Trouvaille (#featured)

· f o u r t e e n ·

Faye couldn't think of more interesting things than what the villagers did in celebration of what they call the "appeasement of the spirits." Whatever they called it, to her, it was the best send-off party she had ever been in.

There was the ceremony of the men catching a hog while they were blindfolded. Then, there was the tasting of different...things for the women. Chinook told her that both signified man's ignorance and how they stumble and finally achieve peace and happiness once they understand what the spirits were trying to tell them.

The rest of the day was devoted to giving them parting gifts. By far, the strangest thing she received was a necklace made out of the fangs of a fish. She didn't know what kind of fish had teeth that large, but all she knew was that she didn't want to swim in waters infested by them.

The festive mood didn't end with the giving of their gifts. It didn't matter that the sun had set quite some time ago. When usually, the darkness prompted the villagers to return to their huts, this night, they were even more lively than they were when the sun was up. People didn't stop singing and dancing around the fire, and though Faye didn't understand a word, she enjoyed the energy and the abandon by which they did everything. Even the chief and his wife, as old as they were, rarely sat down beside her and Nathan. The only likely explanation was that whatever they were drinking was a mix of something that can make them abandon their inhibitions and supply them vast amounts of energy. And she was sure it was not a mixture of alcohol and Red Bull, but it was something akin to that.

Beside her, Nathan just watched on sometimes laughing and singing in the wrong lyrics without a care that they hardly resembled what the natives were saying. But for the past half hour – or at least, it felt like half an hour – he was having a faraway look in his eyes as the light of the fires flickered across his face. The play of shadows and light accentuated some hard planes in his face that highlighted his masculinity. It was something Faye had never seen before and did not expect to see from him. In her mind, he was still the chubby bully who wanted to take all the glory for himself. The more she looked at him, though, the more it sank to her that he was a changed person. He was no longer a boy, but a man – a man with a well-defined body and would have no problems being cast in Baywatch. Even his hair no longer looked like the one Moe sported from the Three Stooges. Sure it was messy from lack of combing, but somehow, it suited him. She wondered how they would feel like between her fingers...

She suddenly shook her head and felt her face burn. What was she thinking? She had to remember who he was! Nathan bloody Prescott. The person who—

"Faye?"

She jumped suddenly found herself staring into his eyes. "Huh? What? Sorry?"

"I haven't said anything yet," he said in an amused tone. "Got something on your mind?"

"No!"

"You're red." He touched her cheek lightly.

"It's cold." She wasn't lying. It was cold. But she knew in her heart her flushed cheeks and the cold air weren't related at all. And she was sure that her suddenly erratic heartbeat had everything to do with her flushing and the tingling sensation on her cheek where their skin met.