Fantasyland: Midnight Soul Part 65

"It's a miracle!" she cried.

It was, indeed, a very attractive hairstyle.

"You look lovely, my dear."

She got close to where I was sitting, bent over me and started plucking carefully at my hair with expert attentiveness. "Gads, Franka, I see what they've done. Released some of the buoyancy by cutting layers into the length to take off the weight. Extraordinary," she breathed, leaned back and examined my face. "And your brows are quite lovely, arched like that. All in all, I must say, you look even more beautiful than normal," she declared. "Mas...I mean, Noc will be even more enamored with you when he sees you."

I had no doubt this would be true.

And the reason why was not my hairstyle, which was really quite lovely, a change but not much of one, however it made an impact. Or my brows, which were always arched but the delicate sweep of them now was most effective.

It was simply because Noc was enamored with me and it seemed anything I did made him more so.

I tucked that thought safe close to my heart and smiled in a way I knew how it felt having it there showed on my face.

And it did, for Josette asked, "He's lovely to you in all ways?"

"He's more than lovely to me in all ways," I answered.

"I knew he would be," she whispered. "And this makes me happy."

It did me as well.

I didn't share that.

I reached out a hand and took hers, giving it a squeeze.

"Franka? Josette?" a woman called.

We both looked to her standing at the mouth of the area we were in.

"Time for mani-pedis!" she exclaimed, as if she'd said, "Time for you to select your sapphire the size of your palm!"

Josette, my sweet adventurer who greeted every new experience with excitement and delight, gave me an eager look then rushed to the woman.

I pushed up from my seat and followed more slowly, doing it realizing that for some reason I'd taken on this other-world adventure with trepidation. Perhaps because nothing had gone well for me in my past and I could not imagine a future where I could expect even a modic.u.m of that and I was living in unconscious dread of when my luck would turn. Perhaps it was because I was Franka Drakkar and I had not yet gotten used to the new me, I feared I'd lapse into the old, and it would be me who would drive away all the good I seemed to be earning.

I followed Josette and the woman slowly, also realizing this was foolish and feeling my shoulders straighten at the thought.

Antoine had been right.

Kristian had been right.

Josette had been right.

And Noc had been right.

The four people I had allowed closest to me knew me better than I did myself.

The new me was me.

As such, it didn't seem I was earning anything.

I simply was earning it.

So I should b.l.o.o.d.y well enjoy it.

As I felt a smile curve my lips, my step increased and I sallied forth on my next adventure of allowing someone (not Josette) to shape my nails.

It was not hand to claw combat with a bear.

But it was my adventure, my life.

I was going to cease fearing it.

I was going to embrace it.

Every second.

"By Hermia," Josette whispered loudly from her place beside me, her entire body vibrating from the apparatus that was inside the seat that whirled and kneaded, tapped and pounded against our backs. "Another miracle," she whispered, waving her pink-tipped fingernails my way.

I'd noted, with some envy, Valentine's varnished nails, something we did not have in our world.

Now both Josette and my nails were the same, shaped and varnished, and the ladies were attending our feet, an utterly sublime experience.

Josette had chosen pink.

I had selected a rich burgundy, the color of my favorite Fleuridian wine.

"We must come here every week, Franka," Josette carried on whispering.

This, once Noc taught us to drive a vehicle, we would do.

"Agreed," I declared.

She again smiled hugely.

I looked down at the woman sitting on a low stool at my feet.

"Hail, young woman," I called, her head twitched and she tipped it back to blink at me. "Can you please inform me of when you're close to finished?" I requested. "Not," I went on quickly, "that I'm not enjoying your ministrations. I am. Thoroughly. Just that my, well...erm..."

I looked to Josette and lifted my brows, uncertain how to refer to Noc.

She shrugged.

Ah well.

I turned back to the woman at my feet. "My lover requires me to text him when we're nearly finished so he can collect us. We've both enjoyed our time here, tremendously. But I, for one, am quite famished and he's to take us out to luncheon." At her continued stunned expression, I amended, "Lunch and I'd rather not delay in waiting for him to arrive by texting too late."

"Are you in character for some play or something?" she asked when I stopped speaking.

"In what?" I queried in return.

She stared at me.

She then inquired, "Are you from England?"

I stared back at her.

It was not lost on me I was much different in manner and speech to those of this world. Until I found my footing, at times such as these, an explanation might be required.

Therefore, I gave her one.

"We both are from Lunwyn," I shared, flinging a hand Josette's way. "It's a land far from here. Though we speak the same language, things are much different there."

"I've never heard of that," she turned to her compatriot on a stool at Josette's feet. "Have you heard of it?"

That woman shook her head.

"It's very difficult to get to. Quite, undeveloped, as it were, in comparison, of course, with your," I threw out my other hand again, indicating the soil under the floor on which we sat, "America."

"Right," she said. "Okay."

"So, to end, are we nearly finished?" I asked.

"Yeah, uh, just, you know, the ma.s.sage and polish. Maybe twenty minutes. But you should probably text now."

I nodded. "My grat.i.tude."

"Right," she mumbled then went back to my feet whereupon she commenced ma.s.saging them and my calves.

Marvelous.

I had to request another who worked at the establishment to help me liberate my phone from my reticule so I didn't spoil my varnish and it was not easy poking at it with wet nails.

I accomplished it, a whoosh noise happened telling me it was sent, the phone sounded in my hand, making both Josette and I grin at each other like schoolgirls, but my grin deepened when I saw Noc's name above a little bubble that was underneath my little bubble.

Be right there, sugarlips, it decreed.

Ah Noc.

My Noc.

A goodness I earned.

The best there could be.

Half an hour later, I was not thinking such kind thoughts about Noc.

I was grinding my teeth.

This was because he was laughing his a.r.s.e off, doing it carrying me to his vehicle, with me wearing brightly-colored, flimsy, weightless pieces of nothing that looked like the footwear Josette had been wearing since she donned this-world clothes, except much less substantial.

I had been shuffling along, rather gracelessly (to my utter despair), holding my shoes and my bag, until Noc took pity on me and swung me up in his arms.

He didn't take that much pity considering he did it as I'd mentioned, laughing his a.r.s.e off.

Apparently, after a pedicure was complete, you either had to wait some time for your varnish to dry or you were to arrive in footwear that would not demolish the efforts your pedicure person put into making your feet look better than they ever had. Something you'd paid no mind to all your life. Something that seemed, from the moment the last brush of varnish went on, crucial to existence.

This bringing of the appropriate footwear being something I did not do.

Noc walked me out to his car, opened the door while still carrying me, and ducking us carefully to avoid slamming us both into the roof, he deposited me in my seat.

Through this, I had ignored his existence, a difficult task considering he was carrying me, but one I pulled off with aplomb (in my estimation), until that moment when I could no longer do so since he placed his hand on my jaw and forced me to look at him.

He was still laughing.

This meant I began glaring.

"We'll get you some real flip-flops for the next time you go to a spa," he said, continuing not to put the slightest effort into quelling his mirth.

"I've been in your world not but two days and I still can say with some authority I am not a flip-flop person," I announced haughtily.

His waning laughter burst forth yet again and he felt, for some reason, the need to kiss me even while allowing the full force of his hilarity to continue to flow.

This he did.

When he ended it, he was only chuckling.

Regardless of the fact that his laughter tasted lovely on my tongue, I was still glaring.

He took in my glare and that made him no less amused.

"Will it help if I say you look cute, even shuffling like an invalid?" he asked.

"No...it...will...not," I snapped.

Noc. Still no less amused.

"How about if I tell you, three hours ago, someone asked me if you could get any more beautiful, I woulda said it was an impossibility, but I've been proved wrong?"

"How about if I tell you, if you remove yourself from my vicinity, perhaps I'll no longer wish to kick you somewhere unpleasant?" I returned with false sweetness.

"Is it vanity, baby?" he queried, now only grinning, which was no less annoying, "Or pride?" he finished.