The Red King and the Witch

A Meeting with a Witch

Tommy couldn't fucking move.

The feeling of the girl's touch was still thrumming through his arms, her heated whispered offer still echoing in his ears.

She was a witch.

The girl was a fucking witch.

She knew about the fucking business.

How she knew he didn't have a fucking clue, but he could take an easy guess.

What the fuck had Esme and Polly told her?!

When Tommy opened the door, he expected to see bright mischievous green eyes and her breathtaking grin.

Instead she looked dull and depressed, an emotion she kept for only a few moments before swiftly shifting her mood into that of a seductive enchantress.

Recognizing the girl's quick change in character as a defensive mechanism, Tommy found himself questioning the look of desolation on the girl's face. 

What the fuck happened last night?!

He listened as the girl walked away, her steps quick and firm, a fucking soilders march.

How the fuck had the world changed so much in a hundred years that men would send woman to fight the front?

Did the girl have nightmares about her war?

Is that why her eyes looked so tired and far away?

He needed a fucking cigarette, but he couldn't fucking move.

How the fuck had this happened?!

How the fuck had she figured it all out so quick?!

Tommy closed his eyes and clenched his jaw tightly. Breathing strongly through his nose, listening to the chatter from the den die the moment the girl stepped into the room.

He needed to fucking move, so with a heavy grunt he rolled his neck, trying to loosen the knot set in his shoulders, but it was useless.

The girls voice had left him fucking rigid.

Amanda had spoken to him as if she was the commanding officer and he the errand boy.

She had answered his questions with a playful seductive banter and a few long suffering sighs, all while fixing herself for the day and pretending he didn't fucking exist.

It was only after her confession that Tommy recognized that same smug prideful superior display of rank as that of the fucking American military.

Tommy had met a few Yanks in France.

He remembered how proud and dismissive their officers were, how he burned to smash their faces into the mud for how long they waited for them.

He remembered what the Yanks said about their women, but nothing those men described compared to what just walked past him through that door.

What world could the girl come from that she would speak so openly to him or any man?

Why the fuck did he like it so much? 

Tommy squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the woman kept quiet.

He knew if she spoke in that manner to Arthur or John they'd raise hell, but so far he heard nothing, they were waiting.

He couldn't stop the stream of expletives he cursed in Rokka at the situation he landed himself in.

His mind repeating the words of his late mother, who'd warned him more than once that one day a girl like this would come.