Me! Here is the long overdue(WORK IS INVADING MY TIME!!! ) Chapter 4.5! (Lost a page, give you the rest ASAP... My comp is mean!)
"I was born and raised on the moors of Ireland. My father was in England looking for work, leaving my mother to raise the clann. I was rasied during the last years of one of the many potato famines to creep through our area. My athair would send us home money every week so that we could have food, but our letters never seemed to reach him, so we could tell him that what he was sending wasn't enough. My big brother, Russ; Cyruss his name is, but we mostly called him Russ, took a job at a neighboring farm at 13 to help back the money that our father was sending, and it really saved us. As a kid, things were pretty basic, sleep, wake, shower, eat, shit, sleep. Day in day out, that was my routine. Until me thirteenth birthday, that is..." Drake took a pause, to take a drink, and started again after he drained his glass. "That was the day you could say shit really hit the fan for me..." As Drake was talking, his mind began to wander back to those times with a vivid clarity that he could feel. He knew that this was a memory induced vision, and hoped that he didn't scare Aramai-sama too badly if he could see it too.
Drake had been wandering the moors as he did so often at those times. His bloody head would get to throbbing so badly it felt like it was going to pop like a grape under a boot. He had a method for getting rid of his headaches, but today it just want working. He thought that his headaches were caused by the constant hounding of the polterguist in their house, but he thought that some of it was stress, too. With his big brother at work on the neighbors farm, it was just him, his máthair and the new baby that had come after his athair visited last time. His headache was blocking most of his thoughts, but there was one that was constantly dogging him that week: On the coming saturday was his brothers 23 birthday, and he had no way to gut Russ a thing. "Cac!" he swore to himself. "Is there no way for me to get anything? I have to be able to get a job somewhere!" This thought train was his mantra of the week. After his brothers birthday, it would return to, "Fucking potatoes. Damn headaches. SHIT!" as was almost a common for his thoughts.
He wondered if any of the local farms needed someone to slop out the barns. It was a job that he hated, but if it would make him a few dollers for a gift for Russ, he thought that he could live with the fact. If there was something better he would take it, but he thought that shit work would be the only thing he would get. If he wouldn't have had to sell his bike, he could've rode to town to see if there were any of the shops that needed a cleaner, someone to unload the trucks, or something in that vien. But, he did sell his bike, and he couldn't ride into town, so it was off to one of the local farms to look for work. He thought that he should try to get on at the farm with Russ, but he was afraid that he would cause Russ to loose money if he did. "Off to MacLeod's stead...Damn but I hate that drunken bod."
Drake's dislike for Joeseph MacLeod stemmed from a fight that happened between him and Russ over the matter of $80. Joeseph blamed Russ for four of his pigs getting killed by a wolf that had gotten into the barn through an open door. After he beat the bejesus out of Russ and took the money, it was found later that Joeseph himself left the door open after a drinking run that ended with him in barn after his wife had kicked his "drunken useless ass" out for the night. While he never paid Russ back, when he showed up at MacLeod's shop he never allowed Russ to pay for anything related to the farm for the next several months. According to MacLeod, it was due to an overpay on the Masters farm tab; Drake and Russ knew it was him trying to ease his guilty heart.
Drake almost missed the path to MacLeod's home, being in a brown study as he was. With a shake of his head, mostly wondering if it was really such a good idea, he walked up to the front door. After knocking, he took a step away from the door, in case it swung out, like the one that brained him as a babe. As the door opened, "In..." Drake thought with an inner smile, he saw that it was one of MacLeod's daughters, Maura, that answered, instead of the Missus.He found that he had lapsed into thought over the fact when she asked him if he was, "going to stand there gaping or come in."
With a laugh, Drake walked into the foyer, as it were, and asked about Mr. MacLeod's whereabouts. "I could really give a high squat about where that addled fool is." was the response he got. Gape mouthed and lacking reply, the young woman continued. "My càpraid athair has been out on the moor for more than a day. We can hear the truck now and again as he comes to the barn for supplies, but he never sets foot in the house. Mother went to look for him this afternoon, but she hasn't come back yet...and I'm scared."
The sudden drop in her mood startled Drake, and his instant reaction was to try to comfort her. He shifted his weight and began to put an arm around her shouders, when she crumbled into his chest, crying. Startled, but not stupid, he put his arms around her and began to talk to her; much like his máthair did when his little sister was hurt. His words worked, though, and she calmed under his hands; soon her tears lessened to sniffling, which subsided to nothing. She pulled back a bit to look at him, and his head began to fill with heat, like when his migranes came. He apologised, and went outside to clear out his head. She followed him, felling that she should because he had helped her. Sitting next to him on the rail, she could feel a moderate heat radiating from his body, as if he was deep in fever. She knew he wasn't though, because the heat hadn't been there as he held her.
For Drake, her sitting so close mad the heat in his head worse, a phenomina that he had no explaination for. Suddenly, an unbidden thought shot into his mind. "It isn't me...it's her! I'm feeling her sudden want for me!" As soon as he gripped this thought, all of the heat left his head and traveled...south. They turned to each other at the same instant, and Drake then found himself lost in the heat of he kiss. His mind filled with thoughts, some of them from the stories his brother had told him about some of the women in town. The heat began to climb, when she suddenly took his hand and tugged him to the left of the house and he followed, curious. She led him, after a check of the path ahead, to the barn, and then to the hay-loft. He paused as she climbed, thinking, "Is this me? This beast of heat and lust?" He told the thoughts that he was, when her had appeared over the edge of the loft, her slip in hand. When he got to the top, he was struck by her scent(as his mind insisted it was, and would forever after), and then was lost in the heat of their renewed kiss...
Drake awoke sometime later to the yelling of Joeseph, and could initially not remember where he was. Then he saw Maura sleeping with her head on his chest, and both of their clothes in a pile beside them. The thought of what had transpired brought the heat back into his body, but he willed it away, knowing that Joeseph was prob'ly looking for his daughter.
"Damn it, girl! You was supposed to have dinner ready when I got here! If yer hidin from me you had best show yourself afore I get more angry than I am!"
Drake nudged Maura awake, and began to carefully move for his clothes in the same moment, when he heard Joeseph's yelled, "Got ya!', from below. Knowing that there was little chance for escape, Drake decided to take what he had coming, but kept running the thought, "Don't find us!" over and over. Joeseph got to the top and looked directly at both Drake and Maura, and then climbed back down! Hearing the man leave, Drake let his breath loose. "I don't know how he missed us, Maura, but he did." She grinned at him, much as she had earlier, and kissed Drake reaching down and helping the heat find where it was ment to be. They then enjoyed each other again, purely in celebration that they would live another day.