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“What’ll it be?” The barman gave us a funny look but had apparently seen enough not to ask questions.
“What’s good to eat?” I asked.
“I don’t know about ‘good’ but I’ll tell you what’s on.”
“Okay.”
“There’s goat stew,” announced the barman as if beginning a list, but then fell silent.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Well,” I shrugged. “Two goat stews then please.”
“Excellent choice. And to drink?”
I looked at the row of tankards along the bar and the row of faces wavering above them in varying shades of red.
“What’s not lethal?”
“Milk,” advised the barman. “Steer clear of the dreck, young lady—it’ll have you off your feet and then one of these reprobates will have you on your back. And you sir, stay away from the water. There’s not a well worth shit in these parts. Someone offers you water then he’s a liar. Either that or it’s liable to get up an’ get outta the glass by itself.”
“Two milks.”
We found a table, and we ate and drank. At first, we attracted more attention than I was comfortable with as an anomaly, but pretty soon the novelty wore off and the drinkers returned to killing their brain cells with dreck.
All bar one.
There was one man on the far side of the bar who kept looking our way. He seemed to be with a group of rowdies who stood out themselves, but our observer was different. While his friends made merry, he sat quiet, watching us.
He noticed me looking back and gave me a roguish smile that made me blush and return my attention to the goat stew (which was actually pretty good—kudos to the goat).
After a while, I chanced another look and found the man still watching. There was something about him that…
He was quite handsome in a rough sort of way (again, ‘rogue’ was the word that came to mind), but that wasn’t it. There was something in his eyes that made me think back to…
It was an odd connection, but I found myself remembering a day five years ago.
The day my life changed.
