43

A new day. A new life continues.

"Bon Jour ma petite!"  Xena greeted me this morning.  I was way over a foot taller than her but that didn't make any difference.  She came out of her room and with both hands grabbing my head and holding it still she planted a kiss on my forehead.

"Bon jour Xena," Started to answer but she turned my head back and forth and said

"Non, non, non, I'm no longer zee Xena, warrior princess of the new world, je suis a southern belle, born and raised in the deep south, I would never set foot in that yankee wilderness of Kentucky.  Non, non, ma petite ami, je suis a belle of the south, maybe a canjun belle or a belle from Georgia, I could be a Georgia Peach!"  She swayed around the little apartment, exaggerating her belleness I suppose.

"Well! Belle!" I said.  I liked it.  To tell the truth, but not to Xena/Belle, I never really pictured her as a warrior, a princess, yes, for she is petite and very good looking, kind of like a princess but not really a warrior princess, except for her eyes, or in her intelligence maybe, and in her ideas, yes!   I could see her as a warrior/belle.  Kind of like that movie where they had these ladies acting like flowers but at the same time thinking they were like steel.  That's Xena/Belle. 

"Un croissant with cream cheese," Belle continued trying to be French/Cajun/southern belle.  "Avec coffeee avec cream (actually milk with a bagel) avec ma jolie petite ami..."  She waved her hands, evidently running out of avecs.  She finally ended up on the couch (my bed) and tore her bagel to pieces as she ate it.

"I'm adventuring today, so I might be late tonight."  She was dressed all in grey and black.  She looked at me and gave me one of her warrior looks.

"Don't ask, don't tell," she finished her bagel.

"You sure I can't help?"  I tried asking anyway.

"No, you'll be too noticeable.  I'm much more safer without a jolie lug lurking along with me."

Every now and then Xena/Belle took off for a day, or a night and then returned with cash.  She'd told me long ago that it was bad guys cash and they didn't need it and she relieved them of some of their stash.  She's never explained and was adamant about it being safe and I wasn't to concern myself about her vocation, as she sometimes put it.  She hated bad guys, hated bullies, hated anyone who preyed on the weaker, hated anyone who hurt the weaker and somehow relieved them of their ill gotten gains (her words again).  It must be dangerous but I had zero say in the matter. Xena would have been astounded if I tried to tell her, or anyone else for that matter, what to do, how to act or especially how to take care of the "bad guys".  After our first week here in New Orleans she'd announced that there were much more bad guys here in the city than out in Kansas.  As she had said, bad guys are bad guys anywhere we go but there are a lot more of them here, and we'll get them to contribute to society.

"Bye bye sweetness," she said when she left.  I worried about her but this is what she did before I met her last year and this is what she'll do for as long as she wants.   Oh well, she'd told me once that "we" gave a fourth of the takings to different causes that "we" liked.  I scatched Rosie and gave her some of the left over cream cheese.