When There Is Nothing Left But Love (Ashton And Scarlett)

In our desperation to head home, Nora hauled me along into the village in our hunt for a phone.

It’s the twenty-first century! Surely someone must have a phone around here! we thought. When we knocked on the door of the next cottage, however, Nora’s hand signals asking for a phone only met with baffled looks.

Our best efforts at miming remained futile. We departed after a good while, empty-handed.

Tabitha and Laurel hadn’t fared much better. We returned to find them sitting side by side, disconsolate. Laurel was the first to speak. “If we can’t get any results here, we should try moving further in. Perhaps we’ll get to the city. We may even meet some fellow countrymen!”

“The probability of that will be really low though. We don’t know how much longer the road up ahead is. If we aren’t careful, we may be mistaken for thieves and locked up,” Nora countered. She plopped down onto the floor with a sigh, looking defeated.

“What’s so bad about getting locked up?” Tessa asked thoughtfully. “Surely, the local policeman knows a little more than the average villager. If we manage to explain our situation to them, it might be our ticket home.”

“That’s right!” Laurel leaped to her feet in excitement. “If we get in touch with the local police, they may be able to send us home. We won’t have to wander around so aimlessly either.”

We all agreed that this was the most promising idea we’d had. We cheered up instantly at the thought and launching into a feverish discussion of what we should do to capture the attention of the local police.

We were in a village on the mountain. Who knows if there’s even a functional police station around here? I wondered to myself.

Tessa remained steadfast in her conviction that she shouldn’t participate in any criminal act, regardless of its motive. She slipped off before our discussion even began.

enthusiastic. “Leave

yards under the pretense of

fruit, fully expecting

nor Tabitha had counted on the kindness of the villager. The owner of the house had been enraged at the two girls’ theft.

Nora and Tabitha

that Nora and Tabitha had returned. Embarrassed and slightly frustrated, Nora and Tabitha decided to turn

several other homes only to be met with the same result. Some villagers even

world was confined to the boundaries of their farm. They remained largely oblivious

Tabitha’s acts with almost naive simplicity, assuming that the two girls had been starving or poor. They’d done what they

we realized this, we were resolved not to pursue our thoughtless ways any further. However, news of our presence here in the village

days, practically the whole village came to visit us bearing gifts of

the most rudimentary of phrases and lots of guessing, we discovered that our host was named Troy Laander. His daughter was

the villagers’ language, having been

was able to converse

behind our rather peculiar acts of theft, he said ruefully, “There was no need for you to behave this way! We could have found

her head in both hands. She’d long ago realized the foolishness of our plan. It was our utter hopelessness that had