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This happened last night:
"What's the matter, Dawna?"
I took my head out of my hands and hastily wiped the tears off my face. I hadn't been expecting Cindy back quite so soon... "Nothing, nothing," I said quickly. "How was your day? They stopped interrogating you about that car yet?"
"Not yet, but they did give me a new one, which should please Mike," Cindy said, sitting down on the couch next to me. "Now what's the matter with you?"
"Nothing," I said again, which wasn't true at all. I'd just realized that I had missed, by a few days, the anniversary of my (somewhat self-imposed) exile from Aekea, and all that had caused it. Of course that had set off a crying jag, and since Lady Luck had gone off somewhere, I had nobody at all to comfort me. But now that Cindy was back, I wasn't going to upset her, or stay upset myself for that matter. "Want a toasted cheese sandwich?" I asked, and hurried off to the kitchen.
I couldn't shake her off that easily. She followed me, and again asked, "What IS the matter? Can't you tell me?" I sighed.
"It's that it's been a year since I...left Aekea," I said. "It was a year on the 11th, I just remembered..."
"Oh," Cindy said, sounding relived, "I thought something was really a problem." I shrugged and put the sandwiches in the toaster oven.
"What happened then?" she asked, as we munched our sandwiches. "You said something about that at the Halloween party..."
I put down my sandwich. "Yeah, well..."
Cindy's nearly as good a listener as she is a talker, and she listened, wide-eyed, as I talked about my family in Aekea, and about the "accident". She looked quite upset when I finished.
"But...Gambino said he didn't have anything to do with it," she said.
"Why should I belive him?" I asked. "He's more then capable, and besides, I know it was on instructions that he gave...before." I looked down at my half-eaten, cold sandwich, trying not to think of my monster form.
"Well, I've just the thing to cheer you up!" Cindy said, pulling a small, flat, box out of her pocket, and giving it to me. "Open it!"
My heart leaped as I saw the glitter of gold inside the velvet-lined box. Then it sank as I looked closer at what turned out to be a pair of gold hoop earings.
"My ears aren't..." I started.
Cindy laughed. "I know that, silly, my glasses do work, you know! Maybe you need glasses too... Look closer."
I felt my face heating up as I picked up the earings. The were clip-ons. "Thanks, they're lovely..." I said.
Cindy laughed even more. "You never noticed they were missing, did you? I found them under your bed when I swept your room, and I thought I'd have them remade so you can wear them!"
I looked at the earings again, and remembered. They were the ones I'd gotten for my birthday, on the Isle! They'd probably been tossed under the bed in my hurry to get dressed up for Halloween. I hadn't seen it at first, since, as Cindy had said, they had been remade for unpierced ears. "Thanks loads!" I said again.
"They go with your hair and eyes," she said with a smile. "Put them on!" I did, and shook my head gingerly.
"They feel a bit odd," I said.
"You'll get used to them," she said, a little bit of a dreamy look in her eyes. "My golden girl... Never grudge the Gambino blood in you, Dawna. It's given you most of your looks, as...as your sea-people genes have given you your abilities."
"At what price?" I asked rather sourly. She sighed.
"A big one, I'll admit," she said, "but we'll find a way to pay it off. You and me, and..."
Lady Luck stalked in and leaped onto Cindy's lap with a scolding look that was almost too much, since it was she, Lady Luck, who had been away.
"And Lady Luck," Cindy finished, scratching Lady Luck under her chin. She looked from her to me, and shivered slightly. "Your eyes are both the same gold...it's like looking at Celeste, but you're both so different every other way. I mean, Lady Luck's a cat! And you're much prettier than Celeste..."
Unexpectedly, Lady Luck sunk her teeth deep into Cindy's chin-scratching hand, then leaped off her lap and onto mine, from which she climbed onto my shoulder, and then my head.
"What was all that about?" Cindy asked in astonishment, clutching her bitten hand. "Biting the hand that pets you?" To which I could give no answer, and Lady Luck would not, and now, much later, as she lies curled up on my pillow, still will not. If she could, that is...she can. Lady Luck's good at getting her message across. I wonder if that was a message, biting Cindy like that!