The Girl in the Glass

six

Six

Curious was not a word Cait usually used to describe herself. Alas she wasn't really herself.

An hour or so into their ride, after the wind had died down and the sun had come out, Cait had asked Gideon if he would play twenty questions with her. At first he'd grunted and that was the end of that, but as the day drug on second by minute by hour, Cait became extremely bored. She asked Gideon again.

"Fine," He answered, his voice grumpy but in a lighthearted manner, "but that counts as your first question. Only nineteen left."

Cait thought for a moment. She had to ask questions that didn't seem too personal but still gave her information.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Really? That's the best you can come up with?"

"Shut up. I'm the one asking the questions here."

"Okay. Your loss. My favorite color is Black."

Cait thought for a moment.

"What's your favorite animal?"

"I hate all animals equally. I'm an equal opportunity animal hater." He chuckled at his own terrible joke.

"Har Har." Cait said sarcastically. She was glad that, at least for the moment, they could joke around a bit.

"What did you look like before you came here?"

Gideon didn't stiffen or anything, like she'd expected him to. Instead, he cleared his throat. "Well, I was quite strapping. I had glorious blond hair, that was always rakishly curly-ish. My face was pretty much the same, I think."

"Hmm." Cait thought, trying and failing to imagine Gideon with blond hair.

"Okay, where was your favorite place to be?"

"I don't dwell on the past and I don't want to think about what might happen in the future."

"Wow, I'm not sure that qualifies as an answer to my question but..." Cait said, "That was deep. Is that why you hate talking about what happened to you?"

"No. I don't want to talk about what happened to me, because I don't want to talk about what happened to me."

Gideon went silent. Cait turned a bit to look at him, he was staring at her. His face was its usual grim mask, but his eyes had glazed over.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothing." He answered, snapping out of it quickly.

"It was a memory wasn't it?" Cait asked. She'd never seen herself having a memory, but somehow she knew that that's what had been happening to him.

"Yes." He answered simply. Cait didn't say anything.

"You still have twelve questions." Gideon reminded

"What?" Cait asked thrown off guard. "I did not ask eight questions."

Gideon transferred the reigns to one hand and held up five of his fingers. "Now you're down to eleven. First you asked if we could play. My favorite color. My favorite animal. What I looked like before. My favorite place to be. Why I hate sharing my past. What, it was a memory wasn't it, and what, again."

"Those last three didn't count!"

"Yes they did."

Cait rolled her eyes. "You're impossible, did you know that?"

"Yes, I did. Ten."

Cait bit her cheek to keep from laughing. In that moment, Gideon reminded her of her brothers.