21st Century
"Whoa," is all I could manage to say as I walked into his house.
To the right is the living room with a decently sized couch and a wooden coffee table in front of it, a small tin bucket with flowers and a few coasters spread about the tabletop. A small flatscreen hung from a mantle above a rustic looking fireplace. To the left is the kitchen and dining room.
Walking into the kitchen and looking around, I notice that he has more plants hanging in the window above the sink. I stroll through to the dining room and the first thing I see is a sizable wooden table taking up the room on top of a wool rug, two wooden benches lined the sides instead of chairs.
As I look around the room, I'm noticing that there's swords hung up on all the walls and guns scattered in random corners of the house, glass cabinets full of small things collected over the years. After examining the room once more, I turn around to find Kian watching me.
"My bad, I was just looking around. You have a lot of cool stuff." I say as I awkwardly shuffle back into the kitchen. Looking out the window, I notice his garden that takes up the whole left side of his backyard.
"What do you have in your garden?" I ask, turning around to face him.
"I grow a lot of different veggies. It's one of my favorite pastimes and what I grow is normally better than what you would find at the store." Kian chuckles to himself as I smile at him.
"So, you've always lived here?"
"Well, yes and no. I grew up in this house many years ago, but I didn't come back until right before I signed up for the war in the late 1840's. From then, I just came back when I grew old enough." He says scratching the back of his head.
"Would you like something to drink or eat? I doubt you've eaten anything since you've been with William this whole time." Thinking back at everything that's happened, I try to remember if I've eaten anything and when I don't reply fast enough Kian looks at me and shakes his head.
He walks to the fridge as my vision starts to become blurry. My head starts pounding and before I know it, I'm on the floor with Kian rushing towards me.
*flashback*
"You gonna offer a lady a drink or what?" I smirk at Kian.
"How rude of me." He says as he gets up from the table and walks into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle and two small glasses out of the cupboard.
"Would M'lady like a drink? Tonight we have…" Kian pauses to look at the bottle before holding it up for me to see, "Whiskey! And…" he looks at his empty cabinet, "Nothing else."
He walks around, setting both glasses down on the table then sitting down across from me. Opening the bottle, he pours a small amount of the whiskey into both glasses.
"Does this look like a shot glass? Pour me some more." I say as Kian laughs, filling both cups halfway.
"I don't know if anyone has ever told you this before, but you have a serious drinking problem, Almyra." He says, resting his hand on my shoulder as he made eye contact with me doing his best 'serious' expression.
Without hesitation, I grab my drink off of the table and then while never breaking eye contact, I chug the whole thing before setting the empty glass back down.
"You have issues." He laughs as he grabs his drink and takes a big swig while relaxing into his chair.
"You really do have a nice house." I say, looking around.
He glanced around, sighing, "Yeah, one of my childhood homes. I wanted to see it before I went off to war."
I whipped my head around to look at him, shocked.
"You… You're doing what? I don't think I heard you right. You're trying to leave me?" I scoffed, "Well, too bad. I signed up too. Good luck getting rid of me now."
Kian's eyes grew wide, his face burning red from a mixture of alcohol and anger.
"What! When were you going to tell me that you signed up? I can only imagine what could've happened if I didn't sign up and you ended up going by yourself." I burst out laughing, standing up from my chair and instantly sitting back down after how dizzy I was becoming.
"I'm way more tipsy than I thought. Anyway, no worries about that. I signed up right after I saw you at the booth in town earlier. I didn't know what to do or think, so I signed up, too. I regretted doing it soon after, but honestly I was just waiting for you to tell me you signed up before I told you." I responded, taking a deep breath, standing up once more. I walked from the dining room into the living room and sat down on the couch, raising my hand.
"Bring me another drink, will you? I would like to discuss this 'going to war' while I'm not sober." My hand falls back into my lap as I lean back, relaxing into the couch. Kian walks over to me, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and our glasses from earlier in the other. He hands me a glass, pouring some whiskey into both before setting the bottle down on the table.
"Here's to the war!" I exclaim, holding my drink up to clink glasses with Kian's.
"Cheers!" We say in unison, downing the whiskey in one gulp. Kian takes my glass from my hand and places both glasses on the table, then leans back into the couch.
"You know, I'm kind of glad you're going to war with me, but how did you even get in?" He turns to look at me quizzically before laughing and I begin to laugh along with him.
"Well, honestly. I'm not sure, but I think they liked that I actually had an education, unlike more than half of the guys that signed up." Kian rolled his eyes, still laughing.
"What do you think is going to happen when we go?" I ask.
"I don't know, but I do know you'll definitely be in charge, all the schooling you've done and all." He smiles as we both start to drunkenly laugh again.
"Well, whatever happens, we're going to get through it together." I lay my head on his shoulder as he rests his on mine.
***
Something warm and wet touches my face as my hand flies up to remove it.
"Whoa, now. Calm down. It's just a washcloth." Kian says, taking it off of my face.
Opening my eyes, I look around at my surroundings. I realize I'm laying on the couch and he's kneeling down beside me, a bowl of water set on the table behind him.
"Would you mind telling me what's going on or do I have to force it out of you?" Kian raises his eyebrows. I sigh and sit up, patting the space next to me as Kian gets up from the floor and sits next to me.
"As I told you before, the spell William did fucked me up." I say, trying to hide my face.
"Almyra, you mumbled something while you were passed out. You said something about before the war. I know there's more to these blackouts and you can't keep these things from me any longer." Kian says, resting his hand on my knee as I look up at him.
"Everytime I blackout… I get these visions of my past and recently it's been visions of us… At this house, actually. Right before the war." She says.
"What do you mean? What have you seen?" Kian asks, intrigued.
"There's so much, but the last one that I remember was us having a drink together while talking about signing up for the war and something about wondering what's going to happen next..." Almyra trails off, staring blankly past Kian.
"What happened after that?" Kian asked quietly with a concerned expression.
"Nothing. It was just of us sitting on the couch, drinking. Why? Is there something I should know?" I asked, raising my eyebrow, leaning in closer to him.
"What?" He scoffed, "No! I was just wondering since you hide shit from me all the time." He says, watching for her reaction.
"Well, I didn't see anything else. So, do you plan on telling me what happened next?" I look up at him expectantly, wiggling my eyebrows.
"Well, I guess you're going to have to figure it out on your own because I'm not telling you anything." Kian says, exaggeratedly clenching his lips together, pretending to lock it and throw away the key.
"Wow, alright! I see how it is. I didn't want to know anyway!" Almyra exclaims jokingly, turning away.
"Ah, come on," he says, twisting her back around to look at him, "how about we go take a look at my garden and then I'll show you what a great cook I am." I roll my eyes as he laughs and stands up, grabbing my hand and pulling me up along with him.