When There Is Nothing Left But Love

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.

and Tabitha, however, were enthusiastic. “Leave

up to one of the villager’s yards under the pretense of borrowing something. They then grabbed a bundle of items and sprinted

fruit, fully expecting the police to be hot on

had been enraged at the two girls’ theft. However, on

police. Nora and Tabitha were rather taken aback by this

Tabitha had returned. Embarrassed and slightly frustrated, Nora

this at several other homes only to be met with the same result. Some villagers even gave us additional food items from their own hoard out of

of the world was confined to the boundaries of their farm. They remained largely oblivious to the wider modern society beyond

assuming that the two girls had been starving or poor. They’d done what they did selflessly, out

further. However, news of our presence here in the village had already spread

days, practically the whole

guessing, we discovered that our host was

was the quickest to pick up the villagers’

to converse with the

finally comprehended the rationale behind our rather peculiar acts of theft, he said ruefully, “There was no need for you

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