Strange Aeons [Book 1]

24. The Man with the Silvery Voice [part II]

Vopros had left first.

He had arrived under Irissa's house right on time and the girl had come out with the dignity of a queen. She was wearing a red dress that exalted her perfect skin and raven hair, let loose like a river of black gold over her pale naked shoulders.

She moved towards Vopros's car and stopped a second to look at it.

«If you no like car, you go alone.» said Vopros, after three good minutes of her staring at his precious Simca. She snapped out of it and put an apologetic smile on her face. Vopros grumbled and extended himself over the passenger's seat, opening the door to her from inside.

Cautiously, she sat down in the car. She checked that her dress wasn't caught in the car door and slammed it. Twice before it closed properly. Then she fastened her seatbelt. Or at last, she tried, because it had been broken for years. As much as Vopros liked to make changes and improvements on the Simca 1000, he never worried about the details. Like seatbelts. Or airbags.

«I still no understand why you asked me to bring you.» he asked, revving up the engineì.

«I just wanted to spend time with you. That's all!» she said, sitting very ladylike.

«I can be grandfather to you.» he stated, going back into the traffic.

«I know, but you're... interesting.» she looked down at her hands collected in her lap, with a sudden rush of rosy color to her cheeks.

«I old man who blows up stuff. You find it interesting, you read storybooks.» he suggested, following the slow evening Boston traffic.

Irissa bit her lower lip.

«May I ask you a personal question?»

Vopros darkened. Then sighed. The road was long and blocked with traffic.

«You may.»

«Are you truly an anomaly?»

Vopros kept his eyes forward, didn't even flinch, maintaining the most perfect and awkward silence. For five minutes. Then, she decided to speak again.

«Well?»

«I say you may ask. I never say I answer.»

«Oh, come on! I won't tell anyone!»

«You won't. Because you not know.» his tone was blunt. His lack of eye contact was a very good dissimulation of the clenched jaw she could guess under the cured beard and mustaches. His eyes had slightly narrowed, and his grip on the wheel had tensed.

«I don't ask to judge you, or to make fun of you, or whatever you may think. I just want to know...»

«Why you want to know?» asked Vopros, after five other minutes of complete silence. «So much you ruin your evening asking old man to be your plus one?»

«I just wanted to hear your story to... better understand.»

«Why you care?»

She bit her lower lip to the brink of bleeding.

«Because... I am one. I am an anomaly.» she said, in one whisper.

«You strange power, you just young, you learn to use it, no problem.» he minimized, without even looking at her.

«I can't control it. Because my power is not a problem. The other... Irissa, that comes out, she's a completely different Irissa. We're two, in this body.»

«That happens a lot with mages. Magic is no good with head.» he said, with a darker tone now. «You just remember who is real Irissa and she stays under control.»