Re: Chapter #7i: Evening Church (Liseth, Kerr)
Kerr’s skin seemed like it was on fire where Liseth touched him. It was really a strange feeling; weren’t massages supposed to be, well, relaxing? This seemed anything but relaxing. Of course, the churning in the pit of his stomach probably had something to do with that.
“Oh, those,” Kerr said in response to Liseth’s inquiry about his scars as he breathed deeply in an attempt to relax and enjoy the beginning of his therapeutic massage. “Well, that’s kind of a story. It happened the very first time my dad let me track by myself. I mean, I hadn’t been doing incredibly well at it up to that point but he thought maybe if I didn’t have the pressure of him staring over my shoulder I would relax and have more success.”
Liseth could feel Kerr relax a little as he warmed to his story. “So there was this cougar that had been taking chickens from a couple of the local farms. Well, my dad was a trapper and tracker. Have I told you that already? Anyway, my dad was the best tracker and trapper out in the farmsteads, so people always came to him with this sort of stuff. I think he could have probably made a pretty good living just off of that, although of course at the time I didn’t even think about the payment.”
Kerr was really enjoying the massage now. Liseth is actually very good at this!
“So, ah,” Kerr completely lost his train of thought as Liseth climbed up on top of him to get a better angle on a particularly-tense muscle group. “Um,” he said, trying to ignore the feel of her thighs on his back. “Yes, well, er, my dad. He was a tracker.” Kerr tried to recover the thread of his story. “You’re really good at this massage thing, did you know? That feels amazing. Anyway, he let me track the cougar. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, right? I was only about eleven at the time, but I was already pretty tall. Too tall for cougar prey, anyway. At least, that’s what Dav and my dad thought.”
“So anyway,” Kerr struggled to keep track of his train of thought, a remarkably-difficult feat. “Um, dad let me go track the cougar. Which took me FOREVER. But I finally tracked it down!” He said with a note of triumph. “Of course,” he paused for effect, “what nobody knew was that the cougar had kittens, or whatever you call cougar babies. So when I approached its lair it did attack me. From behind, which I don’t think was very sporting, do you?” He said with mock indignation. “Fortunately my dad had been tracking me, so he saved me.” Kerr grinned. “Not very heroic, was it? And holy Desna was my mom furious when we got back. My poor dad.” Kerr chuckled.
“I think that may have been when they decided I should be an acolyte. Father Zantus had been asking but I'm pretty sure my dad had visions of me following in his footsteps.” Kerr stretched his arms above his head, luxuriating. “So here I am. It’s strange, isn’t it? Now that we know what we know I’ve been thinking back and wondering how many events in my life that I thought were totally mundane were actually influenced by the gods to get me to where I am now. I mean, it’s kind of a sobering thought, isn’t it? If the gods have taken that much of an interest in me, how much responsibility do I have to come through for them?”