Something Fishy

A/N: Well, I got a review requesting that this one be updated, and ya\'ll know how much I love to make my readers happy. So. I\'m bringing this one up from the back burner--but \"Looking Glass\" will still have the bigger front burner. But I\'m willing to turn the heat up on this one. If that long metaphor made any sense and wasn\'t completely ridiculous. If it was, tell me in a review! (Oh, and you could always add what you thought of the chapter, too. Obviously I struggled, or I would have posted before this.) And I know I said that this story would be about sex--and it will be, I promise. I just gotta build up steam and plot and all that boring stuff. But hey--I almost mention it in this chapter!

Dane DeFryske



Chapter Two


Apparently, she’d have to wait a long damn time. It had been three years, and Zelia still had gills. And she wasn’t too happy about her fare, either. The beasts of the forest weren’t exactly bringing her offerings from the forests and fields. No, she was limited to what she could reach, which was generally as wet and slimy as she was. And raw.

“Come on, you miserable, mud-sucking, brainless bastard,” she growled, in the middle of prying a mussel open. She yelped when it snapped shut on her thumb, letting out another string of curses. Three years of solitude hadn’t done much for her ladylike manners.

“Bloody fucking hell!”

The cat looked at her like she was crazy. Zelia didn’t even know anymore how tenuous her hold on reality was. Tom Cat seemed to like her anyway, though. At least most of the time. After all, he was a cat.

He had joined her a few months after the little incident with the witch. One day, in the middle of winter, he had just walked up and sat on the rock her father had once inhabited. And he had stayed. Zelia tried not to let him know that she loved him for staying. Instead, she sometimes gave him fish, which he devoured. He sometimes brought her dead mice. She tactfully threw them back into the woods. All in all, it was a good relationship.

Tom Cat was a surprisingly handsome fellow, for living in the wild so long. He was a sleek gray, with gray-green eyes. Zelia was surprised that one so good-looking would stay with her. Her hair had grown long, and she did her best to keep it neat and twisted around her head, but there was only so much she could do for it without a comb or a maid to dress it. Her torso, which she was proud to say she had retained, was tanned, and freckles had appeared on her nose and shoulders. Her chemise had long since disintegrated, but her nudity wasn’t a problem. While the pond was secluded, it had once been a favorite spot for lovers and swimmers. It hadn’t taken long for rumors to circulate, however, that a monster had come to inhabit this particular spring-fed wonder. So, for three seasons of the year, Zelia was left totally alone, except for Tom Cat.

During the summer months, something truly wonderful happened: she was given legs (her own, in fact). So, she guessed she had better revise her previous statement. Her nudity wasn’t a problem now. That first summer, she had hidden in the forest, butt-ass naked for a full day, before she had gained the courage to steal a dress from a laundry line. It hadn’t exactly fit, but it had done until she could steal more. She had taken great pleasure in stealing her entire wardrobe from the daughter of the family who now owned what had once been her father’s property.

Once she was properly dressed, Zelia had set about building a new life for herself. She had assumed ownership of an abandoned cottage a few miles from the pond, right next to the road. She had worked hard to clean it up, and had begun taking in travelers, for a fee. It was still a good cottage, with nice wood floors, and five whole rooms. It was like magic, that it was just sitting there, empty for Zelia to take.

As she had become better at cooking, she had started to actually make a fair bit of money, which she had plowed back into the cottage, buying nicer furniture and fabric for curtains, even glass for the windows. Eventually she had gone so far as to buy the cottage and a bit of the land around it from the people who really did own it.

As the cottage had become more upscale, so had her guests. She now served only the most elite of the landed class, had a maid and a cook. She had once had to turn away a duke because she had no more free rooms. So she had built an addition, adding an extra five rooms that could be rented, and an expanded dining room. Zelia had thought, all in all, that it had been a pretty successful summer.

She was still gloating over her success in September, when she first felt the call of the pond. She had shaken it off, thinking that she had probably just grown fond of the place during her months there, and was missing it a wee bit. She had assumed, not unreasonably, that the old biddy had finally died, freeing her from the curse forever. As the month wore on, however, the call became stronger, almost unbearable. Zelia could barely breathe. So, she had paid her maid and her cook to stay and take care of the place, and nailed up a sign, “Closed for the Season,” praying that she would be able to return to the cottage that had provided her a living and a home.

Relief didn’t even begin to cover what she had felt when the same miracle occurred the next summer. A bit confused about her three-month reprieve, she had sought out a woman wise in the ways of magic—but not one with a grudge against her and her family, like the bloody old biddy that had cursed her. The woman had thought that maybe the cross on the necklace Zelia still wore had deflected some of the malice of the curse, cracking—but not breaking—the shell of it. She suspected that was the reason Zelia retained her own human torso, as well. If the witch had wanted to ruin her beauty, as she said she had, she wouldn’t have left the girl her face. Even tanned and freckled, it was a decidedly lovely face, with its fine bones and eyes the exact color of the pond on a sunny spring morning. They even seemed to ripple like the water’s surface.

Her curiosity somewhat abated, Zelia had headed home to her cottage, to find that her maid and cook had remained loyal, and hadn’t ripped off her silver or expensive linens. They had, instead, created a waiting list for that summer. They were booked through August. Having proven their loyalty, Zelia decided on the spot to leave The Cottage open all year long, in the care of her employees. And so she settled into a routine: running The Cottage in the summer, and swimming the rest of the year. Tom Cat went where she went, whether she was at the cottage or the pond. Sometimes, Zelia fancied that he was watching out for her. Tom Cat remained the only man in her life, though. While she could get away without explaining much to her employees, it might be a little more difficult to sidestep telling a lover where exactly she spent nine months of the year. And a husband was simply out of the question. Even if she wasn’t far too old. No, some magic thing or even God had helped her when she had discovered The Cottage and made it a success. She really couldn’t expect much more than that.

Knowing a husband was not in her future did not mean that she didn’t have offers for less, er, permanent relationships. After all, there were a lot of men coming in and out of her home, and she had quickly learned that bored, rich men looked to their hostess to relieve their boredom, to be so...entertained.

And Zelia had definitely been tempted a few times. There had been an earl once, just returned from touring the Continent, who had caught her eye. Between the heeled knee-high riding boots and the snug-fitting britches, his bum was shown in all its mouth-watering, angel-tempting glory. It had been all she could do to keep herself from planting her hands on it, squeezing a few times to see if it was as firm as it looked. She had found herself inexplicably fascinated with the way the light highlighted and shadowed the velvet-clad contours—until Cookie had caught her staring and laughed. Then she was far too embarrassed to do anything at all. Hopelessly on the shelf or not, an unmarried woman simply didn’t behave in such ways as had been dancing through her naughty mind. Or rather, she shouldn’t be caught in the act of having such inappropriate fantasies.

She had gone to his room later that night, though, and what appropriate women did was blown right out the window.

She highly enjoyed her interludes, but didn\'t splurge too often. She was busy still ensuring the success of her business and the protection of her secret. And she had to feed her cat. For now she would content herself with food that was actually cooked and a warm, non-liquid bed to sleep in, and ignore the fact that there was no one she wanted to share it with.