Bard and His Lia

CHAPTER ONE: LONG LOST NEIGHBORS

        Bard was just about to set about scrounging up some dinner when he heard a knock on his kitchen door.  The wind had finally died down outside, but the late afternoon sun had loosened the grip of the heavy snow and ice on his roof, and he heard it creak and groan in response to the knocking.

            Who the devil could this be? he thought grumpily to himself, cursing the knocker for reminding him that he hadn't yet cleaned this last round of snowfall and icicles from his roof.  Forty-five years old but feeling a thousand after four long days in a row on the icy waters of the river, Bard rose on stiff and tired knees and frowned through the curtain at the silhouette outside.

            As he opened the door, a number of things happened at once.  At the same instant that he registered that a woman stood before him, he also realized that she was about to be crushed by a downfall of ice from his roof.  Before the creaking groan which promised her terrible discomfort and possible injury could pay out on its threat, Bard seized her by the shoulders and yanked her sharply toward himself, stepping backwards through his door with her held tight in his arms.  A soft and breathy “oh!” emanated from the woman's mouth, audible to him (over the din of the falling ice hitting the planks of his walkway) only because she was so near his ear.   Chunks of ice broke off and slid across the planks in every direction, including through his door and into his kitchen, skidding to a halt as they hit the woman's and his ankles.

            “Bloody damnation,” he muttered under his breath, kicking the ice back out the door as he released the woman.  “Are you all right, ma'am?” he asked, frowning, without looking at her.

            Instead of speaking, the woman only looked from him to the ice and started chuckling.  “I'm sorry!  It's only, that was quite a way for me to introduce myself to a neighbor!”  She continued to chuckle, and Bard could only glance awkwardly sidelong at her and back to the ice chunks on his floor.  “I'm all right, sir, I assure you.”  She giggled lightly again.  Bard looked up at her and properly saw her for the first time.

            She was bundled in layers with a bright blue scarf at her throat and wrapped up over her head, which served to accentuate the pale beauty of her heart-shaped face, framed on either side with long, large, bright red curls of silken hair.  Her cheeks and the tip of her elegant nose were flushed pink from the cold, as were her soft, curving lips.  She was smiling warmly at him, and her blue eyes, as deep and as brilliant a blue as the scarf, shone and sparkled with a liveliness that entranced Bard.  He had never seen her before, and that was most unusual in Laketown.

           When Bard only blinked at her, his bewildered frown persisting, she gestured to the door and asked playfully, “Do you reckon I should go back out, and we'll try that over again from the start?”  The woman chuckled under her breath. 

            Bard glanced down at the ice again and felt his cheeks grow warm, but he grinned a little in spite of himself.  “No – I'm sorry.  How can I help you?”  He glanced sidelong at the woman and busied himself with brusquely shoving the ice and snow out with a nearby broom.

            “I've come to meet you, neighbor!” the woman enthused, and Bard noticed in his periphery that she held a basket in her hands.  He looked up again, pausing in his work.  The woman raised her eyebrows at him and leaned forward a little, clearing her throat very softly, still grinning, with that twinkle of amusement in her eye.

            “Yes, come. . .come in,” Bard muttered lamely, gesturing toward his kitchen table.  “I'll just be a. . .” and he turned his back to her, very quickly shoving the large chunks of snow and ice over the side of his walkway, listening for the thuds and splashes as they hit the planks or water below.  When he'd done, he came back inside, securing the door behind him, and found that the woman had set her basket on the floor, loosed her hair from the scarf, and was shaking a little sprinkling of snow out of it.