An untitled chatfic
Well, the bulletin board that we used to use for posting chatfics have now been taken down, so I'm posting this on my own journal. This is a little piece showing Heather a.k.a. Artemis after she returns from her first visit to the headquarters of the Society.
Heather was in such an ebullient mood after leaving the Society, she ran up the steel stairs four at a time. What a joy, for her heart to feel so light for the first time since... well, since a long time now. Friends! Or at least nice people! She wondered if it was too early in knowing them to bake them some banana bread, or maybe oatmeal cookies. That Mr. Federici was a little scary, what Mama had always called "sharp" with a guarded note in her voice, and he'd probably think homemade cookies were way too lame anyhow. But she could picture Allison enjoying them, and probably Jonty would at least try one, if only to be polite. She even let herself fantasize about that brisk, business-like archer woman - Redshaft, that was the name she'd given - nibbling one absent-mindedly, and then exclaiming in surprise as she realized how moist and filling the little treats were.
She wanted to fling open the door and vault out crowing with happiness and excitement, but alas, that was the sort of thing you could get away with only when you were a little kid. Instead, she lifted the lid cautiously, and after a look around to reassure herself there was no one around, swung her legs around and dropped to the pavement of the alley. She sighed briefly, and hitched her backpack a little higher on her shoulder.
Though it was not yet really night, it was darker out than she had expected, and when she went to the door of the convenience she found it locked and the store beyond lit by only the few ancient bulbs that were kept on at all times to deter theft. Well, Mr. Sanderson did sometimes close up early, so it didn't mean she was too late, but still, it'd be best to get home as soon as could be. She hitched up the pack and began jogging.
She didn't realize until she was halfway home, past the old Miller farm and the VFW hall, that she was already sighing deeply. Was the fault in Rabbit Fork, or in her, that it took so very little of it these days to put her down in the pits? Probably fault in her.
She was getting stares from a boy on a battered BMX bike, who was falling behind her despite his panting efforts to match her foot pace, so she let him pull ahead, jogging with deliberate inefficiency, letting each foot stay flat on the ground as it fell instead of springing up again, and soon he had overtaken her again. It didn't stop him from craning his head over his shoulder after he passed; she wished he'd just forget her and pay attention to the road. Why couldn't people just look right past her, she thought bitterly, as they always had before.
She opened the front door and Mama was all over her before she even got halfway down the front hall. "Where have you been?" Mama cried. "Mr. Sanderson called saying you'd gone away, with some foreigner named Ikkay Norway -"
"Ikenoue," Heather said without thinking.
"- or SOMETHING," grated her mother, "the point being that poor Mr. Sanderson didn't know but what it could have been some crazy murderer or rapist that you went off with -"
"It wasn't, Mama, he came to help."
"Help? That's a funny kind of help, running off with a teenage girl without so much as a phone call -"
Heather raised her voice slightly, to be heard over her mother's panicked distortions. "Mama, he came to help with that." She put a particular stress on the last word; everyone in the house had taken to referring to it that way, when they talked about it at all.
Her mother stopped in mid-sentence. "Oh," she said softly, in a changed tone. "That." Her hand had been raised to point a lecturing finger; now she hesitated, letting that hand come to timid rest on her daughter's shoulder. "Does this mean... you're going away?"
Heather lifted her eyes up from the photos on the wall, startled. "What? No!" After a pause to think, she modified this: "Not now, anyways. I don't know what could happen down the road. There could be some place where it's right for me to go, like I was going to college. Or maybe college, for that matter. But that's past tomorrow, and I ain't finished with today yet." For a moment, they both smiled together; those were the words she used to use as a little girl, begging to stay up longer.
Mama's smile faded. Heather wondered if Mama was looking at the same photos she was, the ones she could not help captioning in her mind as Before and After. One from the last day of her freshman year, showing her and her then-best-friend, both smiling awkwardly for the camera. Both of them brunettes still carrying baby fat, and still hoping that some day would bring the special someone who would see past the clumsy movements and the department-store-optical glasses and find something to love, or at least pay attention to. Next to it, a photo from just a few months later: three inches taller, all the baby fat given way to lean muscle, hair already starting to pick up its current tawny shade. She lied when she went back to school the next day, and told people she was wearing contacts; the truth was she didn't know why the nearsightedness she'd had since sixth grade had abruptly reversed itself and left her with near-perfect vision. She didn't know why the limbs that had always seemed to unerringly find things to bump into and knock over now seemed to move with a quick, efficient grace.
Of course, less than a month after that was the incident with lifting the car in the school parking lot off Mr. Chermak, and if she had ever had any hope of hiding the changes she was going through until she understood them, that hope ended there.
"I don't see much of Dotty anymore," Mama said, breaking into her thoughts. The hand on her shoulder squeezed gently.
"Neither do I," Heather said. "She's very busy these days, I guess. Whenever she sees me coming, it reminds her of something she has to do somewhere else." Mama looked sad, and hugged her in close. Heather let her head lean forward, wanting to rest it on Mama's shoulder for comfort as she always had before, and realized for the first time that, unless she bent her knees, she was too tall.
"Please don't think too badly of her," Mama said softly, gently stroking her braided hair. "Sometimes people, they're just feeling so much hurt, they don't realize that you didn't do ... whatever it was that hurt them." With a sigh, she opened her arms. "Here, let's make some dinner together."
They walked into the kitchen; Heather pulled her old beloved flower apron off the peg, tied it on, and stepped to the cutting board where the potatoes and carrots were waiting to be cut into cubes for the stew. For a while, there was quiet, nothing save the sound of the bubbling pot of the stove or the swish-click as the knife blade slid through the thick potatoes and hit the board. As much as Heather wanted to talk about the Society, she wasn't sure if she was supposed to keep it a secret, and she wasn't sure Mama was ready to hear it. The silence seemed too loud.
Something clicked in, suddenly. There was no sound of TV from the other room. "Where's Dad?" she asked.
Mama stirred the pot; the wooden spoon scraped against the sides. "He decided to go out for a drink," she said.
"Oh. To Wicker's?"
"No, to The Byway. He claims the crowd in The Byway is better these days."
"Oh." The main place to drink in Rabbit Fork used to be Wicker's Pub. Heather could remember, long ago, Daddy carrying her in his arms around the dark interior of Wicker's; she remembered all the man with the work-roughened hands and the cigarette smell on their clothes smiling at "Hal's little girl", remembered how each of them seemed to have a quarter to give her for the jukebox. A year or two ago, Dad would never have set foot in The Byway, calling it a slick place just gotten up for the out-of-towners who didn't know better.
"Mama," Heather asked suddenly, "would you take it all back? I mean, if someone gave you the power to take it all back, to make - whatever it is that happened to me - never have happened ... would you?"
"Oh, honey." Mama turned the flame under the stew pot down and turned to her, looking hurt. "I wouldn't do that, never. Just think of all the people you've helped - that teacher at your school, and those families out to Baileysville, and everyone who would have been hurt if those car thieves had gotten away -- I'm so proud of you, honey, and all you've done. I hope you realize that."
"Yes, but..." Heather laid down the knife and stared at the cutting board. "What if... what if all those things weren't in it? Suppose it could have been Dotty, instead of me? What if there'd still be someone to do all those things, and ... and I could have just stayed the same. And it was up to you -- which would you choose?"
There was too long of a pause before Mama replied. "I wouldn't change anything about you!" Heather stared at the cut potatoes as Mama gave her a squeeze. "I love you just the way you are. Even if it ... causes difficulties." Heather took Mama's hand in hers and couldn't look up. "Daddy loves you, too."
Heather shut her eyes tight. She couldn't say what she was thinking; if she did, either she or Mama would cry. After a while, Mama let her go, and scooped up the cut veggies in her hands to put in the stew pot. Heather could only take a seat on the old kitchen stool, and listen to the bubbling stew, and think, "He used to."
Heather was in such an ebullient mood after leaving the Society, she ran up the steel stairs four at a time. What a joy, for her heart to feel so light for the first time since... well, since a long time now. Friends! Or at least nice people! She wondered if it was too early in knowing them to bake them some banana bread, or maybe oatmeal cookies. That Mr. Federici was a little scary, what Mama had always called "sharp" with a guarded note in her voice, and he'd probably think homemade cookies were way too lame anyhow. But she could picture Allison enjoying them, and probably Jonty would at least try one, if only to be polite. She even let herself fantasize about that brisk, business-like archer woman - Redshaft, that was the name she'd given - nibbling one absent-mindedly, and then exclaiming in surprise as she realized how moist and filling the little treats were.
She wanted to fling open the door and vault out crowing with happiness and excitement, but alas, that was the sort of thing you could get away with only when you were a little kid. Instead, she lifted the lid cautiously, and after a look around to reassure herself there was no one around, swung her legs around and dropped to the pavement of the alley. She sighed briefly, and hitched her backpack a little higher on her shoulder.
Though it was not yet really night, it was darker out than she had expected, and when she went to the door of the convenience she found it locked and the store beyond lit by only the few ancient bulbs that were kept on at all times to deter theft. Well, Mr. Sanderson did sometimes close up early, so it didn't mean she was too late, but still, it'd be best to get home as soon as could be. She hitched up the pack and began jogging.
She didn't realize until she was halfway home, past the old Miller farm and the VFW hall, that she was already sighing deeply. Was the fault in Rabbit Fork, or in her, that it took so very little of it these days to put her down in the pits? Probably fault in her.
She was getting stares from a boy on a battered BMX bike, who was falling behind her despite his panting efforts to match her foot pace, so she let him pull ahead, jogging with deliberate inefficiency, letting each foot stay flat on the ground as it fell instead of springing up again, and soon he had overtaken her again. It didn't stop him from craning his head over his shoulder after he passed; she wished he'd just forget her and pay attention to the road. Why couldn't people just look right past her, she thought bitterly, as they always had before.
She opened the front door and Mama was all over her before she even got halfway down the front hall. "Where have you been?" Mama cried. "Mr. Sanderson called saying you'd gone away, with some foreigner named Ikkay Norway -"
"Ikenoue," Heather said without thinking.
"- or SOMETHING," grated her mother, "the point being that poor Mr. Sanderson didn't know but what it could have been some crazy murderer or rapist that you went off with -"
"It wasn't, Mama, he came to help."
"Help? That's a funny kind of help, running off with a teenage girl without so much as a phone call -"
Heather raised her voice slightly, to be heard over her mother's panicked distortions. "Mama, he came to help with that." She put a particular stress on the last word; everyone in the house had taken to referring to it that way, when they talked about it at all.
Her mother stopped in mid-sentence. "Oh," she said softly, in a changed tone. "That." Her hand had been raised to point a lecturing finger; now she hesitated, letting that hand come to timid rest on her daughter's shoulder. "Does this mean... you're going away?"
Heather lifted her eyes up from the photos on the wall, startled. "What? No!" After a pause to think, she modified this: "Not now, anyways. I don't know what could happen down the road. There could be some place where it's right for me to go, like I was going to college. Or maybe college, for that matter. But that's past tomorrow, and I ain't finished with today yet." For a moment, they both smiled together; those were the words she used to use as a little girl, begging to stay up longer.
Mama's smile faded. Heather wondered if Mama was looking at the same photos she was, the ones she could not help captioning in her mind as Before and After. One from the last day of her freshman year, showing her and her then-best-friend, both smiling awkwardly for the camera. Both of them brunettes still carrying baby fat, and still hoping that some day would bring the special someone who would see past the clumsy movements and the department-store-optical glasses and find something to love, or at least pay attention to. Next to it, a photo from just a few months later: three inches taller, all the baby fat given way to lean muscle, hair already starting to pick up its current tawny shade. She lied when she went back to school the next day, and told people she was wearing contacts; the truth was she didn't know why the nearsightedness she'd had since sixth grade had abruptly reversed itself and left her with near-perfect vision. She didn't know why the limbs that had always seemed to unerringly find things to bump into and knock over now seemed to move with a quick, efficient grace.
Of course, less than a month after that was the incident with lifting the car in the school parking lot off Mr. Chermak, and if she had ever had any hope of hiding the changes she was going through until she understood them, that hope ended there.
"I don't see much of Dotty anymore," Mama said, breaking into her thoughts. The hand on her shoulder squeezed gently.
"Neither do I," Heather said. "She's very busy these days, I guess. Whenever she sees me coming, it reminds her of something she has to do somewhere else." Mama looked sad, and hugged her in close. Heather let her head lean forward, wanting to rest it on Mama's shoulder for comfort as she always had before, and realized for the first time that, unless she bent her knees, she was too tall.
"Please don't think too badly of her," Mama said softly, gently stroking her braided hair. "Sometimes people, they're just feeling so much hurt, they don't realize that you didn't do ... whatever it was that hurt them." With a sigh, she opened her arms. "Here, let's make some dinner together."
They walked into the kitchen; Heather pulled her old beloved flower apron off the peg, tied it on, and stepped to the cutting board where the potatoes and carrots were waiting to be cut into cubes for the stew. For a while, there was quiet, nothing save the sound of the bubbling pot of the stove or the swish-click as the knife blade slid through the thick potatoes and hit the board. As much as Heather wanted to talk about the Society, she wasn't sure if she was supposed to keep it a secret, and she wasn't sure Mama was ready to hear it. The silence seemed too loud.
Something clicked in, suddenly. There was no sound of TV from the other room. "Where's Dad?" she asked.
Mama stirred the pot; the wooden spoon scraped against the sides. "He decided to go out for a drink," she said.
"Oh. To Wicker's?"
"No, to The Byway. He claims the crowd in The Byway is better these days."
"Oh." The main place to drink in Rabbit Fork used to be Wicker's Pub. Heather could remember, long ago, Daddy carrying her in his arms around the dark interior of Wicker's; she remembered all the man with the work-roughened hands and the cigarette smell on their clothes smiling at "Hal's little girl", remembered how each of them seemed to have a quarter to give her for the jukebox. A year or two ago, Dad would never have set foot in The Byway, calling it a slick place just gotten up for the out-of-towners who didn't know better.
"Mama," Heather asked suddenly, "would you take it all back? I mean, if someone gave you the power to take it all back, to make - whatever it is that happened to me - never have happened ... would you?"
"Oh, honey." Mama turned the flame under the stew pot down and turned to her, looking hurt. "I wouldn't do that, never. Just think of all the people you've helped - that teacher at your school, and those families out to Baileysville, and everyone who would have been hurt if those car thieves had gotten away -- I'm so proud of you, honey, and all you've done. I hope you realize that."
"Yes, but..." Heather laid down the knife and stared at the cutting board. "What if... what if all those things weren't in it? Suppose it could have been Dotty, instead of me? What if there'd still be someone to do all those things, and ... and I could have just stayed the same. And it was up to you -- which would you choose?"
There was too long of a pause before Mama replied. "I wouldn't change anything about you!" Heather stared at the cut potatoes as Mama gave her a squeeze. "I love you just the way you are. Even if it ... causes difficulties." Heather took Mama's hand in hers and couldn't look up. "Daddy loves you, too."
Heather shut her eyes tight. She couldn't say what she was thinking; if she did, either she or Mama would cry. After a while, Mama let her go, and scooped up the cut veggies in her hands to put in the stew pot. Heather could only take a seat on the old kitchen stool, and listen to the bubbling stew, and think, "He used to."