It was simply because Noc was enamored with me and it seemed anything I did made him more so.
I tucked that thought safe close to my heart and smiled in a way I knew how it felt having it there showed on my face.
And it did, for Josette asked, “He’s lovely to you in all ways?”
“He’s more than lovely to me in all ways,” I answered.
“I knew he would be,” she whispered. “And this makes me happy.”
It did me as well.
I didn’t share that.
I reached out a hand and took hers, giving it a squeeze.
“Franka? Josette?” a woman called.
We both looked to her standing at the mouth of the area we were in.
“Time for mani-pedis!” she exclaimed, as if she’d said, “Time for you to select your sapphire the size of your palm!”
Josette, my sweet adventurer who greeted every new experience with excitement and delight, gave me an eager look then rushed to the woman.
I pushed up from my seat and followed more slowly, doing it realizing that for some reason I’d taken on this other-world adventure with trepidation. Perhaps because nothing had gone well for me in my past and I could not imagine a future where I could expect even a modicum of that and I was living in unconscious dread of when my luck would turn. Perhaps it was because I was Franka Drakkar and I had not yet gotten used to the new me, I feared I’d lapse into the old, and it would be me who would drive away all the good I seemed to be earning.
I followed Josette and the woman slowly, also realizing this was foolish and feeling my shoulders straighten at the thought.
Antoine had been right.
Kristian had been right.
Josette had been right.
And Noc had been right.
The four people I had allowed closest to me knew me better than I did myself.
The new me was me.
As such, it didn’t seem I was earning anything.
I simply was earning it.
So I should bloody well enjoy it.
As I felt a smile curve my lips, my step increased and I sallied forth on my next adventure of allowing someone (not Josette) to shape my nails.
It was not hand to claw combat with a bear.
But it was my adventure, my life.
I was going to cease fearing it.
I was going to embrace it.
Every second.
* * * * *
“By Hermia,” Josette whispered loudly from her place beside me, her entire body vibrating from the apparatus that was inside the seat that whirled and kneaded, tapped and pounded against our backs. “Another miracle,” she whispered, waving her pink-tipped fingernails my way.
I’d noted, with some envy, Valentine’s varnished nails, something we did not have in our world.
Now both Josette and my nails were the same, shaped and varnished, and the ladies were attending our feet, an utterly sublime experience.
Josette had chosen pink.
I had selected a rich burgundy, the color of my favorite Fleuridian wine.
“We must come here every week, Franka,” Josette carried on whispering.
This, once Noc taught us to drive a vehicle, we would do.
“Agreed,” I declared.
She again smiled hugely.
I looked down at the woman sitting on a low stool at my feet.
“Hail, young woman,” I called, her head twitched and she tipped it back to blink at me. “Can you please inform me of when you’re close to finished?” I requested. “Not,” I went on quickly, “that I’m not enjoying your ministrations. I am. Thoroughly. Just that my, well…erm…”
I looked to Josette and lifted my brows, uncertain how to refer to Noc.
She shrugged.
Ah well.
I turned back to the woman at my feet. “My lover requires me to text him when we’re nearly finished so he can collect us. We’ve both enjoyed our time here, tremendously. But I, for one, am quite famished and he’s to take us out to luncheon.” At her continued stunned expression, I amended, “Lunch and I’d rather not delay in waiting for him to arrive by texting too late.”
“Are you in character for some play or something?” she asked when I stopped speaking.
“In what?” I queried in return.
She stared at me.
She then inquired, “Are you from England?”
I stared back at her.
It was not lost on me I was much different in manner and speech to those of this world. Until I found my footing, at times such as these, an explanation might be required.
Therefore, I gave her one.
“We both are from Lunwyn,” I shared, flinging a hand Josette’s way. “It’s a land far from here. Though we speak the same language, things are much different there.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” she turned to her compatriot on a stool at Josette’s feet. “Have you heard of it?”
That woman shook her head.
“It’s very difficult to get to. Quite, undeveloped, as it were, in comparison, of course, with your,” I threw out my other hand again, indicating the soil under the floor on which we sat, “America.”
“Right,” she said. “Okay.”
“So, to end, are we nearly finished?” I asked.
“Yeah, uh, just, you know, the massage and polish. Maybe twenty minutes. But you should probably text now.”
I nodded. “My gratitude.”
“Right,” she mumbled then went back to my feet whereupon she commenced massaging them and my calves.
Marvelous.
I had to request another who worked at the establishment to help me liberate my phone from my reticule so I didn’t spoil my varnish and it was not easy poking at it with wet nails.