Chapter 17: Chapter 17: A Very Diluted Luke Tea

The flood water was already all around her; it had probably submerged her father's slab by now, so unless she wanted a very diluted Luke tea, disassembling him would be much more trouble than it was worth.

Nikola was also no longer sure that he and his group of friends had attempted to murder her in malice, anyway. She didn't understand his explanation of the events, not one bit, but there was enough uncertainty surrounding the whole situation that it was worthy of a second thought. Was she holding somebody prisoner for nothing?

Clearly, she had some sort of damnable soft spot for the wrongfully imprisoned. She had one wrongfully imprisoned person on her back, and... oh, god damn it, she was about to try to be friends with another. Already regretting her decision, she reached out and slid the many locks open.

Pulling the imposing, sturdy door open produced a ripple in the water that lapped past her wounded knees, the water directly surrounding them reddening. Her slow opening of the door displaced the water and it went to even out, swishing past Luke and the rapidly bloating pillow of hay she had left for him.

"Nikola!" Luke gasped, shocking her with the glee imbued in his tone.
"Hello, Luke. Are you harmed?"
"I uh-- no, I don't think so. Not harmed, just surprised and glad you actually came back here. Are you cool?" He looked her up and down, eyes squinting to verify that what he was seeing was indeed the reality. Nikola was in pyjamas; a puffy pair of shorts and a tank top, both of them pale in colour but splattered with dots of blood and dirt. Her knees were skinned, her palms were reddened. Her elbows, too. Even underwater, her feet were leaving an abundant trail of dirt and muck behind them, particles floating up to the surface of the water.
And, perhaps most peculiar of all, she was wearing someone on her back. They seemed to be asleep, their limbs dangling freely.

"I am unaware of what you mean by 'cool'. If you're asking if I am cold, then the answer is yes. I wish to go upstairs and gather my things just in case they are washed away in the flood. I also wish to change and attend to my wounds. Can I trust you to remain here while I prepare?" Nikola glanced over the rest of the room, but all that needed to remain in its place was secured, and all that was necessary would be unaffected by the water.

"Yeah, sure," he uttered with a nod. "But we need to be getting out of here soon. Who is that on your back, by the way?" Luke started to swish his way through the water towards the door, glancing cautiously between Nikola and the door as he approached it.

He took another step closer, and then another, until they were both standing by the doorway. Luke swallowed around the lump in his throat uneasily. Nikola could very well have changed her mind on the whole 'prisoner' thing; or maybe the mere suggestion of friendship had pissed her off. He searched her face for an indication of anger or malice, but it had all the emotion of a piece of paper.

"I do not believe now is the best time for idle chatter," Nikola decided, pointing downwards at the rapidly rising water that had gone from sitting at the bottom of her knee to just over it in the time they had been conversing. She turned around with a splash and waded over to the stairs, climbing them until she was free from the water.

"While I am upstairs getting ready, I wish for you to gather as much of the food from the kitchen as you can find. Stale loaves, salted meat and vegetables, nuts, anything. We may be unable to return here for some time. There is a basket with a handle in the kitchen, with rags already inside."

Luke did a happy dance in his brain when they passed through the doorway without incident, and he followed Nikola up the slippery steps, placing his hand on the wall to aid him in keeping his balance. They both made it to the top of the steps without crashing back down - or, rather, all three of them did. He had nearly forgotten about the wet rag of a person draped over her. They hadn't once opened their eyes or raised a hand to greet him.

"Roger that," he replied, making a beeline for the basket.

Nikola made her way to the stairs dubiously, looking over her shoulder every few seconds but ultimately deciding that if Luke escaped her, she would be able to find him eventually. Him no longer being her prisoner had to mean that she no longer had the authority to trap him, so even if she desperately wanted to pick his brain, she had to let him move freely.

As she climbed her second set of stairs, she could at least hear some kind of rustle of activity in the kitchen. Whether or not that meant he was gathering food like she had asked him to remained to be seen, but it gave her an inkling of something like hope.

Nikola pushed into her bedroom, her mind racing with possibilities. She had several things tucked away that she could find a use for, but time was of the essence. Now was not the time to collect every little thing that she could think of even a fringe use for.

As she looked around at her bed and the multi-toned sheets laying upon it, a sense of finality washed over her. Her house was flooding, she was considering things she never thought possible, and she was about to embark upon a flood-forced journey with someone whose friends she had killed. A whisper in the back of her mind told her that it would be a long time before she would be returning to her cozy village home.

She grabbed a leather bag first, and her belt with a pouch on either side. Storage was her first concern. Then, she rifled through her dresser for a pair of long, baggy pants, the cords she used to tie up the bottoms so they wouldn't get in the way, a few tank tops, a pair of pyjamas that weren't the ones she was wearing, a cloak or two from her abundant collection of cloaks; just those things were already taking up quite a lot of space. She tucked in the one flimsy dress she cared to wear, her undergarments, and topped it all off with a couple pairs of leggings.

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The bag was filled to bursting, and it weighed as much as a sack of potatoes, probably more. She flapped it closed and used its belt-style closure to fasten it so it stayed that way.

Nikola swished to the other side of her room, where her bed sat, gingerly pulling her blanket from beneath her pilllow and placing it in one of the pouches at either side of her belt; the left one. It was small, grey and deeply worn. Her father told her that it was made from the fabric of one of her mother's old shirts, and that had sealed its fate as one of her prized possessions.

Then, she peeled off the dirty, blood-splattered, mud-caked pair of pyjamas she had been in all dang day. She was all too happy to abandon them for the water to claim. Nikola used the jug of drinking water she kept in her room to fill a flask, and then to rinse off her feet, her battered knees, and just about every other part of her that was smeared with dirt. Then, she navigated away from the mushy puddles she had created and pondered over a new outfit.

They would be walking quite a distance and the weather was fair, so it couldn't be something heavy. They would be trudging through muddy fields, and every bit of the earth was a puddle trending towards a river, so it couldn't be something long.

She settled on something layered: a simple shirt dress with chunky stitching and the slip that went under it, her belt with pouches around her waist, a loose, airy cloak with a hood, and her leather boots that had been treated to repel water.

As her final item, she grabbed the last book that her father had been reading to her before he was taken away.

She skimmed over the room with her icy blues one last time then, making extra sure she had collected everything that she would miss - everything that was reasonable, that is. Her bed would have to stay where it was.

She pushed the door slowly closed behind her, sealing it away. She surprised herself by laying a soft mwah on her fingertips and pressing them to the doorknob as she left; her emotions were still new to her, and the feelings swirling around her about having to leave her home were bigger than she had thought they would be. What if her father returned while she was away, only to find an empty, water-logged mess?

But it's not like she could just stay and drown because she felt bad about how he might feel.

Nikola grabbed the corked bottle filled with her most recent poultice as she passed her washroom, and then started back down her stairs. Her steps were light but frenetic as she made her way back down to the ground floor.

She wondered if Luke had ducked out while she was distracted after all. She didn't remember hearing the door unlatch, but then again, she had been preoccupied with packing her belongings.

She rounded the corner to her kitchen and found it still occupied, her heart rising within her chest like a weight had been removed from it. He was trying to close his backpack around a very stubborn carrot that was poking its way through his zipper. She watched him zip up one side, make contact with the carrot's tip, unzip it, and try again like... four times, baffled by his determined stupidity.

"Have you tried putting the carrot on its side instead?"
Luke started with a gasp and whirled around to face her. It took him a second to regain his composure, but when he did, he turned back around and gave the vegetable a good, hard look. "It won't fit - will it?" He laid the root down on its side, nestling it into the space that was left. It just fit, but only just.

"Whoa... women really do excel at Tetris," he marveled, yet another confusing collection of words tumbling from his lips.

"I am unsure what this 'Tetris' is," Nikola admitted.

"You don't even know what Tetris is and you're already better at it than I am."

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