You've Got Another Thing Coming

After a couple of minutes of reluctant trudging along we reached a nice little camp.

Well, I say nice but really; you could tell a bunch of bachelors were bunking down there temporarily. It looked like the outdoors-y version of a teenage boy’s bedroom.

Hood gentlemanly allowed us to be seated on a pair of evilly sharpened logs outside a soggy tent and waved to a man standing some feet away.
“Watch ‘em, Roderick. I’ll be back in a few.”

The man obviously named Roderick looked like a hippopotamus left to rejoice in mud and tons of larder, and grinned unpleasantly at me and Cherokee with a mouth that could have swallowed a black hole without much trouble other than the looming process of digestion. Although, I had to admit, his stomach looked as if it could handle anything the universe could throw at it, including the universe itself.

Cherokee and I sat down as Roderick busied himself by pointedly ignoring us and polishing his sword, carefully making sure we saw him doing it.

For the first time in a while I allowed myself to relax a bit, as there really wasn’t much else to do. However, taking my mind off the fact that a famous legend was about to have my how-the-hell-did-this-happen husband brutally and unjustly killed, only resulted in my mind worrying over other things – like the state of my how-the-hell-did-this-happen husband.

“You’re drenched in blood,” I unnecessarily stated, as this was a very obvious fact. Cherokee didn’t as much as glance down at his shirt as he sarcastically as ever replied:
“Why, thank you for noticing, darling, and, by the way, yes; I am unharmed, except for one or two flesh wounds.”

I grabbed the hem of his shirt between my thumb and my index finger and pulled a bit. The fabric made disgusting sucking sounds as it parted with Cherokee’s skin. I sighed theatrically. “It’ll never wash out,” I commented and let go of the shirt, making sure to wipe my hand on my trouser leg. “Once, I got a nose bleed and it spilled all over my white t-shirt. It didn’t matter how much I washed or bleached it, the stains were permanent.”

“Fascinating,” countered Cherokee, now reeking with irony. “Did you hear that, Roderick? The stains were permanent!” He addressed the obscenely fat man who did not as much as look up at the mention of his name.

“Don’t push yer luck, mate,” the hippo-man said warningly and rubbed at a stubborn spot on his sword. “I don’t wanna come over there and shut that big mouth of yers.”

“Oh, look who’s talking,” muttered Cherokee under his breath, but still loud enough for me to hear.

I shot him a dirty look. “I agree with our Roderick over there; don’t push your luck.” I gave his shirt another critical examination and added: “Take your shirt off.”

Whatever reply Cherokee had been expecting, it hadn’t been that one. His eyes popped and he almost fell off his pointy stub with surprise.
“Excuse me!” he exclaimed as soon as he regained his balance.

“Sure,” agreed I. “I’ll excuse you as soon as you take your shirt off.”

“Why the hell should I?”

The hippo man chortled. “That’s a very stupid question to ask yer wife, y’know.” He carefully avoided eye-contact with either of us as he puffed on: “But, while on the subject, I should do what she tells ye to do, ‘cause ye don’t wanna upset the woman who does yer cookin’ and washin’ up.”

Cherokee opened his mouth to reply, and I could just feel how sarcastic and dribbling with badly held-back anger it would be. But, to my own shock and to Cherokee’s eternal honour, he shut his mouth again and without another word eeled his way out of the sticky shirt.

“Thank you,” said I, going for nice and simple. “Now, where are you hurt?”

Cherokee actually looked offended. “Excuse me?”

“Sure,” said I again. “I’ll excuse you as soon as you tell me where the aforementioned flesh wounds are situated so I can bandage them properly.”

He gaped, and shut his mouth. Then he opened it, and shut it again. But, as third’s the charm, he managed to come up with:
“What are you going to bandage them with?”

I looked into his face and then down at my shirt. It was torn and a bit dirty, but there were still some clean patches. “This,” said I and pulled at a tear. My shirt ripped along the bottom and round, making quite a nice strip. Cherokee’s eyes popped again as I rolled the strip up and grabbed his arm in search for a wound worthy of a bandage signed Marc O’Polo.

After a couple of trial and errors, and Roderick the Hippo’s constant chortling, I had Cherokee nicely wrapped up in fine fabrics à la the French Resistance, who’d been the last to provide me with sufficient clothes.

“There,” I breathed happily. “Done!”

Cherokee was red-faced and flustered, and refused to look at me. He just nodded and kept his lilac eyes on the ground as I fluttered around him, trying to clean him up with a bowl of water that Roderick had been kind enough to force another be-haired Neanderthal to go and get. Other than that small gesture, the hippo-man hadn’t said or done anything much other than to polish his sword.

I stepped back and admired my handiwork and sniffed proudly.
“I should so become a nurse!” I exclaimed, noting with pride how wonderfully bandaged Cherokee looked. “How does it feel?”

The object of my professional wrapping shrugged and looked up at me for the first time since I’d started bandaging his boo-boos.
“Feels good,” he admitted. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied, smiling happily at the fact that I’d done something good for a change.
“It was fun!”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” He let his eyes wander back to the ground, and I felt my smile falter a little.

“What do you mean?” I asked, stepping a bit closer and, for some reason, put my hand on the one shoulder that wasn’t wrapped up with a perfectly wearable shirt.

Cherokee sighed irritably and shrugged, as if he was uncomfortable.

“Do you want me to loosen the bandage?” I wondered hurriedly and started fiddling with the fastenings.

His hand was on mine before I’d had much time to act. He gently pushed them aside but kept a hold on my left hand and squeezed it, and with his other hand he grabbed a hold of my chin and practically forced me to meet his gaze.
“No, I meant to thank you,” he said, his voice deadpan and serious. “Thank you for everything.”

I tried to shake my head in confusion, but his grip on my jaw kind of ruined that plan. “Thank me for everything that I’ve done to you?” I asked, wondering where this conversation was heading. “Thank me for getting your sister into trouble, getting entangled with the French resistance, getting witches to chase us, fighting to deliver a bleeding MacGuffin and meddling with natural forces completely unknown to all of us?”

Cherokee looked blank for a second. “Yes,” he then said, as if ticking things off in his head. “And also for making us run half across the Land in pursuit of getting you back to your own physical shape.”

I made a face. “Well, you’re welcome for that, too – it was really no biggie!”

“Don’t joke around!” he ordered blatantly, his voice still even and unemotional. “I’m being serious.”

I let my face relax a bit and let it scrunch up in a worried expression instead, because that was almost its normal look by now.
“You’re seriously thanking me for putting you and your sister through a bunch of mortal perils?”

“Yes,” replied Cherokee. “Because it’s changed me – for the better.”

“When the hell did you figure that out?” screeched I, now getting seriously scared. A friendly Cherokee seldom promises happy endings.

Cherokee shrugged again and had the decency to look even more uncomfortable. “I think just now, when you were talking to the ball of fat over there.” He let his head fall to the side to incline towards Roderick the Hippo, who polished his sword and eavesdropped on us so much it was quite embarrassing. “Looking at you just gave me this sort of…” he paused, searching for words, “warm feeling,” he finished lamely.

My forehead wrinkled. “As in ‘cute and fuzzy’ feeling?”

He shook his head. “No, more like… like I feel about Rose, but still different. Like I care for you.”

I smiled a little. “Well, I kind of care for you, too.” He smiled back, his lilac eyes much more than his lips.

And so, all of the sudden, the planet stopped spinning.

Time stood still and the world fell behind as a spark of something – something more powerful than any magic I had ever felt – cracked like lightening between the two of us. It was like a Big Bang but without at the theories and hypothesis. This was a certainty, and it grew stronger as it filled my body from head to toe, surging through my entire being and rendering me helpless to its powers.
Cherokee’s eyes were the only hold I had, his gaze kept mine locked and his hand harboured me to him. In that moment, he and I were one, and I knew that whatever was going on within me was going on within him as well. It was unspeakable, indescribable, unbreakab-

SNIVEL!

Time kicked into gear, the earth reinstated itself and the lightening disappeared. Both our heads snapped towards the direction of the sound, where we found Roderick the Hippo crying pathetically into a towel-sized handkerchief.

Locating the source, Cherokee and I relaxed and let ourselves breathe. We also noticed ourselves doing so in unison, and held our breaths simultaneously to let this social faux-pas to pass by, which it did not. We looked at each other, embarrassed to the brim of death, and spoke in unison:
“Sorry about that. No, wait… What did you say? Huh?”

I cleared my throat and, eyes cast downwards. Cherokee did this also, and noticed our hands were entwined to the point where the laws of physics clearly stated that either something should break clean off, or the two matters will have to painfully merge and make up a new entity. He let go of my hand and rubbed his nervously against the leg of his trousers. He too cleared his throat and searched desperately for something to say. He optioned to not talk to me, but to Roderick the Hippo, whom we had to thank for interrupting whatever that moment had been.

“Er, I say,” he said, directing his full attention to the sobbing man. “Are you all right?”

Roderick barely looked up from his handkerchief to bubble out between snivels: “It’s… just… so… so romantic!” And so he broke into a huddled piece of weeping jelly.

This comment caused Cherokee and I to finally meet each other’s gaze again, and for us both to ask: “What the hell just happened?”

“I think it might have had something to do with all your magic,” said Cherokee nervously.
“Whatever happened between us must have been enhanced by it.”

My throat was dry enough to shave wood, but I managed to croak out: “But something happened in order for the magic to enhance it.”

“True,” agreed Cherokee. I noted his hand was shaking. “So that brings us back to square one.”

“Which is ‘what the hell just happened’”, I filled in.

The sobbing heap of man erected itself for a few seconds, supported on his sword, and shouted through the material of his handkerchief:
“You’re in LOVE! Damn you kids for being so stubborn, and young and… and…” Roderick had to pause to get enough air into his lungs to be able to scream, “…and so inlove!”

He then returned to the safety of his hankie, which was now of the same consistency as a swimming pool, and left Cherokee and I to stare incredulously at each other.

“In love?” said I. “Are we in love?”

Cherokee looked just as surprised as myself, but his hand stopped shaking. I reached forward and grabbed it with a courage I didn’t even know I had. He stared at his hand, then at my hand and then he turned his gaze to my eyes.

We had another moment, but it wasn’t like the one we had before. Now it was like something out of a fairy tale, like the ones young girls dream of. It was that feeling, that sure certainty that this, this was right and this, this was meant to happen and it would happen to the both of us because we both felt the exact same way.

Then and there, Cherokee and I fell in love.