John Laughed at the Expression
I’m not going to go to the bathroom- “But where are the huts?”
- forbidden within city limits
- haven’t spoken Romanian in decades
- People are disgusting.
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John laughed at the expression of fury on my wife’s face. “I think you have better things to worry about than Tessa, buddy.”
I swallowed, but my throat was dry.
Fleur tied the laces of John’s roller skates together and hung them around his neck. She unzipped the door at the front of our buoyant boudoir, grabbed John, and in one quick motion hooked the zip-line to his skating harness and shoved him out into open air. He fell only a few feet before his tether stopped his descent with a jolt. Fleur pointed at the zeppelin ahead of us. “Haul yourself back and beg my father’s forgiveness for both your ineptitude at aerial roller derby and for interrupting my fertility ceremony.”
As John pulled himself along with shaking hands I heard him repeating, “I’m not going to go to the bathroom in my shorts,” over and over again.
Fleur rezipped the door and said to me, “Tessa is the least of your concerns right now. We are already in Contrarian air space. In a mere 24 hours we will land in the capital. I better be pregnant by then.”
I wanted to remind her that conception wasn’t an instantaneous process, that it might take several days, but I was distracted by the view out the window.
“But where are the huts?”
“The entire populace of Contraria awaits us in the capital. They took their huts along to camp in the streets. Usually that is forbidden within city limits, but this is the Year of the Monkey, so special rules apply.”
And then she told me to shut up again, and the next 24 hours passed in a sweaty blur.
When the airship arrived at the Contrarian capital, it went into a holding pattern. Fleur and I were reeled in and given the opportunity to clean up before all the pomp and circumstance. I was assigned a manservant named Nicolae. I haven’t spoken Romanian in decades, but we were able to communicate well enough to get the job done.
When I exited the spa, refreshed and clad in Contrarian ethnic garb, I passed by a laundress who was carrying the linens from the bed Fleur and I had just spent the better part of a week befouling.
I heard her mutter as she passed, “People are disgusting.”
bonus points for using them in order