Sulfur & Tealights

Perspective

For over an hour, thin, spindly fingers hovered around the limp, brown cactus hanging over the side of its plastic pot as Mel tried to force her will on it. The more time that passed, the more frustrated she got, until, finally, she pushed her chair back, accidentally banging it against one of the counters. Once her brief moment of startlement passed, she stretched. Further frustration welled up at the sensation of soft hair against her face. No matter how she positioned it, it descended over her shoulder in a thick curtain.

"Would you like me to braid your hair for you?" Ba'al asked.

Thirty minutes into her attempt to revive her plant, she'd grown uncomfortable with his presence behind her and asked him to "entertain himself with something else". She had then watched him take her laptop and go somewhere she couldn't see him, much to her relief. Since he left her sight, her mind had not drifted to him once, so his sudden appearance took her by surprise.

"You know how to braid?" As the question left her, she regretted it.

"Of course. Did you take for granted the beauty of my considerably long hair?" Naturally, he spoke with exaggerated offense.

"It looked so incredible as it was, I could not imagine it up," she shot back sarcastically.

"Well, I suppose I will forgive you this time."

Mel snorted. "Gee, thanks."

"My offer still stands."

With a sigh, Mel turned her back to him and acquiesced. "Sure."

Almost immediately, Ba'al's long fingers began to comb through her tresses. She felt an initial surge of irritation, but soon the feeling soothed her temper. He painlessly untangled a few knots in her otherwise straight hair, then set to work separating it.

"Tell me a little about your childhood," he said distractedly.

The request caught Mel off guard. He hadn't wanted to know anything personal about her, except her name, before. "Why?"

"We live together. We will die together. I think it is only natural I know something about you," he explained the obvious.

"You're right," Mel admitted.

They had only been together one full day, yet so much seemed to have happened in that single day it felt odd that she was still unused to the concept of spending an eternity with the being rearranging her hair.

"Well, my parents inherited an inholding on the wildlife refuge next to Grand Lake, but they moved to New Iberia when I was...maybe fourteen? Anyway, I didn't like it there, so I moved out after I turned eighteen."

"You moved here?" he asked.

"Yes." Mel wondered what he was thinking.

"Why?"

"It was cheap. I didn't have a lot of money, and New Iberia was too big for me."

If she'd had a choice, she would have moved back to the house she grew up in, since she never stopped thinking of it and the land around it as her home. The apartment her parents bought in the city was cramped and stuffy, and the constant sound of cars and people took some adjustment.

"Could you explain what an inholding and a wildlife refuge are?"

Ba'al had said he was last summoned in the 1800s, but it was easy to forget because he didn't talk at all like one would expect of someone from that period. Which seemed odd, now that she formulated the thought into words. She resolved to ask him about it later.

"A wildlife refuge is an area of public land set aside for the protection of the plants and animals in that area. An inholding is private property inside a publicly owned spot of land," she explained.