Paul and Storm

by N.K.L. Storm

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]

[editor’s note: this installment was written in a different color ink than the first part, apparently at a later time. There were no other chapters in the Trapper Keeper ™]

The sweet air was all around them as Emily and Nightfin walked in towards a smoky evening. They didn’t exchange any words, but Emily knew they totally didn’t need to, and even the trees were singing, just for them and them alone. The sky was turning a dark indigent blue.

When they were way down the street, Nightfin took off his Charlie glasses (he’d been wearing glasses to make himself look like a doofus), and suddenly the full fist of his sexiness hit Emily in her mind’s jelly-guts. Suddenly she wished she really was just going bowling with stupid Jessica or something, and she worried about Nightfin’s tongue.

“I thought we could just, you know, walk around and stuff,” said Nightfin, and Emily sighed a big sigh of relief.

“That sounds cool, I guess,” said Emily, who was trying to be all blasé, instead of spazzing out like the dummy she usually was.

“Check this out!” said Nightfin, who then did, like, 20 back springs right down the middle of the street! But sexy. And Emily was amazed by his limbers, and stood there like a dum-dum. Nightfin waved to her from waaaay down the street, where his hair and black coat waved in some sort of unseen wind.

“Join me! Come! You can do it!” he said, but Emily wasn’t sure. I mean, gymnastics was the thing she was easily WORST at and totally hated, and she always tried to act sick or something when it came up in gym class, but the stupid gym teacher always made her do it anyway.

“I–I don’t think I can,” said Emily, glancing down at the ground and looking very pretty (if only she could see herself through other eyes!)

“I believe in you, Emily Smithingtonson,” said Nighfin Daggarhart, and suddenly Emily was filled with some kind of kooky power-flow feeling, like when you’re on a swing and going up REALLY fast.

“Okay, I’ll try,” she said. Emily turned her back to the sturdy-standing Nightfin, scrunched up her eyes and thought about backsprings and swingsets…

…and suddenly she was COMPLETELY flipping around, backwards, and through the breezy air! She thought she’d get dizzy, or fart, but she didn’t, and totally did 20 backsprings. And on the last one she felt an even bigger mega-boost, and she went way way up high, and did this flippy thing, and landed right in front of Nightfin, who was TOTALLY surprised.

“Wow,” he said. He was trying to act all blasé, but Emily knew that she’d totally blown him away. “You really could be The One…”

“Huh? What do you mean??” said Emily, who knew but kind of didn’t know, you know?

“Nothing,” said Nightfin, who was now back to being nothing but sexy and blasé. Then he got this wicked smile on his face, and Emily got this terrible feeling, like a train was going to jump the tracks and onto her. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”

All the way to the Softy-Cold, Emily wanted to hide into a manhole or something. Would Nightfin still think she was okay if he found out? She wanted her feet to be going backwards, not forwards, but her direction was not hers and hers alone to make, and before you knew it they were there.

“I love ice cream,” said Nightfin, who was all licking his lips, making him look like a hungry model or something.

“Yeah, ice cream’s pretty wow-awesome,” said Emily. Oh, no! She was TOTALLY losing it and talking like a dork! “I mean, yeah, it’s pretty blasé.”

“Give us two chocolate ice creams, Nick,” said Nightfin to the boy behind the counter, who was also totally cute. And sort of sexy, but not as sexy as Nightfin, to Emily. Ashley might have thought he was WAY more sexy, which was fine and all. But Nightfin was the REAL sexy one, so Ashley could have the new boy. If she wanted.

“On the house, Nightf–I mean…CHARLIE,” said Nick (who probably wasn’t really named Nick, we’re thinking.)

Nightfin’s blue eyes looked at his so very brown ice cream, and his tongue licked it all swirly. Emily gulped and stood there being nervous with her stupid ice cream cone.

“Mmmm,” said Nightfin, giving his ice cream another sexy lick. Emily noticed that his teeth were really, really white and totally perfect, which she certainly admired. “It’s soooo good! Why haven’t you had yours yet? Did you want a bigger one, with more milk in it? Nick, give her a bigger one…”

“No, Night–I mean Charlie,” said Emily, who barely remembered that no one was supposed to know his real name. A dark sad cloud swept over her soul and heart, for she knew she had to tell Nightfin the inconvenient truth, and that their love could never be, and that her life was just as stupid as she thought it was.

“What’s wrong?” said Nightfin, who didn’t look sexy or wicked or mean AT ALL at the moment, but looked really concerned and sort of sad, too. Which was kind of sexy. And Emily knew that she could tell him ANYTHING. She gulped another bunch of breath and decided to plunge her words, for both of them.

“I can’t eat dairy,” she said, bracing herself as she waited for her soul-mate to spurn her blossoms, for Eternity. “I’m lactose intolerant.”

But to Emily’s wholesome surprise, Nightfin smiled and put his hand around hers, which was around the ice cream cone, in which lay the deliciously damning nourishment.

“Yes, you can,” he said, and Emily’s stomach started to go all tingly. She looked into his eyes (which were now ever-so azureous), but her level of brave was smaller still.

“But…if I eat it…then later…”

“You won’t fart tonight, Emily Smithingtonson,” he said, and it was like a big sigh! “And I wouldn’t care if you did. It smells different to…” and he looked over at the guy that Nightfin called Nick (he’s actually named Trudude), who nodded, like they were in on some kind of plan.

“…our kind,” finished Nightfin, who then pushed the ice cream up to Emily’s lips. And Emily licked it, and it tasted sweet and milky, but like it was from another PLANET, or some other unbeknownst place. And she ate it and ate it and ate it, and Nightfin held her hand on the cone, so warmly, and he smiled as she devoured the cone-nectar, like he was the kindest person ever (but not like he wasn’t still sexy, because he most dubiously still was!), and it was his first gift to her, to share.

“Okay you two,” said Nick, who was sort of acting annoyed, but was really probably just joshing them, and was actually pretty happy for them. Then he gave Nightfin a very morbid look (which would have driven Ashley NUTS, but she wasn’t there. Ha-ha!) “I think it’s time she knows.”

“Yes,” said Nightfin, letting go of Emily’s creamy hand, with drama. “Let us walk.”

Before she even knew it, Emily’s feet tread them into the woods where she used to hide when she was just a stupid little girl. And for a moment she thought “no, I can’t take him here”, and she worried about Nightfin’s tongue again, but she knew at that moment that she was totally SAFE, and it wasn’t creepy at all.

Then she was all confused, probably because it was pretty dark or something, and she didn’t remember how to get to her hiding place, or back to the Softy-Cold, or back home, or ANYWHERE.

“Shhhhh,” swam Nightfin’s voice into Emily’s auditory canal. “We’re here.”

Emily looked into Nightfin’s indigent eyes, and tried to ask him an infinite quantity of questions, just with her eyes only. How did he know about her secret place? What? Who? Why?!?!?!

“Shhhhh,” coursed Nightfin’s voice over her hair and soft cheek, which truly was pretty. “I know you have a lot of questions, which is why I let you bring me here.”

Then, suddenly, for some reason, Emily was soooo MAD! So was she just, like, his pawny play-thing, then?! Was she?! Had she just been leading him around on a chain that was in all actuality wrapped around her own truly pretty neck, and looped back in a way so that HE was actually holding it?!?!

“First you listen to me, Nightfin-Bannister-StupidGuy, or whatever your lame-o name is!?” she spat in a huffily turning away and acting as blasé as she could! (and really felt, really!) “Maybe I’d rather not ask you any dumb questions!! Maybe YOU’RE the dumb and don’t know anything?! You and your stupid, STUPID blue eyes!”

A hand caught her hand, and the hand was his hand, and he pulled her around, and she sort of twirled around and probably looked very graceful and pretty, though she’d never ever practiced doing that kind of thing in the mirror or anything.

“You’re right,” said Nightfin. “But if my eyes are stupid, it’s because they’re stupid for you.”

Emily wished she could shatter all of her stone words with a big chisel of feelings, and her heart became an ocean of delicious melty ice cream, and she collapsed into his torso.

“There, there, sweetly one,” said Nightfin. “You are no toy, not for me nor ANYONE, of mortal heritage or no. And I wouldst challenge any such who said so–but only if it were your wish, from respect. So you must not cry!”

“I–I won’t,” she said.

“Good, good,” said Nightfin. “For tears so delicious cannot ever be, lest the perils…” he said, mysteriously, as he glanced so sexishly away.

“I don’t understand,” said Emily, breaking herself apart from him.

“I don’t either,” said Nightfin, who turned his head briskly away to the side and down, and looked importantly gothic and blasé. “But I think it’s time that you know more about my kind.”

END OF PART 2

CONFINUE TO PART 3

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPIRE – HOME