2~Kestrel~
Fire in the Moonlight
Andrea glanced at the digital clock on her bedside table and groaned as the sickly green neon lights flashed three A.M. at her. She reached over and rolled the black knob of the lamp to the right and heard the soft click that meant energy was surging from the wall into the frosted glass bulb and would blind her in the next millisecond. With this knowledge she shut her eyes against the vile thing until her pupils had time to dilate to a normal size again. She swung her long, tan legs over the edge of the mattress where the ends of the sheets covered the black void underneath the bed where things traveled to and then disappeared without a trace. This was why she could never find her good shoes and was reduced to wearing tennis shoes to work where her boss usually yelled at her for her "direct violation of company dress code."
Three in the morning was a quiet time for the city and was in fact her favorite time of day when she did not spend it in a blissful sleep. Andrea reached over and pulled out a cigarette. She hated the stupid things, but when she was anxious there was no getting around the urge to smoke. There was an oddly spectral glow that she could see through the crack in her door from the computer she had turned off before crawling into bed a few hours previously. Well, at least she thought she had turned it off. Taking a long drag from the stick of lung cancer she held, Andrea got up, walked to the dark wooden door, and pushed it the rest of the way open to reveal the happily glowing monitor.
It always amused her how much her electronics seemed to enjoy being dysfunctional. The refrigerator spat ice cubes at her, the microwave created gray smoke whenever it was used, the toaster oven caught fire and caused its glass front to shatter into a million tiny fragments that ended up planted in her feet in the end, and the computer, through all its happy humming, deleted her entire document if she yelled at it then promptly lost the recover file. She had to pay the technician a tidy sum to fix all of it, but it never seemed to get any better. All electronics have a mind of their own and do not like being insulted by their idiotic human owners. The angry red light on the computer tower flashed at her, seemingly gleeful at its own personal little joke.
Andrea pushed the power button and the screen flashed off as she jumped at the first dulcet sounds of the phone in the kitchen screeched through the still air. She fumbled for the receiver as her hands made contact with the light switch on the wall. Who was calling her this late, or early depending upon how one read the clock? Although it did make sense because she did have a few friends with some rather idiosyncratic tendencies, but eccentric people seemed to be some of the most interesting to know and their odd little quirks fascinated her to no end. This was not to say that she did not have society's version of "normal" friends, she did and she loved them to no end, but "different" people were so outlandish sometimes that she hated to miss the opportunity to spend time with them.
"Hello?" Andrea questioned the plastic receiver.
"Andrea? Hey, this is Aithne, good morning. Are you up to watch the sun rise too?" said the sickeningly perky feminine voice that wafted through the pone line.
"Watch the what do what?" Obviously Andrea's brain was not fully functional at this point.
"Oh, were you asleep? Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." Aithne sounded genuinely apologetic and Andrea's mind chose that moment to flicker on.
"It's okay, Aithne, don't worry about it. Why are you calling me this late? Is something the matter? Are you okay?"
"Oh yeah, I'm fine, but I was leafing through the inn's catalog for what's in the basement and I came across something that I thought might interest you," said Aithne, sounding pleased with herself.
"Okay, what is it?" Aithne never called without reason and she had probably found something that sparked her interest and not Andrea's.
"It's an odd work really, if you ask me, and it looks out of place here. It's pretty though and it looks really old, but it doesn't really look like anything I've ever seen before and I thought that you might be able to tell me what it is and then I thought."
"Aithne," said Andrea, cutting her rambling speech short, "what did you find?"
"Oh. Right. Well, it's a painting, I think."
"What do you mean by you 'think'?" Andrea asked, always skeptical.
"It's looks like a painting, but the way it was done does not look like it was painted at all. The whole thing reminds me of a big embroidered or needlepoint tapestry. It's attractive and I'd say it was done when the Tudors were the ruling royals, but I'm not a professional so I can't be sure. Care to come take a look?"
"You ask me at three in the morning to ask if I would come examine some art for you? Couldn't it have waited until I was supposed to be getting up like around eight or so?"
"Because I knew you would be awake, Andrea, duh," said Aithne as if the reason were obvious.
Andrea sighed and took a long drag from the cigarette she held before speaking again. "Sure, why not. When do you want me to be there?"
"Great. Okay, I'll expect you within the next two days. Do you need directions for how to get there?"
"Yeah, I don't remember from my last visit. I'll talk to my boss tomorrow to see if I can get time to go look at this thing. Call me tomorrow with instructions, okay? I don't think that I can collect my motor skills together enough to write them down. Night, Aithne."
"But it's morning, Andrea."
"It's dark outside. To most people that means that it is night. Good-bye, Aithne."
"Good-bye, but Andrea it's after mid-"
The line clicked dead and Andrea sagged against the wooden counter tops as she shook her head. She smooshed the end of her cigarette against the inner edge of a decorative white bowl painted with flowers that sat next to her elbow. If she was going to have to see Aithne again then she had better take a sleeping pill and force herself to get a few more hours sleep. She was going to need it.