Tabby impatiently walked across the parking lot in front of the hospital. Finally, after a while, her dad and Nicole appeared, but fortunately they were alone. She was quite afraid that they might not be accompanied by someone she somehow did not want to see at all… Ted…
Nicole gave her one of her honeyed smiles, but because Tabby knew about her secret plans, she just nodded her head carelessly and her face remained stony serious. As the forest calls…
She sat silently in the back seat and stared stubbornly outside.
"What's wrong with you? Where did your usual cheerfulness go? Did someone do something bad to you?" her dad asked her. She smiled awkwardly, not yet sure whether she even knew about Ted's invitation and she didn't want to cause any trouble.
"I'm fine, really, I just got annoyed by quite a few people today..." She replied sarcastically towards Nicole and when she looked back at her, Tabby only gave her a frowning look, from which all the lightning in the world was evidently shooting out. Thanks to her sugar brain, Nicole certainly didn't understand anything.
"I'm going out tonight and I don't know when I'll be back..." Tabby added dryly, winding her long hair around her index finger. Nicole raised her eyebrows in surprise and said sternly.
"Tonight? Are you serious? And may I ask with whom?"
...Hm, I'm just confiding in you... Tabby thought sullenly.
"I'm just going out, is that enough? I'm not a little girl anymore, I'm almost twenty years old and I can take care of myself." She cut him off sharply. She noticed that her dad was watching her in the rearview mirror. Nicole blinked in surprise and turned to him.
"You're really not going to tell her anything? You know very well that the Bradleys are coming, they wanted to see her!"
But Steve Harris didn't answer, earning her a disdainful look. Tabby couldn't stand it anymore and replied sharply.
"Then you'll just have to do without me, and if they want to see me so much, you can show them my photo..." This took the wind out of her sails and she watched in the mirror with amusement as her dad smiled mischievously, luckily Nicole didn't notice. After a while, they finally stopped at their house. Tabby jumped out of the car, ran straight to her room and locked the door.
She sat motionless for a moment, trying to ward off the anger from the recent rather unpleasant conversation.
She didn't want to let herself become a puppet of her dad's wife at any cost. Then she opened the wardrobe and one piece of clothing after another fell onto the bed. What should she wear tonight? She wanted to look her best, so far David had seen her in a tattered T-shirt, then in sweatpants and sweat in the park, and finally in that horrible green work smock in the hospital. The fashion show was over, Versace would surely be shocked. After a while she heard
Sid is trying to get into her room with the familiar scratching sound. At that moment she forgot her aloofness, she even longed for his company. She got up and opened the door.
"Come on, you furry monster, it seems you're my only real friend in this house now..." Tabby sighed and returned to the closet. Sid sat down opposite her and watched her incomprehensibly.
"Don't worry, I'm not leaving, but you probably can't tell me what to wear, can you?" She smiled at him. She rummaged through her clothes for a while and finally black jeans and a plum blue sports blouse with a collar won. She had only worn them once, but they seemed appropriate for this occasion. She pulled back her restless raven hair with a ribbon of the same color and posed in front of the mirror. No glory, but it probably won't get any better... she decided and smiled at herself. There was still dinner to endure, during which she would certainly have to face repeated persuasion, but she was sure of her victory in advance. Nicole simply didn't stand a chance.
Finally, evening approached. Tabby was satisfied to find that everyone was in the room, so she managed to slip out of the house quietly and skillfully get rid of Sid, who wanted to accompany her with a mermaid. But she had to bribe him with a sugar cube, which he adored above all else, as she had already found out.
After five minutes, she approached the park at a brisk pace. It was almost dark and the lamps lining its paths, one by one with a short blink, began to illuminate the surroundings like fireflies.
Tabby's initially brisk step slowly turned into a loitering. Except for a few hurrying people, she saw no one here. Hmm, that was to be expected... she thought, but still she did not give up. After a while, a strange, quiet sound caught her attention, reminiscent of the turning of pages in a book. It came from one of the lamps. When she approached it, she was amazed, because some beautiful, huge, perhaps nocturnal butterfly was demonstrating its eternal and futile struggle with the light. Not long ago, she would have passed it by without interest or shuddered in disgust. But now a different feeling took over her, she smiled because she knew who was the cause of it and she even found it beautiful. She almost felt sorry for its dark brown velvet wings, which were frantically and painfully touching the hot lamp again and again.
But she didn't have the courage to reach out and save it, she just stood silently and stared at it, not even noticing the creaking stones behind her. She was awakened by a quiet whisper near her.
"It's beautiful, isn't it, like the soft breath of the night... another winged treasure near you, I'm almost starting to believe in miracles..." She flinched and turned around. Of course, the familiar rumbling sound came again from the place where her heart was, she didn't expect anything else.
"Hello, I didn't even hear you. It's beautiful, you're right, but..."
He didn't answer, he walked over to the lamp and carefully and tenderly took it in his hands. At that sight, a slight shiver ran through her, it reminded her so much of their very first meeting at the station. He came back and she curiously looked into his hands. She looked in amazement at the yellow spot on the dark cinnamon-colored furry body, resembling a human skull in its shape.
"But that's..."
"Yes, Acherontia atropos, the death's-head lichen...it must have gotten lost here on its tireless journey."
"What are you going to do with it? I hope you don't stick it on a pin!..." she added indignantly. She remembered how he had hidden his first catch in a jar that time and didn't even want to guess what had happened to it at his house.
"No, it's too rare for that, I'm not a barbarian...although they say it's a bad omen to see it..." He replied thoughtfully and carefully placed it on the cool leaves of the bush. Then he turned to her and his face lit up with his wonderful smile. Today he was wearing a white, longer shirt with a strange stand-up collar and slits on the sides, carelessly buttoned with only a few buttons, so that in places it revealed what was hidden underneath and what was currently robbing her of all sense. She almost forgot about his illness, that this wonderful boy probably had something like a time bomb inside him that could change everything at any time, but at that moment it seemed unreal to her and it didn't seem important to her. When he approached her and lightly touched her arms, she gasped and briefly cleared her throat awkwardly, looking at the pendant around David's neck.
"Er, that's fine, he'll rest and surely fly on... and... what does your pendant mean, I've never seen one like it before." She whispered and raised her eyes. He was staring at her, like a night predator at a small mouse. She blinked absently and shivered.
"That's the hand of Fatima, it protects against diseases and evil forces. I got it from my dad..." he whispered and looked away strangely for a moment.
Before she could answer anything, he pulled her tightly to him and then gently lifted her chin with two fingers, so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes again. ...Of course, melted chocolate, and today with nuts... Tabby's head flashed. Then something happened that she would never have imagined. He gently pressed his lips to hers. Bang! Another electric shock. She was surprised and moaned weakly. This may have prompted his next action. He exhaled in a low voice excitedly, pulled away for a moment, but then he took her lips again, more violently and much deeper. She couldn't help but move her hands towards his neck, then ran them into his hair and enthusiastically returned the deep kiss she had experienced for the first time in her life. In that magical intoxication, they didn't even notice that the stones on the path creaked menacingly under the shoes of three pairs of uninvited feet. They were awakened by the voice of a fourth person, who sounded distant and strangely muffled, as if the person in question was trying to hide his true tone.
"That's enough, leave her alone! And don't spare him, picking other people's cherries is forbidden!"
They jumped apart in fright, David straightened up ominously and Tabby turned around in disbelief. She watched in horror as three dark figures slowly approached them from the shadows, the fourth uninvited guest quietly disappeared in the meantime. Her throat went dry and she realized that she knew the voice from somewhere after all.