Loretta of the Lamp

Of silence and sky

Loretta had intended to tell Akil all about the curse the gypsy woman had placed over her, the curse that had allowed her the chance to find the way home, but she didn't get a moment really to speak with him alone, and when she woke the following day she was still more than a little annoyed with him for his reaction to Bennou's question. She reasoned that, given the way he had treated her thus far, he was realistically not interested in her at all. Nor did he care what she did. His only interest was in finding a way to get rid of her. For herself, other than a mild concern in the back of her mind about the potential onset of Stockholm Syndrome, she told herself she felt no attraction to Akil.

If the gypsy's spell did work, Loretta considered that everything may return to normal for Akil also, and normal meant trapped in an eternal sleep within the mountain of smoke waiting to become one of the Jin when his life finally burnt out. Loretta shivered, her skin prickling into goose-bumps at the thought of the Jin despite the morning being warm and full of light.

Akil was already up and getting dressed.

"Where are you going?" she asked him.

"To visit someone," he said.

"I'll come with you," she replied, getting out of the bed.

"That won't be necessary."

"Why? Who are you seeing that you cannot take me along?" she wasn't about to let him off the hook easily. She didn't like being left out of his plans, reasoning that currently any plans he made directly affected her.

"I meant that it is not necessary for you to be with me for this."

"If you don't take me with you, do not expect that I will sit here all day just for your sake, feeling sicker and sicker the further away you go."

"Fine then, come." He gave up the fight so quickly that Loretta couldn't hide her surprise.

She turned instead and looked at the pile of clothing she had accumulated. "Do I need to dress nice?" she asked.

He looked up sharply from lacing his boots, "Are you making fun of what I said yesterday?" he said.

"Am I what?" for a moment she didn't realise to what he was referring. "Ahh," she sighed and dropped her hands, "No. I was asking if I should wear a dress or trousers?" If she'd been in any other mood she would have taken the moment to press him to understand why he had described her with such an indifferent word, and why he now had clearly assumed she would be annoyed enough to hang on to it.

She was hanging on to it. But she was not in the mood to let him know it.

She had woken shortly after Akil finally came to bed, and despite dreams still hanging thick on her mind, she had been up most of the night after that, lying flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling, thinking on the gypsy woman's words, 'I will grant what you wish, by making a curse of a kiss...the price of your return must be paid with true love...you will know it well, for the love will not be your own.'

Everything was awkward. In her mind she knew the ideal situation would be for her to be able to tell Akil the truth about everything, that she had found a way to severe their bond, a way for her to go home. She had been given new hope, and it was a hope she longed to share with him, knowing how much of an inconvenience she had been to him. But she couldn't tell him, because the more she fixated on what she knew, the clearer she felt that Akil had to be who the woman was referring too, the 'love that was not her own'.

She reasoned that once it was all over he would be happy. He would get the freedom from her that he wanted, and he would know that she had returned to her home.