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The parchment in her hand was crinkled

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The parchment in her hand was crinkled. She'd folded and unfolded it so many times in the past two weeks, she worried if she folded it again that it would break in half. But still, she couldn't help it. The paper held her immediate recollection of her visions, and scribbles of potential interpretations of each of them.

Most of them were too short to have any real impression worth obsessing over, and she tried reminding herself she shouldn't obsess over something that could end up being fake or irrelevant.

But still, she stared at the paper for hours at a time trying to figure out what the Noisiv Globe wanted her to know.

The only obvious one suggested that Lorelei would have a baby.

Despite telling herself it was probably many years away, she couldn't help her breath sped up everytime she dwelled on the thought.

And though it had been fifteen days since the globe broke, she hadn't told anyone but the lady at the Knick Knack Shack what had happened.

She kept going back and forth about whether or not to tell James. It felt like a silly thing to occupy so much of her headspace, especially when the future was ever changing and she had no way of knowing when the things in her visions would happen or even if they would happen.

But then she remembered how she looked in her vision, smiling in the mirror as she ran her hand across her stomach, and her stomach churned with emotion.

James, who'd unfortunately gotten a bit more time around her to notice the change of her demeanor, made continual teasing comments about her paper. Such as, "Oh, Liz, she's staring at her parchment again, I think we need to give them some privacy." And, "I'll go home tonight, I wouldn't want to intrude on Lorelei and parchment bonding time."

Despite his teasing, he respected her wish of not wanting to share its contents with him. Yet.

When he wasn't making jokes about her parchment, he was dropping hints about marriage and, keeping to his word, trying to find her singular stipulation. So far his efforts were short of elaborate, more poking the edge of her limits then any real attempts.

She found his efforts endearing, but one glance at her parchment made all of her goodwill fall away. She had one exception, only one she would even consider an early marriage for. And while James had been trying to determine it since April, the Noisiv Globe got a hole in one.

Because once she paused and examined her memory of the vision, as her left hand rubbed down her swollen stomach, Lorelei had noticed a ring on her finger.

<>

It took her a month to tell anyone.

And the first person she told was her coworker, who she barely knew, on accident.

true loves poison • james potterWhere stories live. Discover now