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September Surprise Story Week: Heliopath continued: Heliopath's World collection: 518 words
See the beginning of this story here (LJ link).
See the second part of this story here (LJ link).
Trying not to focus too hard on what he was doing Heliopath stood and picked Kestrel up. The moment that she was in his arms he knew he should have got someone else to carry her upstairs for him. With that one action he was reminded of things that he really didn't want to be reminded of. It had been a long time since he'd stopped to think about why he'd made the choices he had, partly because he didn't want to but mostly because he'd not had the time to. Breathing deeply he walked out of the room.
“Do you want help, sir?” a male voice asked, after Heliopath had taken three steps towards the stairs.
“Thank you for asking, but I'm fine.”
“Can I do anything for you at all, sir?”
Heliopath looked over Kestrel at the mage. It was someone Heliopath recognised but with the growing number of mages joining he hadn't had a chance to learn everyone's name or who he could trust. The mage had a red cuffs and red level mages weren't rare.
“What's you name?”
“Greg, sir.
Nodding, Heliopath tried to remember who it was that had mentioned the red mage named Greg. He knew it was one of his close associates otherwise he probably wouldn't even have remembered that someone had mentioned Greg. Thinking quickly, knowing that someone he trusted didn't think Greg was a good addition to the Grey Gardens, he made up an errand.
“Can you tell Jasper that I need him to come up to my bedroom? I want to talk to him about what's happened today.”
“Of course, sir. Anything else, sir?”
“That's all, thank you.”
Feeling uncomfortable, Heliopath started walking again. He didn't stop to look back at Greg to make sure that the mage was going to get Jasper, because Heliopath knew that Jasper would know what was going on without needing to be told. That was the good thing about having a close friend who was a telepath, even if it could be irritating at times, and Heliopath didn't doubt that Jasper knew that Kestrel had been knocked out with a sleep spell before anyone else at the Grey Gardens.
Once Heliopath was on the stairs he pushed the bad memories to the back of his mind, the same way he had done more times than he could remember, and kept his attention on getting Kestrel up the stairs safely. For the first time since he'd taken over the Gardens he wished that he hadn't chosen the bedroom on the top floor. It gave him a wonderful view of the town but carrying someone up that many stairs wasn't much fun. By the time he got to his room he felt a bit like his arms were about to fall off and he was grateful when someone opened the door for him.
“I hope you realise that you're a moron,” Jasper said, as Heliopath staggered into the bedroom. “You should have got someone else to carry her. She's not going to be much use if you drop her on her head, is she?”
© K A Jones 2011
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Re: Feedback
Eek! No it shouldn't! "You should have got someone else" is perfectly correct English and, according to my dictionary, "gotten" is not a word. Another English/American dilemma, perhaps?
Re: Feedback
"Gotten" is the past participle (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gotten) of "to get."
However, this reference (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/got.html) notes that it is used as such in American English but not British English.
I'll try to remember to leave "got" alone. *sigh* And not write "gotten" in my Steamsmith series. My BrE dialect tracking is getting a workout these days!