Tales From The Emerald Isles: Hope Chest

7

He looked so helpless now, she thought. He looked defeated. When they had first met she had robbed him on the road where two rivers meet and twin oaks cross. She had no idea if anyone actually referred to it like that, but she did, because the torrent created by the two merging rivers pulled her under over and over again. She thought she was going to die in that river.

She had ran after robbing Ash. She held him up by arrow point. "Give me your gold and neither you nor your horse get shot by an arrow today." Farrah remember saying to him as she refocused the arrow every few second between Ash and Selene. Keep him guessing, she thought. If he doesn't care about himself, he must care for this beautiful horse, and if not for the horse then he must value his life more highly than a purse of gold. She thought herself so very clever in that moment.

Ash smiled that big smile of his, it was a smile that she thought was quite smug in that moment, but one that she would come to adore. She wished he were smiling now, instead of being beaten and tied to that post. She remembered him tossing her the purse of gold he had tied to Selene's saddle. "Here, he said. I've no need for this where I'm going and one who would threaten not only a man, but his beast is surely in greater need of it than I," as he stroked Selene's mane. As she caught the purse their eyes met, and in that moment the fun weight of his words fell upon her ears; she simultaneously felt a warmth rise up within her chest and a chill run down her spine into the pit of her stomach. She eyed up his armor tied and secured to Selene's haunches, but knew that she could never carry it, even though it looked like it would fetch more than enough gold to gain passage on a ship to sail away.

Their eyes met once again. He smiled. She smiled. Then she ran...and ran. She ran through the trees, weaving her way through in a zigging zagging fashion. She didn't want him to follow her. She really wanted him to follow her. She was scared that he would, scared that she would see that smile again. Scared that she would feel that way again. She wanted to go back and return the gold. Maybe then the pit in her stomach would go away. But, she needed the gold. She needed more much more gold than this, but this would be a good start, she thought. She knew if she cleared the river she would be clear of this, and then she could forget that she ever saw him. She picked up speed as she ran towards the edge of the river, pressing into the earth she launched herself into the air, but the angle of the ground made the other side look much closer than it really was.

She fell into the river with a sharp scream. The river flowed fast as it met with another, and became a violent torrent of white capped rapids crashing into each other. She tried to grab onto something, but each grip only served as a momentary breathe of life saving air; nothing more. She cracked her head against a rock somewhere in the riverbed. Her vision became speckled with white spots. The water turning her over and over, again and again. She saw two oak trees just overhead. One straight and strong. The other gnarled and twisted, it bisected the other. She had seen a man wearing something like that around his neck. A cross he called it. In honor of his god, who died upon this very...She forgot the rest of what he had said, but she thought it looked like a half built gallows. It reminded her of Odin, and she smiled for a moment before crashing into something hard once again. Will I be meeting him now?

She heard thunder between the waves. She was sure it was Thor, but he would never come for her. She left her people. There would be no Valkyrie for her either. She had not fought valiantly in battle. She was a robber; a thief. Perhaps Loki would come and offer her a deal, or Hel would call for her to join her in the underworld. The thunder rumbled closer as the white spots in her vision began to grow ever wider and more frequent. Something gripped her arm. It was tight and firm. It hurt, but pain didn't matter to her now. She suddenly found herself slammed upon the ground. She coughed hard. She rolled to her side as she continued to cough. A hand slammed against her back. The water that had begun to take the place of air in her lungs flowed out of her as violently as it went in.