Corresponding Marks

Thank you Pysche B. Mused and Poison Girl for your review! I so appreciate it, and it helps SO MUCH!

Chapter 2

The night she’d met Red it was ironically the silence that had awakened her. For the first time in her life that Larena could remember there was suddenly no constant chatter, or yelling or weeping or desperate voices frantic to get her attention. Bewildered, she opened her eyes to look around her cramped cell, stunned when it looked as empty to her as it would have to anyone else. Where had they all gone? Her heart leapt in exuberant triumph; she’d been trying for so long to get rid of them or hide from them and now they were gone! The church had worked! Committing herself to God had worked! Hadn’t it?

Larena cautiously peered into the darkness, searching every corner for the familiar ghostly shapes she’d been seeing all her life, listened for the faintest whisper of a disembodied voice, got out of bed and paced the length of her cell slowly, trying to find any cold spots in the room, but there was nothing. Nothing! Finally, twenty-five years of confusing, disconcerting, sometimes frightening intrusions had come to an end, and all it had taken was the church? Oh but she’d tried everything to block out or disband those recently passed and unhappy spirits that had forever haunted her! She’d been shuffled from psychologist to psycho-therapist as a child, had turned to alcohol and illegal drugs as a teenager, had as an adult joined a coven and attended sabots, cast circles on the ground and chanted spells of protection from all spirits and marked herself with alfalfa ashes to ward off the ghosts. But modern psychology had only made her feel that something was wrong with her, being drunk and high only blurred the ghostly images and delayed her reaction time to them, and witchcraft, while effective enough to make her still wear the pouch of St. John’s Wort, Fennel and Lavender around her neck, only kept some of the needy and cantankerous spirits away for a limited amount of time. The church, becoming a nun, had been her most recent hope, and now, it seemed as though it had not failed her!

She smiled, feeling such a great freedom rain down upon her. Finally, she would know what it was like to live life like everyone else did—falling asleep in actual silence, able to converse with another person and hear only the words they said to her, able to make actual friends without fear of them thinking she was a nervous wreck or crazy, and perhaps friendship would lead to more. She’d often longed to share the company of someone who was more than a friend, to feel that someone wanted her and loved her, but with the affliction she suffered, how could she truly be alone with anyone? How could she be intimate with anyone with so many people in the room? How could she love anyone when she so despised herself for being unable to conquer this curse? How could she have anything to offer someone else when all that she was seemed to be an open door way where spirits continuously stepped through? But no longer! She was free!

Wait a minute; was she free? No. For the last three years she’d been known as Sister Balfour, not Larena Balfour, in a few more weeks, she took her final vows, she was becoming a nun! And nuns didn’t spend hours just lounging in bed napping, nuns didn’t go out with girlfriends to Ladies Night, and nuns certainly didn’t date. Freedom; it hadn’t been granted in the manner she’d always sought to have it. She wasn’t a nun, not on the inside, there were too many desires that she couldn’t shrug off and Larena knew it. Perhaps this was some joke on her played by those spirits she’d tried for so long to banish; that which would keep them away would imprison her yet?

A new heaviness was just coming over her when a noise startled her, heightened her paranoia and again she began to search her cell for the presence of any spirits, perhaps they weren’t gone after all? But still, there was nothing, no one, living or dead. She heaved a heavy sigh and collapsed onto the edge of her meager bed, trying to collect her thoughts and rein in the shattered mirth that filled her, but there was that noise again, like a careful footstep of something large and heavy, out in the corridor by her cell door. The ghosts, it had to be the ghosts, but why were they only in the hallway? Had becoming a novice nun only set up some type of perimeter around her and the spirits?

To her surprise, Larena felt herself growing angry. It wasn’t fair! In the matter of a minute or two her hopes had been raised to the highest peaks and then dashed, plummeting back down like a boulder into a muddy fjord. It wasn’t fair! She knew not what she could do about it, or what anyone could do about it, but the spirit outside her door was about to know her frustration full force. She leapt to her feet gathering up the skirt of her plain nightgown as she strode over to the door, and with the strength of her fury, yanked it open.

“What the hell do you want?” She yelled, her voice heavy and loud, like a pummeling fist against the stonewalls of the corridor. She gave no thought to possibly waking the Mistress of Novices or her fellow sisters in the novitiate wing of the convent, she was too despaired to consider anything but the turmoil she faced, with or without the spirits forever imposing upon her. She hadn’t even focused on what stood before her, but she knew something was there, there always was after all. Details of the form in front of her were now quickly being perceived, and in a split second, Larena realized that this was no ghost.

About six and half feet tall, easily three times her weight, a real solidly, heavily muscled frame, of red. Red, she’d never seen so much abounding red skin! And eyes, yellow, deep set, bestial looking eyes, blazing against the red skin and staring widely at hers as a scream built in her throat. She felt herself trembling, panic setting in as she discerned what seemed to be some type of polled horns above the forehead of this…thing…and a tail…oh God, horns, and a tail! This had always been Larena’s greatest fear; ghosts were always drawn to her, and now, a demon had come for her! She screamed louder than she had previously yelled, hysterical with her terror, and then a giant red hand of stone was clouted tightly over her mouth.

* * *

Red knew the instant the door had swung open and she stood there before him that he’d found the thing that had been drawing him to St. Rita’s for several weeks now. He knew John hated it when he went “off leash,” and his father wasn’t entirely pleased either, let alone how it upset the bureau, but he couldn’t fight the draw of this convent. He wasn’t sure what it was that filled him upon seeing this girl, this nun, an angry form of red hair and balled up fists, screaming at him as though he’d done something horrible to her. He was happy to finally find the “it” he’d been searching for here, though he didn’t understand, and he was so curious and so confused, what did this all mean, and why? But then, long before he could ponder anything more than that, or even get a good look at her face, she screamed. Well, he was ugly, but still, did she have to scream as blood curdling as that? She was going to wake up all the nuns, and that’s all he needed, a convent full of screaming nuns…film at eleven. Reflex won out, and Red clamped his granite fingers over her mouth, muffling her cry and forced her back into her cell, closing the door behind them before anyone else appeared.

“Hey lady,” he tried to whisper, but there was too much bubbling over inside him upon discovering her, the mystery he sought, to keep himself totally in check. “I mean, Sister,” he corrected, watching her deep blue eyes bulge in terror. She had beautiful eyes, except for the terrified part. “You can stop doing that, I’m not going to do anything to you.”

The nun continued to tremble and stare up at him with eyes full of horror, but that was all the recognition she gave. Well, no wonder, he was still forcing his hand, his big, clumsy, granite hand over her delicate mouth.

“Look,” Red sighed. “I’m going to let you go, but don’t scream.” Oh no, had he just said that? Every thug said that! And he didn’t want her to see him like that, it was important to him that she liked him, but he didn’t know why. “I mean, this isn’t what you think it is, “ his physical appearance ran through his mind, horns, tail, red skin…“but I guess it does kinda looks like it is, huh?” He contemplated, searching for how to make this better. “But it’s not! It’s not. I promise!” Red looked down at her, making eye contact, doing his best to be sincere. But there was more than sincerity overtaking him. He’d never looked into a woman’s eyes like that, or at least, he’d never seen in a woman’s eyes what he saw in hers. What was that? He had to know. Did she see that same thing in his eyes? Could she even feel that whatever it was that he was feeling? What was going on? Maybe she could tell him? “I just wanna…talk, okay?”

* * *

The sun shone so bright for six in the morning, and it was to be another day of tending the gardens of St. Rita’s for Larena, a novice’s duty that she’d only recently come to appreciate. She knelt by the vibrant pink flowers of the Crown of Thorns beneath the Chestnut Tree, far off from the other novices, behind the towering boxwood hedge, spreading cedar mulch evenly across the bed she worked. She smiled, it was a beautiful day, despite the babble of the ghosts around her, one of which screamed and screamed, a woman who’d met her end jumping from a tenth story building ledge. But it didn’t detract from the feeling Larena had inside, or how beautiful the day was. In fact, for the last few weeks, they’d all been beautiful days, no matter the weather, and not the spirits around her had managed to depress her. If it wasn’t for the obvious, and if she didn’t know better, or maybe if she did, she’d swear she was in—a sprig of Blue Salvia suddenly fell across the backs of her gloved hands.

Her smile broadened, heart beating faster now, but she didn’t turn to see who had dropped the flower she now picked up and held. “I knew you were here.”

Red chuckled and crouched down beside her, reaching out and gently flipping the edge of her white veil over her shoulder where it hanged down across her face. He didn’t like how her habit hid so much of her from him, she had such soft, long, straight red hair; he wanted to run his fingers through it. “Chased away the ghosts again, did I?”

Larena pulled off her gardening gloves and turned towards him, her attention no longer on the horns or the tail or the red skin…well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true…she’d often dreamed of laying her head upon the red skin of that big, strong chest she was so often sneaking admiring glimpses at, despite her upcoming vows of purity and chastity. Red had been nothing but an evil beast to her once, but no longer. He was more human than most humans she’d known in her life, more caring and kind than any of those who had said they’d meant to help her in the past, and despite the red skin, odd appendage, fearsome features and yellow eyes, there was a rugged nobleness in his countenance that she’d come to adore. Red was big and strong and intelligent and funny and protective and gallant, the knight in shining armor every girl dreamed about. Finding such qualities in him had delighted her to standards beyond that which she’d ever imagined, but also perplexed her. How could she feel her heart swell and the most pleasant warmth course through her when she looked at him, a demon? But then, Red, he made her smile, made her laugh, sat by her bedside each night until she fell asleep, in a quiet cell; how could her Red be a demon?

“I can always count on you to make the spirits go away,” she smiled at him, and picked up the sprig of blue flowers he’d given her. “Salvia,” she said to him, brushing it over his deep brown sideburns, then giggled like a schoolgirl. “It’s for salvation, I think that’s what you are to me.”

Salvation? The word for some reason made Red cringe, but not because it had caused him any harm, he’d just hoped she’d say he was…more? Hmm, best not to linger too long on that. “Hey, I asked a friend of mine, Abe, about that whole chasing away the ghosts thing.” Red had been curious about why that happened, but knowing he could bring Larena that peace, that he could bring her any peace, stirred so much inside him.

“Yeah?” Larena smiled, more thrilled to always find out that Red was so interested in what they had together than she was curious about why the spirits did disappear when he was around…what did they have together? “So what’s the verdict?”

His yellow eyes were holding hers of blue again, somewhere in the middle Red imagined they met and turned the world green. Was green romantic? He’d love to touch her, with more than his eyes. Touch her with his eyes? That didn’t make any sense. Anyway, what were they talking about? “Uh, yeah, there’s a hierarchy of ghosts and spirits and imps and…” he couldn’t bring himself to name the last one, seemed like it would just spoil everything. “Anyway, I out rank the ghosts, so they see me coming and vamoose.”

Larena laughed titteringly, but she wasn’t sure why, after all, Red hadn’t said anything funny. “Then,” she cleared her throat for a moment, collected herself. “Then I wish you’d come see me more often, Red.” When she realized what she’d uttered, she began to crease the edge of her veil nervously; how had Red understood what she’d just said? And what had she meant by it herself? “I mean, to keep the—“

He held up the granite hand, shaking his head, trying to hide his defeat again. “I know.” How could she ever look at him the same way he looked at her? She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that not even the plain white modesty of her habit could disguise. And he was ugly. She was a nun, or close enough to it, she liked him, as a friend, she saw him as a friend…friend, friend, friend…get over it already. He should be happy with that, considering how their first meeting went, but he just wasn’t. He couldn’t be. And, oh yeah, there was that whole witch thing, too, but he thought less and less about that each time he saw her. Besides, the nun thing had to in some way cancel out the witch thing, right?

Something seemed less bright in his amber eyes a second before he looked down into the grass and away from her. Larena felt her heart start to break, what had she done, and what was the right thing to do now? “Red,” she grabbed his granite hand with both of hers. “I didn’t mean…I mean, I meant that…”

His head snapped up. “You meant what?” He tried to sound plainly curious, not hopeful, not desperate, but he was all of those things.

Larena’s head was spinning. “I don’t know anymore,” she sighed, hoping he’d believe she was lost, for she was lost, but not in the realm of words. “I just,” well, she had to say it, it was the nice thing to say, and she did mean it. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, I didn’t intend to.”

Fine, if she could play “lost” so could he. “How would you have done that?” Red feigned his best baffled expression, wondering if this would net him anything that might hit the right spot…whatever that right spot was.

His question surprised her, this would never end at this rate, the two of them would just keep on stammering along, saying nothing and using a lot of words to do so…or saying everything, everything she’d felt growing inside her, that excited her, gave her joy and also made her doubt her sanity…he wasn’t even human, he had a tail, he wasn’t even of her species, and yet she found him attractive, found herself wanting to love him…wasn’t that too weird? No, she didn’t want to think about it, she couldn’t handle it. What they had was what they had, and it would never be anything more than that, it couldn’t be. Larena felt her fingers and hands start to tremble and she thrust them into the pockets of her habit, happily finding a distraction and new conversation nudging against her right hand. Her smile returned, bright and confident. “Oh, I brought you something!”

“You did?” He was surprised, but didn’t know why. She’d given him a few things over the time they’d known each other. He still wore the tiny pouch of herbs she’d made up for him on the rosary around his left wrist, a spell of protection, like the one Larena wore hidden beneath her habit. But it went beyond just a bag of dried leaves and petals. He often came to her fresh from battle in the field, a swelling bruise here, a cut or gash there, a broken bone still repairing itself as he snaked his way silently through St. Rita’s to her cell. Red hadn’t counted how many times she’d seen to his wounds, but he remembered all of them in great detail. His physiology was not like a human’s, his immune system was stellar, his rate of healing far surpassing that of any other living thing, the last favor he required from her was medical attention, but he liked what her worry over him meant…or could mean. If nothing else, at least she had to touch him to clean a wound with her sage tea, and to apply one of the poulstices she made from comfrey leaves. He even enjoyed it when she put a band-aid on his thick fingers, despite how ridiculous Red thought band-aids were…flesh colored….of course they were. Too bad he didn’t have some scratch for her to see to now! Well, maybe tonight, then. For now, he’d just have to settle for what she’d brought him. “What is it?”

Carefully Larena worked the object’s awkward shape from her pocket, hoping it would please him, since she hadn’t been able to, and likely never would be able to. Now she was feeling depressed. Oh, enough, she was going to be a nun, and he had a tail after all. “This has been missing from our collection of relics for a few decades from what I’m told,” she said, gently turning the object right side up for Red to see. “It’s Sister Athelstane’s left shoe, she founded St. Rita’s over two hundred and fifty years ago, and she’s been interred in our catacombs…without her shoe. It was lost in the 1920’s when her body was moved due to a storm that flooded her original gravesite.” Red held his hand out and she placed the worn and shriveled leather and wood sole into his palm. How much smaller it looked in his hand. “I was setting some potted lilies outside the garden shed, and there it was, wedged between a rock and the wall. I thought you could use it.” She smiled at how Red studied the shoe with intense interest. Perhaps she’d been able to erase hurting him earlier?

“Thank you,” Red answered as he turned the shoe at every angle, examining the whole of it and weighing it in his hand, then looked up at her and smirked. “But it’s the wrong size.”

Larena’s lips pursed in disappointment at first, but then she laughed. “Red!” She shoved him lightly in the shoulder. “I know it’s not from a saint or anything, but will it help you in your work?” She hoped it would, she never wanted any harm to come to him, and if she could prevent it from doing so, she would.

Red was astonished that she would turn such an item over to him, rather than give it to the Prioress of St. Rita’s, doing so would have put her in the good graces of the convent, and perhaps allowed her to be a bit happier there than he knew she was. But no, she’d given it to him. She’d given it to him! All of a sudden the only detail Red knew about the shoe was that the leather was still warm from Larena’s body and he imagined that he could draw that warmth in through his red skin and have it wrap around him; it was like being in her arms. “Yeah,” he smiled, the thought of lying back in her embrace so pungent in his mind he was half afraid she knew what he was thinking. “I can do something with this.”

“Good!” She sounded more overjoyed than perhaps she should have, cleared her throat again. “I mean, all we’d do with it here is return it to the catacombs, or maybe put it on display. What kind of sense does that make when it could be doing real good in the world?” Oh no, she’d just become impersonal again, that’s what hurt him the last time! “And you, I mean, it’s your life on the line out there and I know it, and you deserve all the thanks we can give you, whether we know it or not…and it’s a shame that more of us don’t know it, because where would we all be if—“

“Sister,” Red smirked again, he knew what she was trying to do this time, but now she was overdoing it. He wouldn’t complain though, it felt good that she was making such an effort, it was just time to stop her, for sake of her looking foolish. “I know,” he said, but this time he was smiling, his eyes happening to catch hers directly, yellow to blue, the world becoming green.

His eyes did something to her, they always had, from the first time he looked at her it was like he was fixating on something inside her deeper than even she knew. She’d feared demonic possession upon that premiere meeting, for his stare was so unbreakable. Now though, it seemed like it didn’t happen near enough. “Red,” her voice was merely above a whisper, and she wasn’t sure why she’d said his name, but his left hand rose to her cheek, his fingers sliding slowly beneath her wimple, finding a lock of her red hair and pulling it free over her ear. Her eyes fluttered closed as his fingers stroked down the soft tresses in his hand.

He’d never experienced anything like this with a woman, but Red knew willingness when he saw it appear on Larena’s face. Anything he was to ask her for now, she’d give him. Beyond his own control and judgment, he felt himself leaning over towards her, his left hand taking her gently under the chin and tilting her face up towards his own. She didn’t move, soft and supple under his command, the repose of her hooded eyes belying the quivers he could feel beneath her skin, or were they beneath his own? She breathed shallowly, letting him draw her closer, and closer, he could taste her sugared breath against his own lips, his own eyes falling closed. There were but millimeters between his lips and hers, an agonizing heat burning between them, pleading to be smothered with a—What was he doing? He jerked his head back from hers, yellow eyes opening wide. “Sister,”

His voice awakened her from whatever it was that had blanketed them both and Larena’s body jolted as she pulled away from him, for some reason gasping for breath now like she’d been running for her life. Had they almost—no, of course not, such things weren’t possible between them…were they? Either way, she should have stopped it, stopped him, stopped herself. “I’m sorry,” she stammered, her hand unconsciously rubbing at her mouth as though it were dirty. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what—“

“No,” Red shook his head, a bit less ruffled than she was, but rose unsteadily to his towering height. “Hey, I should be getting back to the bureau,” yeah, just play it off, it never happened…at least, it never should have. “They still think I’m asleep, and it’ll look that way as long as I’m there for breakfast.” Was he really leaving? He should be of course, but was he actually leaving?

Larena stood as well, straightening her habit and brushing away imaginary dirt to hide the trembling of her hands. She nodded her head. “I wouldn’t want you getting into trouble because of me.” The words left her mouth and her face reddened. Oh no, that had sounded very presumptuous…and honest. “I mean—“

Red laughed. “I know what you mean, stop saying that already.” Could he not sense how much she needed him to be okay with what almost happened, how much she needed him to be strong, he would have been surprised by how relaxed he was. She’d smiled at his remark, but was still fighting to find her way back to normal. Maybe this would help? “Ahh,” he shrugged, “it woulda never worked, you and me,” he said, catching her attention, her eyes like saucers to hear him acknowledge what had so nearly happened, but she listened, caught in the same restless state of relief and sorrow that he was as he said it would “never work.” What if it would, though? No, say what he had meant to say, finish the sentence, leave her with a smile on her face. “You’re a nice girl and all, but no horns, no tail?” He shook his head, grinning at her. “C’mon!”

Of all the things building within her, the last thing she expected herself to do was laugh, but she did, so much so that Larena had to clamp her own hand over her mouth this time. “Red!” She snipped between her laughs and fingers. She’d at first not appreciated his handling of this, but now, as she laughed she found she felt so much better about it. It was okay, he wasn’t hurt or disappointed. She regained her poise finally and lowered her hand from her mouth, reaching forward and taking his left hand. “Thank you.” She smiled.

“Yeah,” he smiled back, folding his fingers around her hand and giving it a squeeze. “Don’t mention it.” Making a joke may have pierced the uncomfortable atmosphere, but her touch still made his body tingle. Best to get going or this would start all over again. He turned to leave. “Tell the ghosts I said to keep it down, okay?”

She nodded, smiling still until his fingers slipped from hers and his back was to her, when a new fear gripped her. What if things had now become too involved and he’d not chance seeing her again? “Red!”

He halted his strides, looked over his massive shoulder. “Yeah?” Don’t ask him to stay, it was so hard to walk away.

“I’ll see you later this evening, right? After Vespers?” She wrung her hands, anticipating his answer.

Red smiled subtly, trying to hide it from her as he turned all the way around to face her. “Is that what you want?” He wouldn’t force himself on her, he’d leave it all up to her from this point forward.

Larena’s lungs felt so heavily void of air. “Yes,” she breathed in an almost hoarse voice. “It is.”

Thank you to the many of you who cried out for this story to continue! Chapter 3 is in the works!