MARBLE & SALT (Lesbian)

Chapter 6 YOU'LL SAY: IT'S FICKLE HEBE FEEDING THE ZEUS'S EAGLE - IT IS MIRTH

Part 1

"Be patient a little," she pulls away from me and starts rummaging in the pockets of her soft pants. "I'm sure I had it with me. Yeah, it's here..."

The witch takes out a thin rectangular box that looks exactly like a wooden pencil case of an average Soviet schoolchild, and she carefully pushes the lid open. I am not bothering or distracting her, as I'm sitting quietly being a little bit dumbfounded after my first kiss.

Growing up on classic Disney, I always imagined my first kiss in a slightly different way. It was always with a man, but his image was invariably blurred and generalized: a certain ideal picture of a handsome prince who would gallop up to me on some white ungulate and perform everything for me: he would solve all my problems, dispel the sorrows of forever depressed Unsmiling Tsarevna**. But I couldn't imagine what would happen next after my happy reunion with a 'prince'. The picture was not perfect like early childhood memories.

I gently touch my lips with my fingertips as if trying to keep the warmth of her lips, to remember forever their softness and tenderness.

Tenderness! Pfff! The girl unceremoniously stretches my leg. Of course, I give a tearful sob, although it doesn't hurt at all.

"Sorry! Sorry! I keep forgetting that you are a human being and not an ordinary shape-shifter!" the witch apologizes and strokes my sore leg like she would do to a child. I rejoice inwardly, having achieved what I wanted. It is difficult for me to control my emotions and actions now, since I can't understand why I behave this way with the girl. It feels like my well-thought-out little world that I've been building in my head since childhood is crumbling all around me, and I'm trying to build something new on its ruins, poorly improvising and using poorly improvised materials.

"It should help quickly!" says the witch, taking out a white ball resembling a hard candy. "You will feel some cold discomfort, but it's not painful."

She smashed the ball in her hand, and with a pleasant nutty cracking it breaks releasing a milky sparkling mist that envelops my leg. I twitch in fright. It feels like I took my leg out of the felt boot and put it in the ice-hole.

"Tshh, hush, silly," my new doctor says affectionately and squeezes my hand. "The pain will go away, I promise."

I nod obediently, but I listen to my feelings in disbelief. The cold sensation goes away together with the pain.

It cannot be! I gently wiggle my toes: no pain at all as if nothing happened. Even the painkillers do not help so quickly!

I am trying to get up, grimacing and putting all my weight on my healthy leg and scratched hands. Gently but persistently the witch is pressing on my shoulders making me sit back.

"The bones, of course, have grown together, and there is no more inflammation, but the leg will be weak for a while," she says, looking around. "There is a former forester's house not far from the lake. I think, we'll spend the night there. I'm definitely not going home today," saying the word 'home', her voice breaks a little, but she quickly regains her playful mood and fixes 'shifter's' twig on my head. Perhaps I would not even have noticed this change in her tone if I hadn't so desperately caught every word she said.

"And where did the forester go?" I ask the first thing that comes to my mind, unable to cope with her gaze and lithe body of hers which is too close to me again.

"The forester?" the girl scratches the back of her head absentmindedly. "Weeell, somebody has scoffed him, I guess. And everyone who's anyone is here especially at night: from volkolacs to mermaids! Mermaids! I hate them! Ugh, they just sit on the tree branches, and if you pass under the tree accidentally, you'll definitely get wet because these ooze-haired bitches are literally leaking. And don't worry about him," the witch soothes me, misunderstanding my stupid expression. "It was long ago: maybe he strangled himself... or someone helped him," she laughs at the old joke understandable only among local witches.