Colonel Seeders' Mail Order Bride, Hank

11 Michelle

Michelle:

She cried until her tears dried up and she fell asleep. Sometime later, she opened her eyes to a dark room. She clicked a button to remove the glass shield and looked around, remembering arriving and eating with Hawk, and the argument with Hank. Her hand itched under the bandaged and she slowly unwrapped it. Her skin looked as good as new. She breathed in deep and then sat up to poke at her ribs. No pain. She raised her top. No bruises. The bed healed her while she slept.

When her stomach growled, she made her way to the door, opening it slowly so that she wouldn't wake anyone. At least twenty bags stood outside her door, all containing clothes and toiletries of the most expensive kind. She moved the bags aside so that she could get to the stairs, but then stopped when Hawk's door opened.

"We didn't want to wake you up. It's all for you. Dad wasn't sure what you would like, so he got one of everything that did not smell like vomit. There's stuff to decorate your bathroom, some towels and robes. He even went to my uncle to get underwear. Uncle Xander has a new range that fits any size. Like the dress you had on when you got here. Anyway, there's a plate of food in the oven for you."

He went back into his room and shut the door, leaving her in the dimly lit hallway. Her heart ached at the sad look on his face, but she needed a few minutes alone to get her head on straight.

With a deep sigh, she dragged the bags into her room and then headed down to the kitchen. It appeared to be an extension of the entry hall. A stove and grill, separated by a large silver basin, stood against the curved cream wall. A large chest freezer, bigger than any she had ever seen on Earth, stood to the right of the stove and a double door fridge with a picture of a bottle on a display screen stood to the left of the grill.

The rich aroma of the grilled meat still lingered in the domed room, making her stomach rumble. She quickly searched for the plate of food and ate it without bothering to heat it. She got half way with the plate, eating at the kitchen table that could easily seat eight people, before searching through the cupboards above the appliances for a glass.

The juice she poured from a bottle in the fridge must have been a mixture of peach and pear, but had a citrus fragrance to it. Unfortunately, before she could take more than a sip, the glass disappeared out of her hand and Hank dumped it down the drain.

"It's off." He rinsed the glass, pulled out the bottle, which he emptied into the basin, and then poured a light coloured juice from another bottle.

She sipped it, tasting and smelling the difference, before drinking down half of it. "Thanks. I wouldn't have known if you didn't say something. I, uh, only drank juice from those small cartons they served-"

Once again she almost said too much and turned her attention to her food. Hank just grunted and walked back up to his room. The man walked so loudly and yet she never heard him come down. Unless he had been downstairs all along.

She finished her food and juice, washed the dishes and then went back to her room, cluttered by the bags that had been left at her door.

With the light adjusted so that she could see, but not disturb anyone, she went through the bags and packed the fur clothes into the large closet to the right of her bed. When she started packing underwear into the top drawer of the dresser, she remembered what Hawk told her. Xander, the fashion designer had made her dress and underwear. The Xander. Actresses, actors, famous people, begged him to make clothes for them and she, an orphan that had been washed up on some deserted mountain (according to her new bio, not that the old one sounded better), a nobody, had bags full of underwear and a few dresses hanging in her closet, made by Xander. And she would be marrying his brother. Little Michelle Steyner would be the sister-in-law to the most amazing designer in the universe.