Secret Lessons

Sitting on the low cobble stone wall Agnés kept her nose firmly planted in the book she was reading. Even as the day was bright with a cloudless blue sky in her mind she was in a small shack on some stormy night with a cannibal upstairs. The tales of the dream cycle always sent shivers up her spine as she read them. She had to put out the whispers she was getting from the town that always threatened to over power her.

When she heard the whissle of a boy she looked up expectantly but was disappointed to see some fourteen year old walking by her. She scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue at him, thinking better of the idea of throwing a stone at him.

Now though Agnés was wondering if she was over dressed for the occasion. She'd agreed to give Félix his next lesson today, she hadn't seen him once since their last and only meeting. She looked down at the white leggings she was wearing, if she looked carefully she could see the impression of constellations that had been printed into the leggings but would only show up in their glory under a black light. Now part of her wondered if he'd notice them and think she was a giant geek. Oh god, boys hated geeky girls, what was she going to do, today was already a wreck and she hadn't even seen Félix yet. But maybe he wouldn't notice, she could only hope, and it's not like the rest of what she was wearing was all that bad.

She calmed herself down as she looked at the simple black pleated skirt that she was wearing, it was completely normal, nothing that he would object to right? Her shirt was a near perfect match for the leggings, though as she looked down at it she couldn't help but wonder if the pushup bra was going a little to far, for all she knew he had managed to steal a full view of her while they were at the lake.

Touching her lips as she thought, wondering just what she was doing, she knew so little about him and yet she was wearing make up for him, her lips matching the red of her hair.

The wind blew and she could feel the last part of her out fit, a white headband that had a completely ornamental bow on it whose ribbon ran down and would tickle her neck from time to time as the wind moved it.

She put down the book, her mind was in no state to spend time reading, she just wanted him to show up so they could go and do this lesson. She knew that it would likely be a while before he even showed up though, she had gotten there almost two hours early, for fear of keeping him waiting.

Her eye caught a hawk that was circling above looking to find its dinner. She smiled thinking to herself, that she would be the one to turn Félix into a noble creature like that hawk. She stood up and watched the hawk fly, turning her back to the city as the circles the magnificent creature slowly drew it away.

Agnés felt something move in her the very moment her named was called, it was her stomach. She was nervous, had she gone to far, would he freak at her over what she was wearing. It was one of their lessons that they were meeting to do, but she could look nice while they were doing that, right? She was freaking out inside of her own mind.

"Hi." she responded to him, her face an impregnable mask. "No, I haven't been here that long, maybe ten minutes." It was a complete lie by he didn't need to know how long she'd been there, and it wasn't like it had been raining that day, so no harm no foul she figured.

As she took in what he was wearing she couldn't help but wonder if he would would be alright in that getup the day was supposed to be rather hot, she hoped he wouldn't get heatstroke. When he said that she was pretty she could feel her heart practically do a back flip in her chest. "Thank you, that's really nice of you to say."

When he accused her of this just being a ploy to get him to buy her dinner she put on a clearly fake pout. "Not even a little parfait?" She whimpered the words out, but still they had the musical tone to them that betrayed how she was really feeling.

She snatched up her book, and looked to Félix. "Shall we get going?" She walked up to his side and looked up to him. "So tell me, what exactly do you think we're going to be doing in today's lesson? Do you have any guesses?" She eyed him wondering what he would answer, not that his answer would change where they were going.

"Yay, parfait, parfait, I'm going to get some parfait." Agnés sung to herself as she started down the road, hopping up onto the cobble stone wall as she walked.

She watched him as he said what he thought they were going to be doing. A giggle slipped out when he said that he would be carving something. "Sorry, no precooked chickens for you today." She continued on the wall stretching out her arms like she was balancing on a high-wire.

"Should I throw some dirt on you so that you don't have to worry about getting dirty?" As she looked she could already see the first stop of where they were going. It was a farm house that had a wide but low red barn behind it. She shook her head. "Don't worry, nothing you're doing today will get you dirty if you're careful, or even mildly competent."

Agnés hopped off of the cobblestone wall to cross the road. "Alright, we're at our first stop, we just need to get our most important supply." With that she started down the well manicured pathway to the front door. When she got there she used the large brass knocker that was made to resemble a bull.

"This will take just a minute I promise." Agnés told Félix. After a few moments the door finally swung open an old farmer standing in the door frame looking at the two of them. "Hi Mr. Horwath!" Agnés' voice was chipper as ever, a look of recognition slowly coming over his face, "Oh, right. miss Cootie, right?" The name was butchered beyond all recognition, but Agnés didn't skip a beat.

"That's me, I just wanted to say thank you so much for helping me out with this, it's a real help. Oh and this is the guy I told about, his name is Félix." Horwath's eyes didn't move when she introduced Félix, not because they were still staring at her, but because they had spent most of their time looking Félix up and down nearly as long as the door had been opened. "You said five right?" As soon as the words were passed her lips she had produced a bill seemingly out of nowhere.

Harwath simply nodded as he gave Félix one last long look over. "Oh, Let me know which one you choose." And before Agnés could even give her happy 'yup' the door had been closed.

"Alright, follow me." Agnés fought off the urge to take his hand and lead him. She watched him sideways as they walked around the house. "You know, if you had come shirtless we might have gotten a discount, he wasn't anywhere as friendly two days ago as he was today. Oh, it's just inside the barn."

Once they were inside the barn they were surrounded by a mass of caged animals, at the front there were probably two hundred rabbits, mulling about their business. Agnés turned to Félix. "Alright, um, well pick one, which ever one you want. Oh and don't be afraid to ask me any questions that you have, other wise he has some horses nearer to the back and I'd like to take a minute to see them if you wanted to take your time picking one." She was practically bouncing as she spoke, almost seeing that if she took off her shoes that she might just float away.

Agnés was absent mindedly feeding a horse a carrot at the edge of where all the rabbits were held. "Well yeah, but is it really any different when you pay someone else to do it for you?" She looked back to him. "At least when you do it you can make sure that it was done humanely. It isn't like we're just going to randomly stab at it."

She walked back over when Félix decided on a rabbit, she was actually surprised how quickly he picked one. "Are you sure?" She asked, but before waiting for the answer she hopped over the thigh high fence, giving Félix more of a show than she had meant to. With one movement she scooped up the rabbit. She instantly knew why this one had been picked out, his fur was slightly scruffier than the others, and Félix likely read it as a sign of age instead of just a small mutation in his genes since he was surrounded by his siblings, every rabbit was roughly the same age.

Agnés held the rabbit gently to her chest with one arm, all the while stroking it. There was no animosity in her actions towards the rabbit. She flipped up one of his ears and read the tattoo that identified him. "So this is mister six-three-four-eight." She looked up at Félix, a gentle smile on her face, trying to tell him that everything was going to be alright.

Carefully she slid over the divide this time, carefully keeping her legs together, trying not to fall on her head. When she was on the other side, she walked up to Félix and than buried her head into his chest. Now it was almost like the three of them were together a single being. "It's going to be alright. You're a good man Félix, I'm sure you can do this." She didn't want to stop what she was doing it felt so good, so right to her.

Agnés felt her heart leap the moment Félix put his arms around her, she didn't want this moment to end. She instinctively stepped back when he held out his hands to take the rabbit from her. "Uh, we're not going to do it here. You can search me, but I don't have a knife on me, so unless you brought one." She paused for a moment. "If you don't believe me, you're free to search me as much as you would like." She turned away from him, her face feeling warm as soon as she spoke the words.

"And either way, I can't give you the reward here, unless you'd like a different reward that what I had in mind." She did a half turn back to him. "Is there are particular reward you wanted for your first time?"

She waited for Félix to choose what he wanted to do. If Félix really wanted, or even needed to kill the rabbit now Agnés wouldn't blame him, since it took a lot of mental fortitude for most people to do it.