Night and Neera: A Rejected Mate Story

Chapter 3: My Magical Broomstick

"Raevyn," I breathed out the second I shifted.

She seemed to float down the rocks to us, three naked young women utterly awed by meeting the Raevyn Guérir. 

"Let's find your clothes and get back to your hotel so we can move along," she said, her voice low and soft. She flipped her golden blonde hair over her shoulder and walked ahead of us, as if she knew exactly where we'd stashed our clothes.

"Wait a minute," I whispered to Owena and Echo, my voice little more than a quiet exhalation of breath. "Tell me I'm not hallucinating, but wasn't she completely bald a minute ago?"

"Bald as a bowling ball," she laughed. And that was it. No explanation for her hair, no explanation for her being able to hear me. Unless she was wolf, but never had the rumors said that about her.

In fact, Raevyn Guérir may have been a legend, but as we'd discovered on our road trip, she was a very mysterious legend since nothing was actually known about her. The three of us probably knew more about her than any other living creature.

She had a bald, tattooed head. Sometimes.

She also had waist-length golden blonde hair. Sometimes.

She looked ageless. I couldn't even begin to guess how old she was.

She knew things. How to find us. (How did she even know we were looking for her?) Where we'd stashed our clothes. 

Once we made it to the tree, we grabbed our clothes and pulled them on, and she continued on to the hotel, through the lobby and up to our room.

"Get packed and let's go. We have things to do," she said. So we threw our dirty clothes and toiletries into the duffel bags and left the hotel, still so early that most people weren't awake yet. 

We threw our duffels in the trunk. Echo was driving this morning, and Owena looked at Raevyn. "Are you driving with us? Or...?"

"Or flying around on my magical broomstick? No, it's over forty thousand miles so it's in the shop getting a new transmission." She rolled her eyes at all of us, then got into the front passenger seat.

Owena and I exchanged a glance and got into the back seat. All righty then.

We drove for a while in silence, and then Echo announced she was stopping at McDonald's for breakfast and coffee. She shot a look at Raevyn.

"So, do you...eat?"

At that, Raevyn burst into laughter. "What the hell do you think we are? Some sort of vampire that survives on blood?"

Once again, Owena and I exchanged a glance. "Well," I started to say, "we aren't really sure what to make of you."

With a shrug, she conceded the point. "Fair enough. We'll talk after breakfast on the way to our place."

"Oh," I said as we inched along in the drive-thru line, "do you live with someone?"

"Yes, with me," the bald woman said. Not going to lie, we all lost our shit and screamed.

After we calmed down, the bald woman laughed. "God, that never gets old."

"OK this is...different," I said, trying to be diplomatic and not piss off this woman who had extraordinary abilities that I couldn't even begin to comprehend.

"I can see where you would think that," she agreed. 

When it was our turn, we all ordered breakfast sandwiches and hot coffee. We parked and ate our food, then the bald woman directed us back on the highway. "We're just about two hours away, so we have time for your questions."