Chapter 5

Being left with the choice of eating in one of those overpriced restaurants or carrying Vera back to our hostel, I chose the first. Feeding her with more candies wasn’t an option I even considered. They were supposed to be a special treat and would lose their power if she got used to eating them whenever she wanted.

We sat down at the table, and I ordered food.

“Thank you, Freja”

She smiled and began to eat without making any fuss about the dish I had ordered, which was pretty unexpected. I hoped she was not getting ill after spending so much time outside.

“When we get our first sponsor, I will take you for a real date”.

She smiled and looked at me. I sighed. Of course, it would be nice if she would pay for all her stuff, but I couldn’t imagine that anyone would ever watch this crap, not to mention to sponsor it. So far, our only real fan who supported us no matter what was her aunt, but she didn’t speak a word of English, so it didn’t really count.

“We could go to an aquarium or ….”

She trailed off and stared out the window. She’d zoned out, and I had to bring her back to reality before she went too far.

“Shall we do more filming while we are here? I guess you don’t want to walk here tomorrow?

She blinked and turned to me.

“S..sure”

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We went to the local pub after that and got a lot of great footage, so it was a shame that Freja wanted to go back just when some of the locals offered to show us around. All those stories about Dullahan that they told us would for sure make us famous. I was so lucky to stumble upon this keyword before anyone else did. So many villagers had seen him recently, so we would be the first to ride this trend. I was sure others would follow in our footsteps when we revealed to the world what we had found.

I giggled, thinking how proud Freja would be of me. It was so exciting that I somehow didn’t mind walking back to our hostel. Was it Dullahan who manipulated time and space to make our quest easier? But why? Did he want us to reveal all we had learned to the world?

With all the recent sightings of him, our investigation took such an unexpected twist that I felt the need to share it with our future audience. I pulled out my phone and started to film as we walked. They would love it, I was sure of it. At last, I would become famous and be able to pay the rent. I smiled, and an idea popped into my mind. That was it.

I started the live stream. The world needed to know…

                                  —-------------------------------------------

I started to worry a bit; she seemed more lost in her phone than usual, but I let it be. At least she walked by herself without complaining about how far it was. The countryside road was empty, so the worst thing that could happen was her slipping and falling, but that shouldn’t be a problem. She had a cat-like ability of avoiding any serious injuries, and I had put her phone into a protective case a long time ago.

When we finally arrived at the hostel, and I managed to guide her into our room, she just sat on my bed, still lost in her phone. At least she had stopped talking and stayed still enough for me to lie down and relax with a book. But I was wrong. She made a yapping noise and turned to me.

“At dusk, we will go live again.”

I sighed. I really got into the story and wanted to know if Maara would finally dare to open up. But I put my phone down and patted her head.

“Sure…”

If she wanted to entertain the bot audience with this nonsense later, she was welcome to. No real human would be able to withstand more than 3 second of this crap.

“What are you reading..?”

I shrugged and put my phone out of her reach.

“Nothing….”

“Don’t say that. I saw you were reading something. What was it?”

Seeing how her excitement suddenly spiked, I knew that I had lost all chances to learn about Maara’s fate today.

“Boring adult stuff.”

“Read me..”, she pleaded and poked me with her finger.

“No.”

“Read me and I will be quiet until dinner.”

I sighed and took my phone, opening the book that I had prepared for exactly this scenario. She lay down next to me and I started to read aloud, hoping that it would put her to sleep so I could go back to my book.

“HARI SELDON –... born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era as -79 to the year 1 F.E. Born to middle-class parents on Helicon, Arcturus sector…”