Gleich und Gleich gesellt sich gern | armine's Blog

The light in the parlor was hazy; his face was flushed from the liquor. Bernadine was not her usual self around him lately, and he didn't want to ask her what her sudden distance toward him was about.

He had a lot on his mind... and his thoughts were growing heavier and drowning in their own weight.

Then he saw her.

A child.

She was lovely - so radiant. She wore a blue frock coat and a frilly, matching cloth bonnet. She looked to be about six.

"What are you doing here?" he asked the unknown girl who was crouched on her haunches beneath the table.

"You left us", she answered in a small voice - and to Emil it had appeared as though her mouth had not opened while she spoke.

Emil peered at her, his senses suddenly piqued, sharpened. "What do you know about that?"

The pretty, light-haired girl grinned but her eyes remained cool and elusive. "Everything", she replied. Again, her lips had not moved.

Emil sat straight up on the sofa. "What do you want of me? Why did you come here?" he bellowed.

THe child became frightened by his tone, stood up and ran from the room.

Emil got up and went after her, determined to ask her more questions.

Nearly twenty minutes later, a perplexed Emil returned to the parlor.

After searching every inch of the house, the child had been nowhere to be found.

He dreamed about their time together up North - the midnight dogsledding trips, the ice-caving expeditions, the horseback rides to nowhere, the fossil hunting they'd done. They had once taken a trip out to Barentsburg, sailed around the northernmost tip of Greenland; they had been mesmerized by the aurora-borealis, had had their own lifestyle together. He recalled one particular outing, when she had been about six months pregnant with Aric; they had gone boating in the waters by the Lofoten Islands, where Mariel would give birth to their son.

"I will always love you", she had told him, wrapping her arms tightly around him as the waves tossed about the little boat they'd been in. "You will always be a part of my heart".

Emil had never made her any promises, but he had kissed - and slept with - her quite often during his stay in the Arctic.

Bernadine poked her head intot he parlor (where Emil was spending much of his time now) before heading upstairs to bed for the night.

"A man came looking for you today", she told Emil quietly.

Emil glanced over at her, a harsh gleam in his eye. "What did he want?"

"He wanted to speak to you", she replied. "He didn't leave his name".

Emil watched his wife as she turned to leave, pausing to glance back at him before reaching the staircase.

The look in his eye frightened her.

She went up the stairs in a hurry.

Mitzi came into the kitchen one blustery weekend morning in the middle of December. Bernadine had tried to keep her voice down while fighting with Emil, but apparently she had not succeeded.

Almost immediately Bernadine noticed that there was something different about her daughter, but she could not quite pinpoint what it was.

As she went about fixing breakfast for Mitzi, the child sat across from Emil at the table and stared at him somberly.

Emil glanced at her cursorily as he flipped a page of the newspaper.

"I saw the face of the man who's been chasing me", said the little girl as Bernadine gave her some toast. "He finally took his mask off". She paused, staring at Emil. "It was you, Vati!"

Bernadine's nerves were on edge; upon hearing this, the egg she'd been holding slipped from her hand and cracked by her feet on the floor.

The suitcases were packed; Mitzi seemed more cheerful than she had in months but Daegan did not want to leave.

"Your father and I have to work through a few problems", she told her son as she led him and his younger sister outside. "Hopefully things will be better by the time you get back after Christmas".

Bernadine waved good-bye to the children as they climbed into their aunt's car; they would be taken to Als Sund to stay with Bernadine's parents for the next week and a half.

Things were too hard with Emil for the children to stay around now...

                                                                          -Ehehelfer-