, medium brown, medium nice people and medium sized rooms.
The food, too, was mediocre – not bad tasting at all, but not worth remember ever eating. At the check-in, because here they had a mediocre desk with a mediocre girl behind it to list all customers in a mediocre book, Liam had introduced us as ‘Mr. and future Mrs. Rubiginosa, with friend”. There had only been two rooms available – these being located on the second floor – and so I had promptly shoved off the boys to the other as I regally took the first room in possession.
After a quick wash we had later assembled downstairs and decided to have a bite to eat, as Liam’s stomach was practically howling with emptiness. After dinner we had taken to discussing the over looming wedding and that was where we found us in a heated debate.

“I refuse to carry such trivial flowers,” I prompted, glaring at my husband-to-be.

“No, I guess you’d rather carry that package,” sneered my lovable fiancé and indicated to MacGuffin, which stood slightly tattered on the table in front of Liam. MacGuffin, now that was a story all in itself. The last time I remembered seeing it was in my room at the French Resistance’s Headquarters, and every one of us swore we hadn’t taken it with us during our accidental travels.

Yet, when we arrived at the desk at the tavern the mediocre girl had smiled a mediocre smile and announced that there was a package waiting for us. She had pulled up MacGuffin, and we could tell it was MacGuffin because it was MacGuffin.
You don’t forget something like MacGuffin very easily.

Besides, it now carried a note which proclaimed ‘to Callie Johnson-Rubiginosa’. After the initial freak out I had immediately snatched it and snuggled it close to my chest, thanking whatever random deus ex machina that had decided to interfere with our non-process and hand over the most valuable thing to us like it was no big deal.

“The Queen would have my head if I don’t deliver it properly,” I sneered back. “And yours, too, probably.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of Liam, who looked up guiltily. “He said she’s a real son of a female dog with the heart of an icicle, and this seemed to fit quite nicely with your own description.”

Cherokee let his glare burn Liam a little while and then shifted it back to MacGuffin.
“Sounds about right, except for the icicle heart,” he conceded. “Icicles melt.”

“Besides, Pears wouldn’t be too happy with me either,” I confessed, recalling the face of the strange wizard who’d burdened me with the task to hand over the package to the Queen.
If I’d known it would become such of everything I would’ve just had him whine me to death, I grumbled in an unused recess of my brain.

“Oh, right,” Cherokee nodded, as if he’d forgotten. “Pears.”

“Yeah,” I said, and we all fell into a moment of silence as we contemplated the strange creature that was Aberton Olav Pears (wzrd).

However, I rallied: “I still won’t carry red roses in the bouquet.”

The men groaned.

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The medium-comfortable pillow was propped up against the medium-black headboard. The medium-sized bed was somewhat bouncy as I tossed myself at it, making the pillow fall down and land on the medium-brown floor.

“You have everything you need?” asked a voice from the door, and I rolled over on my back and managed to get a glimpse of Cherokee where he stood leaning against the doorframe.

“Yeah,” I said, but as he made to walk away, I cried out. “Wait!”

He spun around. “What?”

“I just…” I felt my face turn a charming pink. “Well, we are getting married.”

“The day after tomorrow,” confirmed Cherokee and raised a blonde eyebrow. “So what?”

I beckoned him to come in the room. He obeyed my request and shut the door behind him.

“Perhaps we should talk?” I suggested and rose from the bed. He gazed down at me, surprised, when I grabbed a hold if his hand. The surprise, however, quickly morphed into awkwardness, and he tugged his hand out of my grip.

“About what?” he questioned, not quite meeting my eye.

My cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink and I let my arms fall limp by my side as I kept my eyes downcast. You just can’t get a more obvious rejection than that. “Nothing,” I mumbled. He apparently felt my discomfort, and so he barked a delightful: “Spit it out!” before crossing his arms defiantly over his chest.

I hung my head lower than Johnny Cash as I whispered out of sheer embarrassment: “I don’t know anything about you.”

“What’re you saying?” he sounded puzzled. “We’ve been experiencing over twenty chapters together, and you don’t think we know each other?”

Daring myself to look at him, my gaze met his crossed arms. I recovered slightly from my dire state of true humiliation.

“I know you’re a short-tempered, ill-mannered fairy who’s prone to being over-protective and defensive to the extreme. And I also know that you can’t swim and that you’re petrified of garden gnomes, which – by the way – I can totally sympathize with.”

Forcing myself, I caught a glimpse of his face. Cherokee’s face contorted into something almost alike hurt, but mostly there was just a large hint of ‘Hey, you just offended me!’.
“Nevertheless, you’re honest and you sure got integrity. Truth to be told, I think I actually quite like you,” I confessed, now back to being mortally embarrassed and very interested in my own feet. I added: “Especially now that you’re not threatening to kill me all the time.”

A quick glance upwards confirmed the growing suspicion that my fiancé was as uncomfortable about this discussion as I was. His cheeks were the same healthy colour as my own and he made a point not to look at me.
He then mumbled something unintelligible.

“Sorry?” I said, sadistically gaining a little courage out of his obvious discomfort.

Cherokee exposed his teeth in something that could have been a smile, but most definitely wasn’t.
“I said,” he growled, fiercely glaring at a mediocre picture on the wall a few feet to the left of my head, “’You’re not as unbearable any more’.”

“Coming from you, that’s practically a declaration of truce.” Letting the corners of my mouth slide up into something reminiscent of a joking expression, I tried to catch his gaze.
This effort caused me to step sideways, and for Cherokee to shift his glare to my right. I side-stepped again, and he found an amazingly interesting patch on the ceiling.

“Ahem,” I said, and incidentally quoting a very famous religious person. “Obviously you don’t want to talk about this, so I’ll just drop it.” Cherokee exhaled loudly, and I relaxed slightly. “But, just so we’re clear: are we cool?”

Cherokee started, and looked down at me in sudden puzzlement. “Nah, I’m comfortable.”

“I mean,” I said, making a mental note to be clearer around people of the male persuasion, “are we okay with getting married?”

Cherokee let his gaze travel away again. “Wouldn’t have proposed if it wasn’t.”

Feeling the colour of my cheeks deepen even more – and silently wondering if this was good for my blood pressure – I snorted to hide my acute case of awkwardness. “Some proposal that was.”

“Yes,” he said. Another quick flicker upwards proved the deepening red skin of Cherokee’s entire face was not wholly embarrassment, but also a hint of anger showed through. After a while in his company you learned to read the signs and the increasing breathing and flaring of the nostrils was a sure giveaway. “I suppose it is more of a… romantic idea to marry a rebel and a soldier. I’m sorry I’m the one you got stuck with.”

I opened my mouth to reply to this stupid accusation, but pure bafflement caused me to gulp like a fish out of water.

Cherokee took one look at my gaping self and shoved one hand down the pocket of his trousers. He brought up his fist and grabbed my hand with his free one, forcing an item into my open palm.
“This is, however, the best you are going to get. We’re saving the world. No one said we should be happy about doing so or even know each other properly, so what use is there pretending or even trying?”

After this little speech he turned on his heel and marched promptly out of the room.

My mouth hanging agape and my hand out before me like a beggar, I goggled at the door which he’d slammed shut. One unbelieving glance confirmed, nonetheless, what the receptive sense of touch told my brain; on my palm there was, glimmering and bright, a beautiful engagement ring.

When he’d got a hold of it, I never knew. But as I stood there, mind-blown and staring at the so-called ‘token of appreciation’, I couldn’t help to notice that was the least troubling thing on my mind.
What was the most troubling thing on my mind was the fact that I’d just upset my fiancé, and was not even too sure about how I’d gone about doing so.
Absent-mindedly, I pocketed the ring. Whatever it was that was happening and however it came about, I would not carry red roses to the altar.

And opposed to all common sense, I set off to tell my fiancé so.