The Dragon’s Throne 1

He showed her how to turn on the water and adjust the spray, then showed her which bottles were for her hair. 

“Everything is all natural since the water eventually ends up back outside, but it all smells wonderful,” he said.  “I’ll leave you to it.”

He left without another word, and when he did, Anna hurried to close the door behind him.  She stripped out of her dress, hanging it on the back of the door and testing the water before she stepped in.

She sighed when the warm spray washed over her.  Not once in her life had she taken a shower that wasn’t the same temperature as the air outside her home.  When the water was cold in the winter, she longed for the heat of the summer showers.  In the summer, she would have given anything for the icy fingers of a winter’s shower running down her overheated body. 

Grabbing the bottle meant for her hair, she poured some into her hand and worked her hair into a rich lather.  The fragrance of sun-warmed mountain flowers filled the shower stall, enveloping her in the scent.  She closed her eyes, picturing the flower she had once seen that smelled exactly like the shampoo in her hair and smiling.  She knew where to find that flower near her home.  Maybe, when she got back, she could…

She stopped herself, derailing that painful line of thought.  No matter where she went, she could never go back to Aldeia.  There would be no mountain flowers unless they grew wherever she ended up.  It was best to let go of those thoughts before they weakened her resolve.  She would leave this place, and then, she would grab what she could from her home and leave Aldeia, too. If there was anything left of her home.  From there, she would set out on her own, hopefully with enough money to settle somewhere else.  Surely there were more human settlements east of Aldeia without hitting the coast.  She didn’t know how far the east coast was from what was once Montana, but she knew that it wasn’t close.  There had to be something between here and there.  There just had to be.

She stepped out of the shower, grabbing a towel and drying off quickly, then opening the door a crack and looking into the room.  There were clothes on the bed, as Eli had promised, and the main door was shut.  She stepped out cautiously, then boldly when she was sure that he wasn’t in the room.  She hurried to the bed, looking with disbelief at the clothes that were laying there

She’d never seen anything like them in her life.

There was a soft knock at the door and she instinctively clutched the towel around herself before calling out.

“Yes?”

“Is everything alright in there?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”  She cleared her throat, glancing at the clothes once more.  “Is there something else I can change into?”

“Do they not fit?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what these are.  I mean, I know what the pants are, but the shirt has no buttons.”

“It’s a t-shirt,” he said, laughing.  “You just pull it on over your head.  I can show you if you want.”

“No,” she said quickly.  “I’ll figure it out.  Maybe I’ll just put my dress back on.”

“You can’t,” he said.  “I already put it in the washer.”

Shocked, she looked at the door where she’d hung her dress.  Sure enough, it was missing, which meant that he had been in the bathroom while she showered.  Incensed by the nerve it took for him to walk in there when she was showering like that, she quickly pulled on the jeans and fiddled with the zipper and snap until she got them closed, then pulled the shirt over her head.  She stomped to the door, pulling it open and stopping inches from his face.

“You were in the bathroom when I was showering?” she asked, her voice echoing in the vast hallway. 

“I reached in and grabbed the dress.  I didn’t stop and take in the view.”

“You should have knocked.”

“Why, so I could disturb you?  You were having a relaxing time.  I didn’t want to ruin that.”

“How did you know that if you didn’t look?”

“Because you were singing.”

“I was?”

“Well, humming, but yes.  You didn’t realize it?”

“No.”

“Then it must have been an amazing shower.  Wait until you get a chance to get in the hot tub.”

She shook her head, not even asking what he was talking about.  When he laughed, she shot him an angry look that would have felled a wild bear, but he laughed even harder.

“What is so funny?”

“You have the shirt on backwards.  The pocket goes in the front.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Didn’t the tag bother your throat?”

“The entire thing is uncomfortable, how was I supposed to notice a tag?”

“It’s not uncomfortable, it’s the softest shirt I’ve ever found.”

“It feels nice,” she corrected.  “But I’m not used to having something so revealing on.  I feel exposed.”

“You’ll get used to it,” he said.  “I never understood the mayor’s insistence that everyone dress as if they were in the eighteen hundreds, but it was just one more way to shut out the progress that got humans nearly destroyed in the first place.  I guess I can understand why he would want to avoid repeating history.”

“Every time you explain something, I just end up feeling more lost.”

“Do you know about the Great War?”

“I do, but we only learned that it led to the downfall of man, which is why we have lost all technology and live simply.  It’s the safest way, and the only way to ensure that greed doesn’t destroy our kind again.”

Eli regarded her, his expression concerned but also something more that she couldn’t put her finger on.

“I think that there are a lot of things that Mayor Freeman left out, probably intentionally.  I’m finding it hard to believe that he does all he does with any good intentions.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head. 

“I don’t think that you’re ready to hear a lot of what you don’t know.  Honestly, you looked like you suspected sorcery when you saw the lights turn on.  I have a feeling that there is going to be an overwhelming amount of revelations in your future, and I don’t want to traumatize you.”