𝐎𝐡 𝐋𝐞𝐢 𝐎𝐡 𝐋𝐚𝐢

Childlike Comforts

Hear ye hear ye,
For all those who care to listen, hear the words when I speak: a new queen is upon us as our king has stumbled upon love, a blond beauty from a neighbouring village has supposedly captured the heart of our king. The ton wishes our king the best of luck on his new endeavour. Remember; all is fair in love and war, God save the King.

Elodie lifts her face from her page to see her spectators turn their attention from her read to begin conversation between themselves. The pub, filled with the stench of mud, must and the deathly bitterness of beer now filled with gossip. A hand is extended towards her as she musters her breath.
"Come on Shakespeare, take your bow and let's get you a drink."
A smile is shared between the two as she takes his hand and steps down off the bar. The two sit down and the boy signals at the tender for two drinks.
"Micah I'm not thirsty, just get one for yourself."
before she manages to muster the words two pints of beer slide across the bar towards them. Micah picks up his pint and lightly taps his glass on hers. "it's juice..as if i would get you beer."
He looks at her smugly and raises the glass to his lips. She hesitantly picks up the glass and goes to take a sip for herself, Micah's gaze stays on her firmly. Elodie's eyes meet the clock that hangs above the entrance just as the rotten taste of liquid ale hits the back of her throat. Without a second of a doubt she spits the drink back into the glass it was once in and picks her booklet up in one hand and wipe her mouth with the other.
"I'm slowly losing trust in you every single day Micah," she says, scurrying towards the door.
"Oh well we wouldn't want that-  Where are you off to Shakespeare?" he laughed, cutting himself off as he watched her fumble over her skirt towards the door. Elodie waves her booklet in the air halfway out the door. "I must get this to the publisher before 6 and would you stop calling me that!" she growled assertively.
With two freshly poured pints in front of him Micah sat at the bar by himself, listening to the surrounding conversations.
"How's the family Lyle, still on edge with the wife?"
"Actually quite well, we are expecting"
"Oh Congratulations, next drink is on me!" The older man puts his arm around Lyle's shoulder and the two slide themselves onto two free bar stools.
Micah refocuses his mind on the pint he finished sipping on, realising the waxy stain of pink lipgloss on the rim of the glass. He puts the pint down and starts choking, realising the backwash he just consumed. As he chokes, a lady to his right turns around to him. He spatters in her face without realising.
"You PIG!" she yells and throws her own pint in his face.
Micah stands quickly after getting splattered with shards of glass and warm ale. The woman quickly follows, standing up after him. He quickly weaves through the crowd of people and slithers through the door. He stumbles into the alley next to the bar and lifts his shirt to wipe the beer off his face.

"What's happened to you?" a familiar voice laughs. Micah glaces up in the direction of the voice and sees Elodie standing there with her arms crossed. Her face turns in the direction of the bar door as a loud and angry lady stomps out.
"Where's that Pig!" she yells.
Micah grabs Elodie's hand and pulls her against the side of the brick wall. "What on God's green earth did you do now?" Elodie whispers, cocking her head towards him in a demeaning way. Micah looks to the side of the street and locks eyes with the fuming woman.
"Go go!' Micah pulls on Elodies hand, leading her with him past the middle aged woman with the burning look of anger on her face.
The two run through the town hand in hand, weaving through the people returning home after a laborious day of work.
They finally slow down, reaching the front step of Elodie's quaint little studio. Elodie looks down at her hand that Micah still has a firm grip on.
"You can let go now." She pants, shaking him off her hand like a bug. The two go up the stairs into the small attic space room that she rents. Micah throws himself down onto her desk chair that squeaks just as much as the floorboards, Elodie opens the small arch shaped window. "I believe an explanation is due" she grumbled in a motherly tone looking over her shoulder at Micah, who had draped himself in the chair in a renaissance fashion.
Micah, still catching his breath, throws a singular arm in the air.
"You spat in my beer," he huffs.
Elodie looks at him, holding a hand full of dried white sage in her hand and a lighter in the other. She glared at him menacingly as she set a flame to the sage "No I think that's where you went wrong-" she said contradicting his claim as he cut her off.
"How can I be wrong when I am yet to-,"
"Because you are in fact a liar Sir, when you claim this beer was so called yours it was actually in my ownership." She speaks in a proper, formal tone as if she was pleading an innocent case to the holy church.
"You Maadam don't even like beer! So why is ownership so important to you?" He mimics her tone in a childish manner. Elodie walks in circles with the sage around Micah slowing the smoke to fog the room. She stops and looks him dead in the eye. "Just because it is mine doesn't mean I like it." She smiles and presses her pointer finger to his nose, then walks away putting out the sage in her kitchen basin.

Micah didn't say much after that, he got up and sat on the bed looking out of the window, which had a shockingly good view of the castle on a clear day. Elodie took the seat at her desk and began to write her next entry. The two often did sit in silence, in their own thoughts but in the company of one another, a kind of childish comfort.