It did with Royce and Beatrice, even though, at their beginning, they’d had a time of it.
Just, it seemed, like Sibyl and Colin were.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Marian invited in a soothing tone.
Sibyl shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. He’s gone for three days and I’m glad.” Marian noted she didn’t sound glad, she sounded positively gloomy. “I can’t seem to get my head around things when he’s around. He’s overpowering. He fills a room… no, the entire house, with his presence. He didn’t let me out of his sight all weekend.”
Marian thought this was a strange turn of phrase for a young woman of this modern age to use the word “let” in regards to her boyfriend. Sibyl was spirited and she had free will, Colin Morgan didn’t own her.
“You feel suffocated,” Marian surmised.
“I feel safe, protected and taken care of, sometimes even precious.” Marian was surprised to hear her reply. “My mother would have a heart attack,” Sibyl muttered under her breath then she continued. “He’s a perfect gentleman, impeccable manners, very respectful, even, goddess, am I going to say this?” She asked herself then said, “Gallant.”
Then she dropped her face into her hands and rested her elbows on the table with despair.
At Sibyl’s words and her contradictory actions, Marian was genuinely confused. “Then, what’s the problem?”
Sibyl spoke to the table, “It’s temporary. I don’t want to like it. I know he’s going to go away.”
“He doesn’t have to go away.”
“Oh yes he does.” This was said with a finality that was absolute and completely conflicting.
Although Sibyl was making no sense, Marian felt her spirits plummet.
“Are there times when he’s cruel to you?” Marian asked gently.
Colin Morgan was, Marian knew, a somewhat difficult man.
This, for some reason, made Sibyl laugh, bitterly. A sound like that coming from a woman like Sibyl grated on the nerves, it was borderline obscene.
She lifted her head and her expression looked defeated. “Every second he’s with me, even though it’s unintentional. He doesn’t mean it, doesn’t even know it, I just feel it. And I did it to myself.”
This really didn’t make any sense.
“Sibyl, just tell me what’s troubling you. Maybe I can help,” Marian urged.
Sibyl stared at her for a moment and Marian felt hope that she would further confide in her. She had promised Colin not to tell Sibyl about Royce and Beatrice but she could help here.
Then Sibyl gave her a sad smile and said, “I don’t think you’d understand and if I told you, you would likely not want to have breakfast with me again.”
Marian covered the woman’s hand with her own. “I’m not sure you understand either, dear. And nothing you could tell me would make me feel the slightest bit different about you. I think you’re terrific”
Finally, Marian made Sibyl smile. It was not her usual dazzling smile, it was tremulous, but it was something.
“I think you’re terrific too,” Sibyl whispered but shared no more.
Some time later, after Marian left Sibyl’s cottage (it was now, firmly entrenched in Marian’s mind, as Sibyl’s cottage and she felt sure that Granny Esmeralda would approve of that), she went to her magic room to check her fermenting potions. Several of them she was likely going to have to use after all.
The only good thing that came of her visit with Sibyl was that obviously the girl had magic of her own. This could be most helpful. The fact that she was feeling memories from her past soul was a good sign.
And Marian still held hope that the feeling behind most of Sibyl’s words (even though the words themselves were rather dire) meant that whatever I -was that was standing between the two young lovers was an obstacle that could still be climbed.
* * * * *
“We go together like ramma, lamma, lamma, da dingity, ding dee dong.”
Sibyl was sitting in the Community Hall with Jem watching her girlie quartet sing a song from Grease while Jemma sewed a poodle onto a child’s full, felt skirt.