Hard as Stone
They compared notes over tea. The conversation was oddly constrained. It felt as if someone had stretched a fine web between them and they were talking carefully, afraid a strong breath might break a fragile weave.
Roary had urged Lin to tell Fiona of her rather un-natural or to some extent super-natural experience at Dun Aenghuis. Lin refused, stating simply that she wasn't at all sure it had not just been exposure to cold and excess worry. Roary was certain she knew that is was a vastly different cause. In fact as he sat there he ground his teeth over it. He was more than a bit angry, he mused, "She simply willna' face the facts. An' it makes no sense, what with her boy's bein' what they are an' all that to boot." He put his cup down a bit hard on the table causing Fiona to give him a rather sharp glance. "How could Lin pretend anything else had happened? Somehow in the midst of all the mess she was still fightin' to keep the Fae at arm's length." His thoughts settled on the night and to what degree she must have had her guard down to have been taken at the Dun. It was either that or the sidhe who used her as a host must have been very strong. It was common faith that a person who had no faith at all in the fair-folk would never see them and never be touched by them. "An' that is a two-edged sword," he thought.
Fiona's silence stemmed from the suppressed hangover, her desire not to divulge how she had spent the night in sport at the pub in such an indecorous way and of course the holding to her heart of the last bits of the night. These last were starry and warm and pressed close. They were not for sharing, they were hers and hers alone. She pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed, praying for a sliver of relief.
Lin just wanted the two of them to focus. Whatever the strange night had brought, its frights and its comforts was past. She itched for action. She ached to move. She could not comprehend why they were still just sitting there. Her whole body wanted to spring forward and scream, to pummel, to force time forward into the moment when all of this would be a distant memory and Sean and Ian would be back again. "Damn and bloody hell," she raged inside, "they were all right when they said I had no cause for running off. It did far more harm than good. Blast the damn swan and its bloody neck. I just want my boys back." This last thought was accompanied by a great heaving sigh as she stood and moved to put her cup on the counter.
Returning to the table she found to her relief that Roary and Fiona had finally, after an eternity of time taken up the conversation again. They were arguing points of location in the general area, trying to get a plan set for the day. Lin interrupted, suggesting an alternative course all together. "I think we are in the wrong place all together." Her partners in the search, much to her surprise, readily agreed. They set their minds to considering which path might be a better one to follow. Each had specific destinations in mind. What was interesting, however, was that all of the paths lead eventually toward the same general area. There was, it appeared, a concentration of Dowths in County Meath. Which was, rather oddly, the conjectured ancestral home of Lin's Irish roots.
It was with this in mind they set out to visit the most celebrated of the sidhe sights, New Grange. The tension still hanging like thick drapery in the car as the mellow strains of a Clannad ballad attempted to ease the air.
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