Old Flames

“This your girl?” The man asked as he pushed a dozen photos across the desk.

Marcy picked up the pictures and started to leaf through them, she had hired the P.I to look for an ex of hers Karmin Artellan. It had only really been to try and get some money back that Karmin had owed her when they broke up but when she had tried to find her herself she had found not only empty flats and deactivated phone numbers but a wall of silence from anyone she asked.

At the time she had put it down to just Karmins shitty circle of friends trying to keep Marcy from getting what she was owed but when even her parents refused to talk Marcy got a hunch that there might be more going on. So she had found herself a P.I and told him to try and find her.

He had taken a wad of cash and mostly gone silent for a month and a half. She had almost written him off for a lost cause when he suddenly called her and said he knew where Karmin was and had pictures to prove it. So they had met in a cafe and he had pushed the pictures across the table and Marcy’s world had started to change in ways she never imagined.

The first picture showed some kind of market from what Marcy could say, people milling around whilst a woman stood in the middle of the frame, she was mostly in profile as she talked to a person behind a stall and Marcy wasn’t sure if it was Karmin. If it was she had changed a lot in the last year. Her long bleached blond hair had been cut back and grown out in her natural brown. The gaudy pinks, reds and plunging necklines of replaced with a sober white t-shirt and grey coat. The dangerously short skirts replaced with a pair of scuffed jeans.

She looked older in those clothes, Marcy was the same age as her yet everyone had always guessed Karmin was a solid decade younger than her with the girlish way she had dressed. The woman in these pictures could have been Karmin’s mother or older sister. The change was so massive that Marcy didn’t couldn’t bring herself to believe it was her. Until she looked at the second picture.

It had been taken a scant few seconds after the first from the looks of it. The same market scene and the same stall in the background but now Karmin was turned fully towards the camera, her hand sliding an apple into a bag at her side as she smiled.

It was the smile that did it. Marcy felt her heart ache as she looked at it. The years they had been friends rearing up in her mind’s eye. The night she had plucked up the courage to tell Karmin how she felt.

The taste of her lips.

The feel of her skin.

The arguments.

The lies.

The end.

“Ok,” Marcy wiped tears from the corners of her eyes as she put the pictures down and looked at the P.I again. “It’s her. So where is she?”

“Look at the rest of the pictures.” He insisted with a grin that she didn’t like.

Marcy flicked the pictures off of the pile, her heart already sore as she looked at them.

Three more pictures of Karmin walking through the market. Then more stalls for the next two before finally something changed. Karmin through her hands up in the air for some blurry figure.

Then her finger stopped as she stared down at the third last picture. Karmin was hugging someone.

An Orc.

She flicked the picture aside and looked at the next. The two of them, the smile on Karmin’s face even wider than before as she leaned back, her arms still wrapped around the neck of the Orc as he hulked over her.

The last picture nearly made her heart stop. The two of them, not just hugging but kissing. In the middle of the market!

“How?” Marcy demanded. Her head snapping up to beseech the P.I to make sense of what she was seeing.

“Have a closer look at the others in that market.” He suggests with a tap of his finger.

Marcy did what he said, her eyes constantly being drawn back to Karmin and the Orc. Yet once she noticed what he wanted her to see they were almost forgotten. The other people in the market were just people.

Humans, Elves, Dryads and even more Orcs all milled around in the crowd around Karmin. She had been so focused on her ex that they had all blurred into the background.

“Where the fuck is this?!”

“A place up north,” The P.I explained, leaning back with a smile as he got to roll out the speech he had been planning for days. “Was a village that got abandoned a few decades back. Some bunch of do-gooders bought the place up and have been recruiting for there little commune ever since. They take anyone they can get, Human, Elf and even Orc.” He tapped the photo. “Your ex has gotten herself a new life and new hubby it seems.”

Marcy shook her head. “No no! That’s not possible on a lot of levels.” She pushed the photos aside. “Karmin didn’t like men! She sure as hell didn’t like Orcs!”

He shrugged. “A lot can change in a year. You want to go ask yourself be my guest but my part of this job is over.”