Earth, Sky, Fire and Rain - Chapter 9

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Alisaura

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Can't help it, posting next chapter already... :reject:

Disclaimer: Fiction, fantasy, fabrication.



end of chapter 8:
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I glanced at a couple of job opportunities, and told myself I'd read them properly the next day, or whenever the jetlag allowed me to resume normal functions. There were a few notes from friends, inviting me to things than had been and gone. I fired off a group email to tell them I was back – I'd had the presence of mind to put an "out of office" auto-reply on my email, at least. I ignored all the list emails, I'd lost track of the discussions entirely, and deleted the lot. And then there was the ever-present spam, of course. Delete, delete, delete.

Wait. My eye had caught something as I'd deleted the last one, and I went into the Trash folder to check it. There it was, in an untitled message, at the bottom – "Ed".


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Chapter 9:
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A very long moment passed before I could force my eyes up to the rest of the message, which consisted of what looked like a phone number, and "I'm in most days except Sunday. No pressure, but I would like to make peace. Ed."

"I do not believe this," I said aloud, utterly gobsmacked.

"Don't believe what?" Glen asked, most of his attention still on the football on TV.

"Ed sent me an email! At least, I guess it's him. I thought it was spam at first."

"What? Well, that still counts as spam in my book."
I hadn't painted a very flattering picture of Ed to Glen, and my man had taken something of a dislike to whatever version of Ed lived in his head.

I frowned in thought, and glanced at the email address... drevans39@gmail... What kind of a word was "drevans?" Welsh? It looked like spam, except that the sentence made sense. I checked the area code – it was a Dublin phone number, too.

"I really should apologise to him," I said, reddening with remembered embarrassment. Such a bitch...

Glen remained silent. I glanced at him, and reddened further. "You are allowed to tell me that I'm being a bitch, at the time when I am being a bitch, you know," I said.

"Diplomacy seemed the safer course at the time, all things considered," he said in a scholarly tone. "You did kind of over-react, though. I know how much you hate being startled, but..."

"But it's no excuse, I know. I feel like such an arse."

"So email him back, say Sorry, and that'll be the end of it," Glen said. He turned back to the football, secure in having solved the problem.

I stared at the number on my screen. I knew Glen was right, I should just email back, and leave it at that. I had no reason at all to want to speak to Ed on the phone... No logical reason. At any rate, I was certainly not going to call that number now, jetlagged and exhausted as I was. I wrote an email back.

"Ed,
"The peacemaking effort should be mine. I behaved abominably that day, and I apologise unreservedly.
"All the best, Lisa."

I hesitated, wondering if I should say more, but stopped myself. Short and to the point was best. I clicked Send.

------

After a couple of nights of un-interrupted sleep, I was pretty much back to normal. I'd read the emails about the possible jobs, and been gobsmacked yet again – one of them, from the British Geological Survey, wanted me out in the desert of Wales AGAIN. At least it wasn't from that same university. It probably wasn't entirely co-incidental, these people all spoke to one another occasionally, I supposed. But someone at the Survey had decided their maps were too old and lacking in detail in that area. And I seemed to be the only person available with experience there.

The other job was logging cores from drilling, oil exploration. They didn't want me out on a rig, thank god, but it would still be tedious work. It was to cover most of the coming winter, which would tide me over nicely until the next field season. I didn't have any desire to go overseas again, for a while. I applied for both, with the usual sales pitch and estimated costs.

There was also an auto-reply from the "drevans39" address. It said, "I rarely check this address; please be patient, or try other avenues." Well, that was a head-scratcher. If he'd emailed me, wouldn't he be expecting a reply? Or was he just waiting by the phone like a love-struck teenager? I laughed, then stopped. God, what if he was? Better I hadn't called. His wife seemed nice enough from a distance, and I didn't want anyone getting the wrong idea. I was glad, as well, that I hadn't mentioned the phone number to Glen – he would only have said it was proof Ed was stalking me.

------

Weeks passed, and I was lucky enough to get both jobs. The mapping would be fairly quick – they wanted better maps, but there's not much outcrop in some places, and it was getting late in the year to be in the field. It seemed the universe was determined to drag me back into that part of Wales, however, because my mapping area was centred around that very same stone circle. I indulged briefly in a paranoid fantasy that someone was orchestrating this whole thing, possibly Ed himself. Who had failed to respond in any way to my email.

I told myself that he probably never saw it, or his email filter had discarded it as spam, or else it was all a joke and someone, somewhere, was laughing at me. Or else that he was just an arse and had ignored it. He'd been the one to start talking about making peace, after all – why would he then ignore my apology? Perhaps his overtures of peace had been purely to wring an apology from me, and now he'd put it out of his mind. Yes, that was likely, I told myself.

But every day, I checked my email, and caught myself looking for "drevans39". I'd realised at some point that it was "Dr. Evans", of course. I supposed there had been thirty-eight other Dr. Evanses who were quicker than he was.

And I had been unable to shake off those weird dreams, or the nightmares for that matter. They were both infrequent, and while the nightmares were disturbing, I couldn't say I minded the others so much. They usually featured this Ewain character, and I wondered what my brain was trying to tell me.


A day came, late in September, when I found myself staring at my inbox, wondering why there was nothing from Ed. What was he playing at? I thought. Had he really not checked that email address for over a month? I'd been refreshing it every hour, all day. It was pathetic. I needed to know. I found the phone number, and glanced around the empty house. Glen was at work, I had a good few hours left before he was due back. I picked up the phone and, feeling rather reckless and daring (and ever so slightly nervous), dialled the number.

It rang four times.

"How can I help you?" said a female, Irish voice, without preamble. No company name, nothing.

"Um," I stammered. "Ed Evans gave me this number, I just wanted to—"

"Who? Oh, yes. One moment please."

Hold music.

I waited, a little flustered. I had, rather foolishly, assumed it would be a direct line. I wondered if I should have called him Dr. Evans. I still had no idea what the degree was in.

"Hello?" A laid-back, English, male voice. I blinked, thrown out again. There were strange sounds in the background, an electronic-sounding sort of wailing keen, occasional twangs and thumps. Muted voices.

"Um," I said again, and kicked myself mentally. "I got an email from Ed, he gave me this number... I really only wanted to m—"

"Oh yes, of course. I'll just get him for you." Was there amusement in that voice? His accent almost sounded like my own. Whoever he was, he muffled the phone, but I still heard him calling, "It's for you". The muffling was removed, and I imagined the phone was being held out. That weird keening sound had stopped. Yet another voice from the background rose in complaint, this one Irish as well, but male.

"You're bleedin' kidding! He just started work, an' now he's got people ringin' him?"

"You're just jealous." I heard Ed's voice, approaching the phone. I told myself I was not at all nervous.

"Lisa," he said into the phone. "Thank you f—"

"How did you know it was me?" I interrupted, startled. Thinking back, I hadn't said my name to anyone.

"Uh, well. I guess it was just a hunch."

"Or a dream? You're lucky it wasn't your wife calling," I said. "Unless her name is Lisa, too."

"No, it's not. I wasn't sure that you were going to call at all – have you just got back?"

Of course, Ed would have got the auto-reply while I was away. "I've been back for a while. I replied to your email, but I suppose you haven't checked it. I just wanted to see if you'd received it, and, if not... to apologise. For my behaviour – it was unforgivable. I'm sorry." There, I'd said it.

There was a pause. "It's not unforgivable," he said. "I'm willing to put the past behind us, if you are."

"If you're sure..." I couldn't believe he wanted to forget all about it. He certainly sounded very calm and philosophical about it. Part of me was suspicious, but what could I do?

"I'm sure."

"All right then."

"Water under the bridge," he said, and I could hear a smile. There was another pause.

"Isn't it kind of late for you to be just starting work?" I asked.

"Huh? Ah. I had rather a late night. And my hours are quite flexible."

There was a cry of "Hah!" from the background.

"Who IS that?" I said, not really that curious.

"Nobody at all," Ed told me in a carrying voice, clearly intended for his colleague. "Just someone who can't mind his own business!"

"You must have a very relaxed work environment," I observed.

"Something like that." Definitely amusement. Were these people all laughing at me?

I was on the point of ending the call when Ed spoke again. "So, where were you? The email just said you were incommunicado. It must have been pretty remote."

"Outback Western Australia," I replied.

"Wow... what were you doing out there?"

"Tripping over rabbit holes and looking for bauxite." And having bizarre dreams that made me think of you, even though you weren't in them. God, I felt an idiot even thinking it.

Ed chuckled. "Sounds like fun. What's bauxite?"

"Aluminium ore," I replied, somewhat gratified that he didn't know everything.

"Oh yes, of course."

I rolled my eyes.
"Look, I need to get going, I'm heading out again in a couple of days." I wanted an excuse to end the call, and this one was mostly true.

"Oh, where to this time? Africa? China? Argentina?" He sounded in a far more buoyant mood than I was. I had to fight an urge to lie and say Yes, I was actually going to China.

"You'll never guess," I said instead.

Ed paused. Something of resigned disbelief must have come through in my voice.

"It's not near a certain stone circle in Wales, by any chance?" he asked.

"However did you know," I replied, deadpan. "I can't avoid the place, it seems, no matter how far away I tried to get last time. Must be fate." I wasn't serious, really.

"I'm not sure about fate, but it's something," Ed said in a low voice. He did sound serious, and I got nervous again. "Tell me... have you had any dreams? About that place?"

My nervousness solidified into fear. "I need to go."

"We need to talk," he countered. "I don't want to startle you again. I'll be in Ystradffin in a week, I'll go to the pub for dinner every night."

"Thank you for the warning," I said sarcastically. I considered staying in a different village, but they were few and far between around there. B&Bs were not plentiful, and I doubted the Survey would pay for me to stay somewhere further away.

I could hear crackling and hissing on the line, it sounded like he was walking with a cordless phone. The background din grew quieter.

"Something strange is going on," he finally said, in a low, intense voice. "With that circle, and me, and you. I've had dreams, and I'm sure you have too. I just want to find out what it means, that's all. I'm just saying, I'll be there. You don't have to meet me if you don't want to."

I thought of three weeks' worth of pot noodles for dinner. And no beer. Not giving me much choice there, are you? I thought.

"I won't be in the village every night, I'll be camping for some of the time," I said at length. "I don't think anything is going on at all, and you're imagining things. But I can't stop you going where you want. And I'll want a hot meal when I am in the village. So I suppose I'll see you there."

"I suppose so." He sounded relieved.

"I'll let you get back to work, then," I said.

"Indeed. Goodbye," Ed said.

"Goodbye." I hung up. I stared at the phone, and decided not to tell Glen about this little development. He would only worry.

And what I would never admit, even to myself, is that deep down, a tiny part of me did want to see Ed again, and find out what his dreams had shown him. The tiny part that couldn't let go of the unscientific, the preposterous. The tiny part that the rest of my mind couldn't quite drown out.

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Oooooooh!

:edge: makes more of an appearance! And I loved the rest of the band in the background.

:applaud: More, more!
 
:yippie: what a treat for a Sunday!! Thank you!!!

I am really hooked up by this story Alisaura, it's excellent!
 
One word:
fabulous.jpg


Ali, I flippin' love this! :applaud:
 
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