Bard and His Lia

CHAPTER FIVE: POETS AND THE PAST

        It was a quiet evening on the lake.  A thin coat of fresh snow was layered on the buildings and boardwalks, but there was no wind.  Inside Lia's house, Bard stood on a stool and, with effort, braced a heavy new beam over her stairwell doorway, thumping it into place with his free hand.  When he finished, he dismounted from the step stool with a groaning sigh.  Lia praised him and thanked him for it, bade him wash up, and then guided him to his seat at the table.  He sat and rotated his stiff, sore shoulders and his neck slowly for a moment, unaware that Lia watched him as he grimaced and winced.

            “Seems you've felt better,” Lia observed with a frown as she set the table.  “What happened?”

            “Agh, I'm all right,” Bard brushed it off.

            Lia stopped what she was doing and turned to mock-scowl at him.  “You, sir, are a liar,” she told him, and Bard laughed. 

            “One of my deliveries,” he told her, raising his arms and stretching the muscles with a little wince.  “A fellow was helping me move some barrels of grain, and he hadn't tied them right – one came down on me, and I strained my shoulders a little under their weight, is all.”

            Lia's eyes grew wide.  “Here you've got heavy barrels falling all over you, and you decided you would just act as if nothing had happened, and let me let you put up that new beam this evening?”

            Bard smiled his wry grin at her.  “I'm fine,” he breathed a little laugh.  Lia glowered at him, and he laughed harder.

            “We'll just see about that,” she muttered under her breath, and dropped the subject. 

            All through dinner, they conversed normally, cheerful and jovial as ever, and Bard thought she'd forgotten it, when, after dessert, she cleaned their plates away and came round to stand behind him.  Bard glanced over his shoulder at her, and winced at the pulling of the muscles.

            “Aha!” Lia exclaimed triumphantly.  “Let me have a look at you,” she ordered, and he indulged her, grinning to himself in a combination of amusement, embarrassment, and pleasure at her attention.  She ran her hands over his muscles, poking and prodding and asking him to tell her when she hit the right places.  Once she understood where the problems lay, she set about massaging the muscles, and Bard groaned quietly, closing his eyes with a deep sigh.  He had to lean against the table to resist her force; Lia's hands were strong.  She told him to put his head on his arms, resting on the table.  He obeyed and was rewarded with what seemed like a blissful eternity of her hands rolling, pulling, pushing, smoothing.  She carefully dug the heels of her hands in deep and smoothed out every large muscle one at a time, working the smaller muscles of his neck and shoulders with strong fingers.  His face, hidden on his arms, winced and grimaced with a pleasurable pain as Lia rubbed the soreness out of him.  After a long time, Lia rested her hands on his shoulders.

            “Phew!” She exclaimed.  “I'm afraid that's all I've got in me,” she laughed, and Bard picked his head up, blinking sleepily up at her, drowsy from the calming effect of her touch. 

            She came round and sat beside him at the table, and he sat up straight, stretching his arms high over his head and wide out to his sides, twisting this way and that in his seat with a long and contented groan, glowing from her doting touch.  “My stars!” he exclaimed in a massive sigh, growing still again.  “What did I ever do to earn that?”  He shook his head in disbelief, smiling broadly at the amused and increasingly satisfied-looking Lia, who laughed.  “Thank you!” he breathed earnestly, his eyebrows high and his eyes wide.