A/N  This is meant as a parody of romantic comedies (with some hopefully inoffensive slash thrown in for good measure) and the way that things always seem to work out for the best, conveniently.  Reviews are greatly appreciated, and flames are used to heat my cold computer room.

The Wacky Adventures of Nikolai, Svetlana and Mark

Featuring Zebulon, Silvana and Wong, the young Asian man

It was a beautiful day in Sfax, Tunisia.  Nikolai and Svetlana, two Siberian sponge-collectors, had been up since dawn scouring the medina for new specimens to add to their expansive collection.  Stall after stall, shady merchant after shady merchant, they browsed and haggled, selecting only the finest sponges.  The pair had amassed quite an impressive assortment already, when something dawned on them.

“Why, Nikolai, I believe we are lost!” exclaimed a dismayed Svetlana.

“You are quite possibly right!” replied her increasingly alarmed companion.

“I have an idea!  Let’s make use of that French[1] we somehow learned on the barren steppes of the Motherland, and ask someone for directions!”

“What a brilliant strategy!”

And so they came to the decision to ask the next passerby to enlighten them as to the location of the nearest exit of the medina.  Their savior came in the form of a young girl approximately twelve years in age, whose name they did not know, but which we shall divulge nonetheless: Silvana.

“Excuse me, miss, but do you know how we might regain the main part of the city?” asked Svetlana, eagerly.

“For a very modest fee, I would be glad to direct you!” answered Silvana, a crafty glint in her eye.

“How much is ‘modest’?” asked the ever-suspicious Nikolai.

“Oh, ten dinars,” said the young girl, “and that’s non-refundable,” she added matter-of-factly.

So the young pair parted with the money, and Silvana parted with the information, and then they parted ways.

“Oh, drat, I forgot to write down the street-names!” cried Svetlana whose emotional state was bordering on despair.

“Not to worry, my vise-like memory recalls everything,” assured Nikolai.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!”

The confident duo made their way through the seemingly endless labyrinth of the medina, until Nikolai stopped dead in his tracks.

“Well I’ll be,” he muttered.

“What it is?” asked Svetlana, attempting to peer around him.

“Well, according to that girl, we should be staring at the exit.”

“And we aren’t?”

“Look for yourself!”

With that, Nikolai stepped aside to allow Svetlana to see what they were staring at: an alley leading directly to a brick wall.

“Oh dear!  How will we ever – Goodness!  Nikolai, there’s someone back there!  He looks hurt, not to mention young and handsome!”

She rushed recklessly to the stranger’s side and dropped to her knees among the various refuse one might expect to find in a dark alley.

“Sir?  Sir, are you all right?  Sir!” she called, unaware in her distress that she was speaking Russian to someone who, though indeed young and handsome, was clearly not from her country.  She kept it up, shaking his shoulder softly, until his eyes blinked open groggily. 

“Jeez, girl, stop calling me that!” he said.

“You, you speak Russian!” she gasped.  “Nikolai, he speaks Russian!”

“Yes, I know,” replied Nikolai dryly.

“Yes, I speak Russian.  I learned it to kill all the free time I had as a youth living in Bermuda,” explained the stranger.

“Well that’s wonderful!” exclaimed Svetlana, nodding happily.

“You wouldn’t happen to know a way out of here, would you?” inquired the pragmatic Nikolai.  “You see, we asked this young girl, but…  Oh, never mind.”

“As a matter of fact, in spite of being a complete foreigner like yourselves, I do know.  Could you just give me a hand getting up?”

[1]  French being the second main language of Tunisia (after Arabic, obviously)