Loving Rain (Watty Awards 2011)

Chapter 16 - The Book

Thanks to Night-World for the amazing cover!!  Also, thanks to Pascwalla for the song to the side, which fits perfectly! Some times it's from Rain's point of view, and sometimes it's as if someone is singing to Rain... brilliant. 

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Loving Rain - Ch. 16

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I woke up to the sound of birds chirping outside. Stepping out of bed, my hands went up to my eyes and tried to wake myself up because I had no idea what today would hold. I looked around the room, and noticed that the closet had been filled with dresses: all my size. A dark blue one that was neither too bold nor too drab caught my attention, and I changed without any help this time. I also took down my hair and braided it in front of the mirror before hearing a faint knock on the door.

               “Yes?” I said, edging towards it. I wasn’t sure who it would be, and I didn’t think I was ready to face Cian after he had so easily broken through my barriers last night.

               “Sorry to bother you,” came the muffled voice through the door. My heart dropped upon hearing it. “But I figured that you might want some company today.”

               I threw the door open, ready to see what Cian really wanted. Then I noticed that it wasn’t Cian standing there, but his younger brother.

               “Oh. Good morning, Gunter.”

               “Good morning,” he said, smiling just like his brother did. “So… Do you accept my offer?”

               One edge of my mouth turned up a bit, but the smile didn’t fully develop. “I don’t know… it depends on what you have in mind.”

               “I was thinking we could walk around town, I could show you all the people to avoid, and maybe we could get into a fight with someone along the way.” He leaned against the door frame, and I vaguely noticed how small he was. He was barely taller than me.

               “A fight? Well, I think I’ll have to pass on that. Sorry,” I said jokingly, because I knew that he wasn’t being serious. I wasn’t used to the light manner these boys had, but it was such a difference from Alan’s calm, dark aura that I was shocked. But I guess Alan had a reason to be so deep: he’d been cursed at a young age, doomed to forever be a Beast. Unless I were to change him, but that would mean I would have to go back, and then… Stop, I told myself, focusing once again on the conversation I was having.

               “Darn. I guess I could settle for just showing you around the castle, then,” Gunter smirked, narrowing his eyelids in what I took as a way to suppress his laughter.

               “How can I refuse that?” I genuinely smiled at him this time. There was something about this place. Or maybe there was just something about the princes…

               “Okay,” he said, taking a few steps down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

               The first thing that I noticed was that everything on the inside was just as homely as the outside had been. Warm paintings covered the walls, candles were lit everywhere, and we couldn’t turn a corner without seeing people walking around. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or distressed at the large quantity of human interaction we were having.

               At one point, near the beginning of the day, we ran into one of Gunter’s friends. He was about the same height as Gunter, but had hair so blonde that it was almost white. When Gunter introduced us, he reached out a hand and said, “Hello, I’m Lynn. You might not have noticed me, but I sit pretty close to Melvin at the table. It’s kind of important, ‘cause the closer you are to the king, the cooler you are.”