by Wakar
wakar@sonic.net
"Gabrielle? Gabrielle? Can you sit
up?"
Through the nausea in her stomach
and the pounding in her head, the young bard wondered why she would want to
do such a foolish thing. But the voice was tense and urgent so she bravely made
the effort. Mistake. With a loud moan she fell back. The seasickness on the
voyage out had been bad enough, but this was excruciating! She found herself
being lifted and carried - a sensation only slightly less painful than her own
attempt to rise. Mixed in somewhere with the cacophony in her head she heard
a soft voice.
"The tides coming in Gabrielle.
I have to move you. Try to hold on."
Finally the motion stopped and
with a sigh of relief consciousness was once again left behind.
"Gabrielle? Gabrielle? Try to
open your eyes."
Lashes fluttered, closed tightly
for a moment against the brightness of the sun, then slowly lifted. She blinked
several times trying to clear her vision. The face leaning over her seemed
solid enough, but she could see right through it. A few more blinks revealed
that the face was not, after all, transparent, only that the eyes and the sky
behind them were exactly the same color.
Gabrielle smilled at this and
the face before her smiled in return. "Xena..."
"Yes, Gabrielle. You're going
to be all right."
"What happened? Are shipwricked?"
"Shipwrecked?!"
"On the way back from Ithica."
"Ithica?!"
For a moment Gabrielle angrily
wondered why her friend was merely repeating everything she said rather than
giving her answers. "Yes, Ithica!" she replied sharply as she sat up, the pain
in her head adding to her lack of patience. "You know . . . you, Ulysses, in
love, Penelope, the whoe thing!" Gabrielle determined to stay sitting up though
her stomach and head were not happy about it. "What?" she demanded, as she looked
into the frowning countenance of the Warrior Princess.
"Gabrielle, I have no idea what
you're talking about. We haven't left this beach."
"But what about Ulysses? Wasn't
he here?" the bard fretted.
Xena smiled inwardly at her
friends ever present imagination and said softly, "No, Gabrielle. We were walking
along the beach when we came across a man being attacked. We helped him fight
them off and he went on his way. You took a pretty hard hit and it knocked you
unconscious."
"Then it wasn't Ulysses?"
"No."
"And you didn't. . . ?"
"Didn't what?"
"Oh, nothing," Gabrielle said,
trying in vain to supress a grin and hoping her joy wouldn't explode her heart.
"Gabrielle are you all right?"
The young bard smiled up into
those blue eyes and whispered "I'm fine Xena. I'm perfectly fine."