Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 13

At Elise's insistence, the girls joined Father Sergius—as they came to know him—for a spot of tea. The younger one, although generally distrusting of adults, decided that recent actions demonstrated Father Sergius to be different than most adults. He hadn't asked their names and didn't seem inclined (he didn't want to punish them or reform them like most adults!), and when they sat down to eat at the café he chose his words very carefully.

"Not to be... involving myself, lasses," the father said, laying his napkin in his lap (he had very good manners, too, which Elise appreciated), "but I wouldn't venture into the military district again, if you can avoid it."

Checking on Dorothy from the corner of her eye, Elise found the witch very near as defensive as she had when confronting the gang. It was a decent enough café in a more or less civil area, which made Elise reasonably sure something else caused her increasingly bad disposition. The witch hadn't been keen on joining the father in the first place.

"Ye," the witch replied before Elise could. "Thanks for the mint." She referred to the ceramic cup of mint tea in her hand. "And the biscuits." With candied chips in her case.

"Of course. With the Empress Ogre taking flight tomorrow morning, an extra meal on the ground is always welcome."

"The Empress Ogre?" Elise chimed in. She'd gotten a cup of hot milk and a small stack of sugar wafers.

"Aye, a great airship bound for the southern rim." Coffee and cake for him.

That sounded wonderful to Elise. She of course had never been south but heard it to be a wild place.

"That sounds like a wonderful adventure," said the girl, dreaming a little bit about the possibility. "What will you do there?"

The father hesitated a moment. "We're hoping to colonize some of the land."

Dorothy looked up.

"Colonize?" Elise asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's when you go to another land to create a colony. It's sort of like... moving to a different home."

The witch scoffed. Her shoulders rolled back.

Father Sergius tried to look mild as he changed the subject. "So how are you enjoying Henden?" he asked Elise.

"Not very much at all," the girl admitted. "It's smelly here and there isn't anything green."

"Aye. I understand. Loebland, my own home, is a green isle as well. I sometimes wish I had spent more of my life there, instead of gallivanting around."

"Oh, but you do such amazing things now!" Elise exclaimed. "Like going to the southern rim in an airship. I've never flown in an airship before. I've never flown at all!"

Dorothy scowled.

"Well, I have, on a broom, I guess," she amended. She had been so wrapped up in talking to the father that she hadn't noticed Dorothy growing very, very agitated. She noticed it now.

"Well, anyway, Father... Maybe you can tell us what you do aboard this airship?" Elise had thought it an innocuous question.

"Yeah, why don't ya father?" Dorothy egged him on. Obviously this was not an innocuous question. Elise's hairs stood on end.

"Well, I'm a military chaplain aboard."

Dorothy's red eyes narrowed. "Yeah?" Her hard, quick voice grew sharper still. All this while she had kept her hand on her bune wand. It didn't make enjoying tea and biscuits particularly easy, but then enjoyment was the last thing on her mind.

"Aye," replied the father. He tried to imagine a way out of this in good conscience. "It probably wouldn't have been my first choice," he elected, "but being of the Old Faith, the spectrum of employment is..." It was then he realized his second and final mistake, "...limited."

"Not the easiest, eh?" Dorothy pushed back her chair. "Problem with your job, do you have?"

"Not meaning to—"

"Of course ya mean it. Ya always mean it." She stood as she said it. "What a bloody laugh: you, a Christian, a priest of all... Ay! Let me know if ya kill any 'barbarians' on your little trip, ay, Father?" The jewelry on her hand made of the lightest of clicks as it scraped the tabletop; the jewelry on her feet, as it scraped the floor. "Sorry. We have to be goin' now."

Dorothy stormed out. Elise, aghast, looked between Father Sergius and her friend. After receiving a look from the father that showed perhaps he understood, or at least that he had nothing to say, Elise hurried out after the angry witch.

"Dorothy!" She managed to catch her hand from behind.

"Let go of me!" Red-faced, confused and cornered, Dorothy tore her hand away. She held it aloft and as gingerly as though it had been snagged by the hot tongs of a blacksmith.

Elise drew back. "What's gotten into you?"

The way Elise looked at her—hurt, as if she had never seen her before—made the world stop spinning for Dorothy. They were back on the busy streets in a district wealthier but not altogether dissimilar from the place they landed. A few watched them at a distance; however, no one nearby wanted to risk the trouble of making eyes with a heated witch.

Elise kept looking at her. In fact, it didn't seem the girl with the foggy grey eyes would look anyplace else until she gave her an answer.

"I just... don't like the military. I don't like priests."

"Why not?"

Unable to withstand the gaze, or provide her a satisfactory answer, Dorothy looked strictly right and downward, at the paving stones.

"Do you not want to talk about it?"

"Not especially."

Sighing, Elise stepped forward. Immediately Dorothy looked up. There, she found a resigned and exhausted face.

"All right, Dorothy, so what are we going to do now?"

It wasn't what she expected, and for some reason she wished Elise had fought her. She wished Elise shoved her and screamed. Instead, she looked sad. Or in those eyes did she see disappointment? Or in those eyes she saw fright.

An action she couldn't repulse, she took Elise by the arm. Elise gulped and looked away; looked down and wanted very much to cry.

Dorothy squeezed tight.

"I'm sorry. Come on. I'll make things right. I'll do better. I... I promise."

Resisting the hot, fuzzy sensation behind her eyes, the ache that constricted her voice, Elise nodded.

Dorothy did not yet know what she would do, but she knew then that she would figure it out very soon. She would not let it be like this. She would do something about it that very night.