The Purple Eyed Girl

2. Unexpected visitors

"Always feeling the need to keep me sharp, huh?" I laughed.

"Looks like you don't need it, kiddo, your senses are incredible." My father chuckled as he removed the sword from my neck.

I turned around and gave him a big hug. "Did you get off work early?"

He scratched his head. "Yeah, couldn't do any more work today, so I thought I'd finish up early to go to dinner with my favorite daughter."

"I'm your only daughter." I narrowed my eyes.

"Exactly." He shrugged before getting into his car, signaling me to follow him to the restaurant.

As we walked in there, everyone's eyes immediately fell on me. A couple of people nodded to me, making me feel uncomfortable. Why were people so obsessed with an eye color?

"Just ignore them, Iola." My father said while he sat down at our table.

"That's easy for you to say. Your eyes are blue." I laughed. "Why are we going to a restaurant anyway? You know that I hate going to public places."

He gave me a small smile. "I thought we could do something nice for your 19th birthday."

I frowned, tilting my head. "My birthday is in, like, two months."

Something wasn't right. I could feel it in my bones, like his worries projected into my own body, and I could see it as I looked at him because his body language was different than usual. I could tell by the way he bounced his left foot up and down, how he subtly scratched his right wrist and how he slightly hunched up his shoulders. Something or someone was stressing him out and I hated seeing my father like this. 

"It's work, isn't it?" I looked at him softly.

He rubbed his temples and let out a sigh. "Yes, the case you caught us talking about last night, it's nearly impossible to solve. Not one warrior has been able to find the Crosslings, they're hiding somewhere. And it's of the utmost importance that we find them."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"NO!" His eyes shot wide open for a second before returning to their normal expression. "No, you can't. It's classified after all."

Well that was weird. It was the first time I had ever seen him react like this, like he was genuinely worried about his work. He had always been secretive about it, but last night in the dark was something new. And now he reacted like this? Strange.

I smiled at him. "They're going to find those Crosslings, dad. They're just a couple of outcasts anyway, right? How hard can it be?"

"I don't know. It seems like this case is going to take longer than normal." He sighed, playing with the food on his plate.

Deciding to let it go, I changed the subject. There was no point in stressing him out even further. 

"How about we have a movie marathon of your favorite movies tonight for a change?" I asked while I stole some of his dessert. 

He slid the rest of it over to me and grinned. "You sure that you can handle eight hours of Indiana Jones?"

I rolled my eyes. "Of course I can, I'm a professional binge-watcher after all. Besides, it's young Harrison Ford we're talking about here."

A big smile appeared on his face. "Good. That's settled then." 

As I took another bite out of the dessert that was now mine, I returned the smile. Seeing him happy made me happy.

My mind immediately went over the stressed image of my father again, making me wonder why work was draining him so much this time. While I repeated our earlier conversation in my head, an eerie feeling formed in my stomach, telling me this was going to be the last normal night we got to spend like this together for a long time.