An Unexpected Destiny (Completed)

Nothing is Free

I am the first to raise my head from the ground and witness the silence with senses other than hearing. It is shockingly quiet, even for a land that has not been assualted with industrialization. Quiet like a sleeping babe in a sleeping house. Though it isn't a creepy, ominous quiet. It is... Promising, I think and watch a brown, wrinkled leaf fall to the thin grass before me.

"Is it safe?" One of the guys behind me, I think Isen, asks against the ground. I place my palms on the earth and look up but do not rise. It certainly appears safe: Ingrid and her cauldron have disappeared, where to, I hardly care— maybe I won't have to pay the price— and the skies are a grey-blue, the usual color after it rains. The glen is clean and is more vivid in color, like an old painting restored. There is no trace of a fruity scent or pine or sage, only wet earth and raindrops. And no redhead with wild blue eyes.

Staying my severe, stabbing disappointment by tasting the gritty minerals from the dirt I nearly consumed, I sit up on my knees. I blink in haste to disperse the tears threatening to come, yet only make my vision blurry as I tap MacLeod and Jude. Cautiously, the company sits up.

"Where did the witch go?" Jude asks. I shake my head. Frowning, they all take in the tranquil glen. They peer around, their eyes narrow, and I know they are searching for the princess that they put time and money in to find for a stranger.

"The princess isn't here," Isen muses. MacLeod smacks the back of his head and Jude mutters somethig about being an inconsiderate bastard.

"This is a large place," Ferdinand points out, "perhaps we should look around for the princess."

"Or perhaps that was the wrong witch," Isen chirps, receiving another blow from his father and a glare from Jude.

"Perhaps," I whisper and shuffle forward a step. I head to a ring of flat stones. Inside of it, the grass is black. The cauldron had sat here only moments ago, with Ingrid chanting over it. I push my nails into my palms and curse the stone circle, the witch, and the magic I foolishly believed would work. I was a woman from the twenty-first century where science and rationality taught me magic was something in fantasy books and only Harry Potter fans believed in. What the hell was I thinking? That a woman with an aparating woodcarving shop and a ill-tempered crow could bring my adopted sister back? Sure, the boulder with the triad of spirals had brought me here and had taken Merida, but that didn't mean anybody, even a deity, had control over it.

"What the hell were you thinking?" I snap at myself. I wished for a whip to strike myself with for being so stupid. I fling the right boot off and toss it into the stone cirle with all my strength.

A tap on my shoulder makes me jump. I put the stone circle to my back and face Robin, whose eyes are unsually bright and pleasant. I open my mouth to snarl "What?", but he puts a finger to his lips and looks deeper into the glen. His focus is not on his kin; rather over their heads.  A few blackbirds fly over us, and I consider begging them to take me with them when I detect a flash of red between the still, fixed bodies of the company. I feel my face pale.

I leave Robin at the stone circle and shove past the shoulders of the company. When my eyes, devoid of tears at this point, refocus at a spot in the glen flanked by two tall, identical trees, and with my heart beating so fast I vaguely wonder if I might die from it, I see her.

Her back is to me. Her hair is as large and loud as ever: thick red-orange curls and a few strands of blonde you wouldn't notice unless you spent most of your days with her. She wears loose jeans and a blue sweatshirt that even from fifty feet away I can see is ratty.  Her hair moves as one sheet as her head looks to the right, the left, then pauses.

My heart fights its way out of my chest and sprints for her by my throat; it prevents her name from leaving my lips. Instead, my mouth opens and a sound more akin to the excited yelp a dog gives emerges from it. It jumps to her ears. She turns around.