When stupid little Lottie threw a stick to throw off a monster (spoiler: it didn't work), she did not expect that it would lead her down the path of an unordinary life with a very unordinary husband.
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All Lottie had ever wanted was to live an o...
Deep into the night, they travelled. It was then Lottie realised how much she loved the rhythmic clip-clop of the mare's hooves—the sound of her husband returning home.
A home they no longer had.
There was no end to the tears that coursed down her cheeks, but with the lull of the gentle rattling and bumping of the wooden cart on the road, she fell into a fitful sleep.
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When Lottie next woke, she found herself lying on a straw pallet on the floor of a dusty little hut. Just as she considered raising herself onto an elbow, a man's arm snuck across her waist. She stilled.
The arm, too, froze.
"Sorry," Cain's voice sounded from behind her. So close. So low. "Just trying to keep us warm."
Lottie nodded and relaxed against him, but only momentarily. His hand splayed itself across her belly and her breath hitched. Did he always have such large hands?
Warmth crept into her cheeks and her insides tickled with anticipation for something she couldn't quite place. Was this how his boots felt when he tugged them on and off each day?
Then with a firm tug, he pulled her close until her back hit his chest, and she forgot how to breathe altogether.
"Did I hurt you?"
She shook her head profusely. She liked this. Even though they were squished up on a tiny pallet of straw because their home was no more, she liked this more than she'd thought possible.
"Relax," he urged.
But she couldn't. Not when his simple words soothed the calamity within her soul, only to send her heart racing a thousand miles an hour. She'd never before been so close to him, or any other man for that matter. How could she relax, when his body felt so large and so warm against hers?
Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to think of anything—anything other than him being large and warm.
"I-I never knew... you were so hot," she choked out.
Wait, what? That wasn't what she was meant to say.
A deep rumble sounded from behind her, and it took a few seconds for her to realise that he was chuckling. She must be out of her mind. Her husband didn't laugh or chuckle or anything like that. He had never. But it almost sounded better than the way he said her name. Almost.
"I mean— I meant, I didn't know you... umm, had a hut. A hut," she said, with great emphasis on the last word.
"Mm." Even that one sound seemed to rumble in his chest, sending warm tingles down her spine. "Never put all your eggs—"
"—in one basket," she finished quickly.
He nodded behind her, his bearded jaw rubbing against her scalp, which now burned from the contact. But it wasn't just her scalp. Her belly. Her back. Everywhere that touched him burned.
"Sleep, Lottie."
After more than three years together, her heart still raced each time he said her name.
How was it possible for her to feel bliss on the most terrible night of her life? To feel as if she'd gained the world in the same breath as she'd lost everything she had worked for?
How was it possible for something so wrong to feel so right?
Even she, as inexperienced as she was in matters of love and romance, knew that she couldn't allow her heart to race off down the wrong path. For it was wrong. Very wrong for her to enjoy this—the first time they shared a bed together.
He likes men. He likes men. He likes men, she repeated to herself, chanting it like a mantra in her head until, finally, she fell into a deep slumber.
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Remember what I said? That trouble comes in threes?
Did you think the burning of their farm was the third trouble? Oh, no, no, no. That was nothing—not in the scheme of things, anyway.
You know that nursery rhyme that kids like to sing to each other and laugh about? The one about how kissing in the tree leads to some little shit in a golden carriage? If that is the only version you have heard, then you have been lied to all your life.
Let me break it down for you:
First comes love, which, as they say, is like war. Easy to start but hard to end.
Then comes marriage, which follows love, just as famine follows war. Both as distressful and tragic as the other.
Then comes— Do I really need to convince you that screaming babies are as horrible as the plague?
So there you have it. The real version of this rhyme that some do-gooders had twisted into something more palatable for the weak of heart. The one that a travelling bard who has sworn an oath of absolute honesty would sing in all the crowded inns:
First comes war,
Then comes famine,
Then comes the plague in a fucking carriage.
Well, maybe it's here already.
Word count: 797
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