LOS TIEMPOS PERDIDOS (THE LOST TIMES)

CHAPTER 4: FLESHES AND BLOODS

"If the sins of flesh ever got old I didn't have enough years for me."

An array of sunlight  had escaped from the small window pane of the picker's cabin. The sun shined from above as she covered her eyes with her hand, contemplating to the things she had let herself be done last night. Lorraine could literally smell the scent she left from her tired and naked body. She was torn between considering herself being lucky or not but she knew she wasn't and would never be. Her right arm reached the other side of the bed just not to be surprised by its emptiness. With her eyes still shut close, she chuckled. "What are the things that a person like me should expect, right?"

Lorraine got herself ready, the picker made it sure to cover all the marks that the people shouldn't have seen with their naked eyes. As the memories from last night had started to hunt her, she washed it away together with the cold water she poured to herself, reminding her  insides for a million times that she shouldn't have let the noblewoman grabbed her last piece of sanity.

While fixing her hair in front of a small mirror, a folded piece of paper had caught her attention, a paper that she did not remember putting in there. Slowly, the picker opened it, a well-written cursive letter had caught her attention.

Lorraine,

Come and see me, at the horse's stable. Don't make me wait.

Alessa.

The picker took a few deep breaths before she crumpled the paper on her hands and threw it away on her trash bin. Shaking her head, she whispered. "She's a spell and I shouldn't have let myself consumed her."

--

"Where did you go last night?" The old maid of the house appeared in the noblewoman's bedroom. An appearance she did not expect in an early morning, Emilia leaned down to grab the bottle of whiskey lying on the floor. "Adelita saw you. Your father had been also looking for you but they managed to acknowledge him to let you be." The woman said. She silently fixed herself as she felt hoarse voice coming out from her throat. Alessa answered.

"I went out to breathe some fresh air. Realization just hit me that this house had been suffocating me from the day I let my eyes open to this cruel world." The maid could literally felt the hurt in every words that the woman said when her eyes caught something on her neck, a red-violet bruised mark lying on her pale skin. Suspicious. She cracked a fake cough before she sat down on a chair next to her.

"Your father wanted me to tell you that he'll be out for the next three days, he had a business intervention with the Rodriquez." The woman nodded her head and stood up.

"Have you seen Lorraine on the field today?" The maid's eyebrow perked up. She knew that the noblewoman never looked for someone nonetheless she needed something from that person and that rarely happened. "If so, tell her to come to the horses stable." She ordered in her not-so-usual monotone voice, her back radiating a different aura that even the older woman did not know what could be the reason behind it, through the years, as she grew up, the young Romero had shown a lot of different sides of her and this one was a bit far from what the older used to know.

She nodded her head and stood up, her eyes checking whether the young noblewoman needed some help. "Alessa." It had been usual thing for the maid to call the young woman by her name, Alessa chose to just made it a bit informal for the both of them as the time passed, it wasn't that a big deal for her as she knew Emilia to be working for them right before she was even born, a little bit trusted of a person she guessed. She hummed in response, her head's lining up with her sea of thoughts. "I don't care what type of businesses you have associated with that new picker but please, make it sure to not include your father's name with it, you know how much he wants to make it clean so as your reputation as the family's only heir."