APPLICATION: The Borrowers - Arrietty Clock [BACKGROUND ELABORATIONS]
This application has been ACCEPTED.
Original application is HERE.
Have you ever wondered where all those extra rubber bands, bobby pins, and thumbtacks go? You never seem to remember using them all up, and yet you keep having to buy new packets... The truth is, they're being "borrowed" by people who need them more than you do: the Borrowers, tiny people who live under the floors and inside the walls of human dwellings and fashion the tools and trinkets of their everyday lives out of your household knickknacks.
Generations ago, the ancestors of the Clock family flew to Japan on the backs of migrating birds. Their Borrowing lifestyle in Europe was getting dangerous as populations increased and people became more suspicious and less welcoming with regards to the little folk in their homes. Pragmatic as always, they decided to move to a quieter, safer nation, and Japan proved to be an excellent home for a time...but civilization marches on, and by the time Arrietty Clock was born, there were only three families living in the rambling Japanese farmhouse she called home. A few years later, after one family vanished and another was Seen by the human beans of the house and had to move to the woods nearby, the Clocks - Pod, Homily, and Arrietty - were the only Borrowers left.
For all they knew, they might have been the only Borrowers left in the world.
This worried Arrietty's aging parents deeply, and they threw their energies into teaching their daughter to look after herself, just in case. Her mother tried to teach her basic household skills, but by the age of fourteen, Arrietty's stitches were still uneven and her enthusiasm for cooking and cleaning was negligable at best. Far more exciting was tagging along with her father, being taught to Borrow things from the human beans in the house. Pod patiently taught his daughter the tricks of the Borrowing trade, from scaling a curtain with earrings for crampons, to rappelling down a cabinet on a fishhook-and-dental-floss climbing line. She loved her simple little life, although her cravings for adventure sometimes sent her out into the garden to fetch herbs for her mother and tease the household cat.
That simple life was turned upside down, however, when a human boy arrived at the house. His name was Sho, and he was very sick and recuperating in the countryside to prepare for heart surgery. He was also very observant, and it didn't take him long to notice the Borrowers at their activities. On his very first day at the house, he managed to spot Arrietty carrying home a bay leaf. Hiding behind the leaf, Arrietty thought she had escaped his gaze, but later that same day, her father took her out for a Borrowing trip into the boy's room. Caught in the very act of pulling a tissue out of the box by Sho's bed, Arrietty was horrified when the boy opened his eyes and began to talk to her, trying to reassure her and tell her not to be afraid. Terrified, she and her father crept quickly back to their bolthole and escaped before the sickly boy had even gotten out of bed.
Mortified at first at having been Seen by a human bean, Arrietty gradually settled into a wary coexistence with the boy as her parents frantically made plans to move out of the house. She intended to avoid him, but was startled when she found a gift he'd left for her near a grating: the sugar cube she had dropped in her bid to escape, and a tiny note that read, "You forgot this." At first, she tried to ignore the gift, and the various other gifts and hints he left around the house for her. Little flowers, messages, furniture from the dollhouse in his bedroom. Bit by bit, she began to forge a friendship with Sho, who was as curious about her life as she was about his. As carefully as she had been taught to avoid humans, Arrietty's curious nature drew her towards the giant human bean child with an inexorable pull.
Their unlikely bond was strengthened forever when the housekeeper, suspicious of the boy's activities, went looking for the missing dollhouse furniture. She discovered the Clock family home under the floorboards and caught Homily Clock in a jar. Furious with Sho at first for inadvertantly destroying her life, Arrietty searched him out in the garden and shouted angrily at him, getting into a fight with him when he pointed out that her people were probably a doomed species. But then, ashamed of having said such a thing, Sho startled them both by admitting that he was the one who was doomed. His surgery had a very low chance of success; as it turned out, Sho's fascination with looking after Arrietty and her family was his way of dealing with his powerlessness to change his own life. Chastened, he apologized for meddling in their lives. Shocked, Arrietty forgave him for his mistakes when he bravely helped her rescue her mother and cover up the signs of their old home, thus making the housekeeper's ravings about tiny people look like the results of one too many bottles of sake and saving them from further investigation.
Fortunately for the Clocks, they had a new life to move on to. In his searches for a possible home, Pod had met another, wilder Borrower, a teenaged boy named Spiller who told them that there were in fact a lot of other Borrowers living downriver in the woods. Taken with pretty Arrietty and generally a helpful, if quiet, sort, Spiller offered to guide the family to the settlement. The Borrowers left quietly that night, under cover of darkness, but the family cat alerted Sho and led him to where they were preparing to depart down a narrow river. Sad to see Arrietty go, Sho gave her a last gift, which she accepted for the first time: a sugar cube, for old time's sake. Solemnly, he thanked her for teaching him that no matter how small and powerless you are, you can always keep fighting to survive in this frightening world. Thanks to her, he was determined to hold on and try to survive his surgery. Bidding her human friend a tearful farewell, Arrietty promised never to forget him and boarded the teakettle Spiller used as a boat and set off down the river with her parents to find a new home and a new world to explore.
Original application is HERE.
Have you ever wondered where all those extra rubber bands, bobby pins, and thumbtacks go? You never seem to remember using them all up, and yet you keep having to buy new packets... The truth is, they're being "borrowed" by people who need them more than you do: the Borrowers, tiny people who live under the floors and inside the walls of human dwellings and fashion the tools and trinkets of their everyday lives out of your household knickknacks.
Generations ago, the ancestors of the Clock family flew to Japan on the backs of migrating birds. Their Borrowing lifestyle in Europe was getting dangerous as populations increased and people became more suspicious and less welcoming with regards to the little folk in their homes. Pragmatic as always, they decided to move to a quieter, safer nation, and Japan proved to be an excellent home for a time...but civilization marches on, and by the time Arrietty Clock was born, there were only three families living in the rambling Japanese farmhouse she called home. A few years later, after one family vanished and another was Seen by the human beans of the house and had to move to the woods nearby, the Clocks - Pod, Homily, and Arrietty - were the only Borrowers left.
For all they knew, they might have been the only Borrowers left in the world.
This worried Arrietty's aging parents deeply, and they threw their energies into teaching their daughter to look after herself, just in case. Her mother tried to teach her basic household skills, but by the age of fourteen, Arrietty's stitches were still uneven and her enthusiasm for cooking and cleaning was negligable at best. Far more exciting was tagging along with her father, being taught to Borrow things from the human beans in the house. Pod patiently taught his daughter the tricks of the Borrowing trade, from scaling a curtain with earrings for crampons, to rappelling down a cabinet on a fishhook-and-dental-floss climbing line. She loved her simple little life, although her cravings for adventure sometimes sent her out into the garden to fetch herbs for her mother and tease the household cat.
That simple life was turned upside down, however, when a human boy arrived at the house. His name was Sho, and he was very sick and recuperating in the countryside to prepare for heart surgery. He was also very observant, and it didn't take him long to notice the Borrowers at their activities. On his very first day at the house, he managed to spot Arrietty carrying home a bay leaf. Hiding behind the leaf, Arrietty thought she had escaped his gaze, but later that same day, her father took her out for a Borrowing trip into the boy's room. Caught in the very act of pulling a tissue out of the box by Sho's bed, Arrietty was horrified when the boy opened his eyes and began to talk to her, trying to reassure her and tell her not to be afraid. Terrified, she and her father crept quickly back to their bolthole and escaped before the sickly boy had even gotten out of bed.
Mortified at first at having been Seen by a human bean, Arrietty gradually settled into a wary coexistence with the boy as her parents frantically made plans to move out of the house. She intended to avoid him, but was startled when she found a gift he'd left for her near a grating: the sugar cube she had dropped in her bid to escape, and a tiny note that read, "You forgot this." At first, she tried to ignore the gift, and the various other gifts and hints he left around the house for her. Little flowers, messages, furniture from the dollhouse in his bedroom. Bit by bit, she began to forge a friendship with Sho, who was as curious about her life as she was about his. As carefully as she had been taught to avoid humans, Arrietty's curious nature drew her towards the giant human bean child with an inexorable pull.
Their unlikely bond was strengthened forever when the housekeeper, suspicious of the boy's activities, went looking for the missing dollhouse furniture. She discovered the Clock family home under the floorboards and caught Homily Clock in a jar. Furious with Sho at first for inadvertantly destroying her life, Arrietty searched him out in the garden and shouted angrily at him, getting into a fight with him when he pointed out that her people were probably a doomed species. But then, ashamed of having said such a thing, Sho startled them both by admitting that he was the one who was doomed. His surgery had a very low chance of success; as it turned out, Sho's fascination with looking after Arrietty and her family was his way of dealing with his powerlessness to change his own life. Chastened, he apologized for meddling in their lives. Shocked, Arrietty forgave him for his mistakes when he bravely helped her rescue her mother and cover up the signs of their old home, thus making the housekeeper's ravings about tiny people look like the results of one too many bottles of sake and saving them from further investigation.
Fortunately for the Clocks, they had a new life to move on to. In his searches for a possible home, Pod had met another, wilder Borrower, a teenaged boy named Spiller who told them that there were in fact a lot of other Borrowers living downriver in the woods. Taken with pretty Arrietty and generally a helpful, if quiet, sort, Spiller offered to guide the family to the settlement. The Borrowers left quietly that night, under cover of darkness, but the family cat alerted Sho and led him to where they were preparing to depart down a narrow river. Sad to see Arrietty go, Sho gave her a last gift, which she accepted for the first time: a sugar cube, for old time's sake. Solemnly, he thanked her for teaching him that no matter how small and powerless you are, you can always keep fighting to survive in this frightening world. Thanks to her, he was determined to hold on and try to survive his surgery. Bidding her human friend a tearful farewell, Arrietty promised never to forget him and boarded the teakettle Spiller used as a boat and set off down the river with her parents to find a new home and a new world to explore.