The Allies of Old; Book Two- Renewal: Chapter Twenty-One "Risking Wrath"
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Book Cover created in acrylic by the extremely talented @therealpaul
If you have not read the first book of the series, "Reborn", it is advisable you do so before reading "Renewal" or you will be lost. This link will provide you with a series summary as well as all sixty-eight chapters of Reborn
Chapter Twenty-One
Anna stood at the boundary of the property her heart drumming in her chest. It had been several days since she’d gotten drunk off her booty and things between her and Jared had not improved, if anything he was icier than before. Which, to put it lightly, made him completely unapproachable.
She still hadn’t worked up the courage to give him the letter she’d written and re-written, she couldn’t shake the fear that if he learned of her human background he would be done with her once and for all. And despite everything, that wasn’t what she wanted.
She was currently contemplating breaking his number one rule and leaving the premises, though the thought of being caught had turned her legs to lead. But she hadn’t checked in with her dad in over two weeks and she desperately needed to call him. Just a brief little-Hey how are you, I’m fine, love you, call you next week- would do, but in order to do that she needed a phone.
Jared had left about twenty minutes earlier. He was usually gone for hours, though once in a while she could feel him nearby as if he were observing her.
She wished she’d thought of doing this the day she’d found the scotch since Jared had left shortly after watching her dance on the roof and hadn’t returned until the following afternoon. Even in her drunken haze she’d been able to sense he’d gone a long distance away and it would have been nice to have the assurance that he wouldn’t catch her.
Unfortunately that seemed to have been an isolated incident. She wondered where he had gone because wherever it was it hadn’t improved his demeanor.
She made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. If she was going to do this she had better stop waffling and get on with it, she was close to losing her nerve as it was. She stretched out her hearing and the sound of music filled her ears, some kind of shindig going on at what sounded like a bar, an excellent place to find a willing phone lender.
But what if he caught her? She shivered violently, butterflies wreaking havoc on her tummy. Don’t be such a Nancy, she told herself, what’s the worst thing he can do? She squeezed her hands into fists deciding it was better not to think of the worst things he could do. If she made it quick he would never know. Get in, call, get out.
Okay, let’s do this. She took a deep breath, dimmed, and blurred towards the music.
She stopped herself just outside of her destination and found it was indeed a pub. She located a convenient and inconspicuous place to undim and cautiously walked inside.
The place was filled with the upbeat sounds of fiddles and guitars, and the people inside were making merry in a big way. She scanned the room for someone who looked friendly.
“Yer a pretty lass, where’d ye come from?” A burly man appeared to her right holding a pint sized beer mug. Golden liquid was sloshing over the side and she had to scoot backwards to avoid getting splattered.
“Um, I’m not from around here, and I was wondering if I could use someone’s phone to call my father?”
“What’s this? American? Need a phone, sure,” he swung to the left splashing more beer, “Camilla, go’ a phone this American lass can use?”
A plump woman with a hearty smile approached them
digging a phone from her oversized purse. She held her hand out and Anna took it smiling gratefully. “Thank you so much, I won’t be long.”
“Oh Pah, don’t worry ‘bout that, ye jus’ be sure and get yer’self a toddy when yer done, it’s an engagement party and the more the merrier!” she grinned at Anna and bustled off.
Anna located the restroom and called her dad, feeling good about how little time she’d taken so far. It rang five times and his voicemail picked up. That was even better, she could assure him all was well in less than a minute!
“Hi dad, sorry I didn’t call, you won’t believe it but I lost my stinkin’ phone again, I know I have to be more careful. Um, I’m using a random person’s phone right now so you can’t reach me on it, but I’ll let you know when I get a new one. Oh yeah, I’m in Scotland at the moment! Anyway, hope everything is good with you, I love you.”
She hung up and left the bathroom doing a rapid search for Camilla but the burly man found her first and she handed the phone to him. She started to tell him to thank Camilla for her when a younger, less robust guy grabbed hold of her wrists and whirled her out on the dance floor.
She tried to pull free gently, but he was having none of it, forcing her to try and keep step or show her strength. “I can’t dance with you,” she raised her voice to be heard over the music, “I have a jealous boyfriend!”
“Eh? Where is the lad?” his brown eyes sparkled with mischief and she noticed he looked a little like the burly guy.
“He’s at home…look he doesn’t know I’m here and I really have to get back…”
“What’s tha’? Ye snuck off on him, did ye?” He continued dancing with her, grinning widely.
“I…yah sort of, I heard the music and couldn’t resist peeking in, but now I have to go, really.”
“Aw come on now, ye canna leave a party when ye jus’ arrived, can ye?” He released her arms and held out his hand. “Gabe,” he told her.
She took it. “Anna. Thanks for the dance,” she started to walk away but was accosted by two more drunken “lads.” One of them, a tall guy with reddish hair and a disarming smile, pushed a cup into her hand.
“The name’s Robert, and doona let Gabe fool ye, he’s no’ a good lad.”
“I claimed naught of the sort!” Gabe socked Robert in the arm.
“Ye want naught to do with either of these slackers,” the third one jumped in, “e’ryone kens Brian McClinnock is the bachelor of choice.” His blue eyes danced with merriment.
“She’s American, ya ken,” Gabe chimed in.
“Are ye then? What brings ye ta our fine country?”
Anna looked around nervously, she really had to go. “I wish I could stay and chat, really I do, but….
“She’s go’ a jealous boyfriend,” Gabe supplied interrupting her, “I think she’s widda wrong man. Is he Scottish?”
She shook her head then frowned, was he? He didn’t sound Scottish, his accent was unidentifiable.
“The wrong man fer sure.” Gabe nodded resolutely.
“Aye, e’eryone kens only Scots are real men,” Brian pounded his chest and they clinked glasses and drank.
Anna laughed truly wishing she could stay. “I’m sure you’re right, but how would you feel if three handsome guys were hitting on your girlfriend and preventing her from getting back to you?”
“Oooo, I’d have ta kick some handsome arses!” Robert exclaimed with a grin.
She started to back away again and nearly collided with Camilla. “Well there y’are!”
“I gave your phone to the, uh big guy, thanks so much…
The woman waved her hand dismissively, “Where’s yer drink gel, you really must try some of our fine Scotch, finest in Scotland made right here.”
She took Anna by the arm and bustled her over to a beautiful hand carved mahogany counter.
“Smitty, scotch on the rocks!” she turned to Anna, “It’s so mellow even an American can drink it straight, trust me hinney, you’ll love it.”
Anna bit her lip. How long had she been gone? The scotch was put in front of her and Camilla stood there beaming. She couldn’t be rude. She took a sip and her eyebrows popped. It was excellent.
“Delicious,” she said honestly.
The woman clapped her on the back, “See, what did I tell ye? Now ya drink up and have another, it’s an open bar today.” She pointed through the dancing bodies, “See that gel in the pretty pink dress? Tha’s my niece and she’s gettin’ married tae the handsome chap sittin’ behind her. We’ve been awaitin’ this engagement for an eternity it seems!” she laughed merrily, “come on I’ll introduce ye…oh what was yer name, hinney?”
“Anna.” Camilla took her arm again and she had to concede defeat. The only way she was getting out of here was by force, and she really didn’t want to leave, she was starved for company and friendly faces. He would probably find out anyway, she might as well enjoy herself and make it worth the punishment.
“Shannon! Meet Anna, she’s American!”
Shannon smiled revealing deep set dimples on a pretty freckled face. Her curly red hair was trying hard to break free of the clips holding it back. “What state do ye hail from?” she asked.
“New York.”
“Really? I’ve always wanted tae go ta New York!”
Her fiancée leaned forward and started singing “New York girls” and others chimed in. The next thing Anna knew the band was singing it making her thoroughly the center of attention.
An hour later she was holding a mug of beer and singing Happy Man with Shannon and her sister Delia, having more fun then she’d had in a long, long time. She was so caught up in merry making she didn’t sense Jared when he walked through the door.
Generously created for me by @son-of-satire
haha, better to ask forgivness than ask for permission... LOL
Anna definitely seems to put herself in that position a lot (much like the author writing her character LOL)
hahaha, i hear you
She just digs herself in deeper, doesn't she?
Yep. But she really needed to phone her dad :) And sometimes good things can come out of bad....
Ooh, can they just? I will have to wait and see how (whether) that plays out.
I am sorely tempted to just get your email and send you the rest...problem is I'm not finished with book three and this one ends on another cliffhanger--not like the last one though, some things will be resolved in this one ;)
I'm sorely tempted to let you ;-) But then I would have to wait ages for book 3. It's fun this way.
I'm glad you think so! I can go a bit nutty waiting for installments of things :)
Maybe if I wasn't so busy, I would. As it is, the end of the chapter always come too soon, but I need to be moving on anyway.
HAHAHA! I was just about to say the same thing!! HAHAHA
Lol, we're on the same wave length again.
Should we start referring Anna as "The Gravedigger?" haha!
But she's also a healer. The Gravedigger Healer? The Healer Gravedigger? No, just doesn't work, does it?
Hmm... how about "Balm"? I suggest it because it kind of works as a salve (healing), but add "em" at the start of it and it would have a grave connotation haha!
Haha, very clever. Though I'm thinking that maybe she is digging a different kind of hole. Maybe a herb garden...
Well now herb gardening is a different story hmmm.. Trying to rack my brain thinking about a witty nickname haha!
I upvoted this and also resteemed :)
That is awesome, thank you so much for that!
Great!!!
Thank you! It's funny how exclamation points can say more than words sometimes, thanks for the multiples!
Much love to @son-of-satire
@son-of-satire made the gif at the end of my post for me- I am @dreemit. But, Hahaha, I will pass that along! You cracked me up, so great comment!
fyi testing somehting and youre the beneficiary cause i didnt want to self vote
Thanks? Haha, are you seeing what your full vote is worth? You know, if the bitcoin fork throw crypto in a downward spiral, as it very well might, maybe you should consider buying back into steem...it will go up again when bc recovers, definitely a good investment opportunity.
(Plus I would be happy to see you around more again ;)
that too... mainly im working on a javascript to let me manage my accounts instead of having to do it on the command line (thats why it screwed up and only gave you 100 votes instead of the 1100 or so i had qued up... i havent got it quite right yet)
Im not sure the btc fork will throw btc into a spiral... i think theres a good chance that, if things go relatively smoothly and the universe doesnt explode, hgetting through it actually might spike btc price.
I can actually power down my bots now (because of a HF change) and im planning on doing so as quickly as possible and divesting myself of pretty much everything i have left in steem. The good news is that, if the price can hold for 13 weeks, its about a quarter of a million dollars ill be cashing out.
Last march, I was considering starting to buy steem if it ever fell below two cents. and right now, though i haven't given it a ton of thought or research, i think my buy point is even lower than it was , really really lowered my confidence. Id probably change from a 'sell' to a 'hold' if the price got low enough (though even thats a tough call, because im not entirely sure steem has a third recovery in it) , but im not sure how low it would have to go before i put more money into it. There are just too many problems and too much of a feeling that corporate wants to make them worse (so they can make money off of them) rather than better.
The only two Horns of Eld i see are the new linear rewards curve (which i think is good) and the code being open sourced (which i think is great, but which could harm the price of steem if someone comes out with an alternative that is free of steems many congenital problems)
EDIT TO ADD: I might hang around some though... all told, ive made around 350K on steem, and i think that makes it worthwhile to give it some more attention.
I hope you're right about the spike, and in that case steem will probably spike with it, so you should be in good shape getting your money out.
If someone comesup with an alternative that is free of problems then we'll have finally found Utopia. I have trouble envisioning such a place as long as we're on this earth in this plane, lol.
Yeah, I'd say 350k makes it worthwhile ;)
though i realize that alts also went up during this most recent BTC spike,
thats sort of the exception to the rule.
normally a btc spike drives the value of alts down (because it sucks all the capital out)
This is the point on the buzz scale where I should probably close down steemit lol.
It figures that I would start paying attention to what bitcoin does when an exception to the rule occurs...gaining me nothing in knowledge haha! Guess it's good for me that you'll be hanging around again, I can stop trying to figure these things out for myself...KIDDING (sort of LOL)
I thought you didn't want to self upvote ;)
Figured the intel was worth a little ping didja? lol
For the gift I said it
Keep it up
I know you are @dreemit
Thank you @greatvideos, it is a gift to have your compliment :)
dont mind me, im just mining steem
Lol, sounds fun!
this chapter is great thanks a lot for posting and keep on sharing ;)
I appreciate the support! Thank you for the lovely comment, and I will most certainly keep on sharing :)
Great work!!! Keep it up champ
Champ was the name of my favorite childhood dog...LOL! Thanks ;)
☺️👍
Smiley thumbs up right back atcha btc, I'm glad you're enjoying :)
Thank you sis 😊
I've missed so much of Anna's story! Well, I'm caught up with this challenge stuff for the evening. I'm going to take my laptop to bed and binge read until I fall asleep. :)
Did you get the comment I wrote about my comments being stolen?! Haha, I'm serious right now, I most definitely responded to tomato ghost, the name alone made me even go check out the page which is pretty much resteems for now.
I wonder if I'm responding too fast, but generally it lets you know that you haven't waited the twenty seconds. Hm. Well, I have been out and about commenting on others, I wll re-reply here. I might start taking screenshots of my posts!
Did you end up reading some?