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#Amelia is getting real tired of this bird boi
harryxmac · 5 years
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Small City Girl
In which, Harry is a heartbroken man, and Y/N is a small city girl who works in a coffee shop.
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“I promise yeh, she’s lovely, proper little down to earth thing. She’s a barista in mayfair, proper” Jeff says talking to Harry about Glenne’s friend, whom of which he hadn’t heard of until now.
“Why haven't you invited her to anything before?” Harry asked, raising an eyebrow. 
Jeff, knowing what Glenne and him were up to, just smiled and shrugged it off as miscommunication and timing.
Later that evening, arriving at Nialls for what would be their weekly pizza Fridays, which mainly consists of, pizza, movies, cosy clothes, some alcohol and just a little bit of mystery, Harry was already feeling tired.
Niall opened the door and walked off immediately. Niall was never the hostess with the mostess, more of a ‘make yourself a drink, you know where it is’ type of guy.
Harry ensures to make the rounds, as usual, kissing everyone's cheeks and giving them a light squeeze to say hello.
That is until his stood face to face with Y/N, the girl who seemed to have become Glenne’s new best friend all of a sudden.
Harry wasn’t complaining.
With medium length hair, bronzed skin, green emerald eyes, just like his, and a smile that immediately encouraged you to do the same, he really wasn’t complaining.
She adorned a cosy, warm like jumper, red, and some black gym leggings, Harry would presume for comfort and some tommy hilfiger socks that covered her tiny feet.
“‘Ello love, M’harry” he smiled, bending so he was able to press soft lips against the smoothness of her cheek.
“M’Y/N, it’s lovely to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you” She smiled politely as she unwrapped herself out of his warm embrace.
“Funny tha’, me too” Harry turns his head to Jeff raising an eyebrow as if he knows exactly what he’s up to before he’s even admitted it. 
“Harry, did you bring pizza or not?” Demands Niall sitting near Adam and Emi who seem to be cuddled up under a soft blanket.
“Didn’t know what everyone wanted, was just gonna order it on me phone when I got here.” Harry said waving his phone in the air as he slipped out of his shoes and kicked them to the side in the hallway.
Making himself comfy on the sofa, he noticed that Y/n was on the other sofa next to Jeff and Glenne who were snuggled up under the same blanket as her, but Y/N just looked as though she was third wheeling.
Other couples, Niall and Lux, Adam and Emi and Sarah and Mitch were in their respective couples, Harry and Y/N seemed to be outnumbered. 
______________
Pizza came, and was eaten, alcohol got brought out and devoured, everyone was tipsy to say the least.
“Right, your turn curly. Truth or dare” Niall probed trying to get the looser side of Harry to come out to play. 
“Truth” he mutters taking a swig of his Jack and Coke.
“Fancy anyone right now? Bae-cation anytime soon?” He asked.
Harry shook his head, Niall fully aware of his situation in regards to his ex girlfriend. 
“Nah, I’m on me own for a bit. No bae-cation” Harry said, needing two exact swigs on his drinks. 
For some reason, Harry found it in himself turning to look at Y/N’s reaction. Of course she was a good looking lady, and Jeff seemed fond of her ‘heart of gold and warm characteristics’ but what was pulling Harry in? 
Was it the way she treated him like a friend of a friend and didn’t immediately scream when she knew it was him?
Or how she wrapped him in a warm embrace back like she had known him forever?
Harry didn’t know, but Harry knew wanted more. Her kind eyes met his and Harry began to feel himself blush. 
Jeff and Glenne seemed to be working on their matchmaking skills already by making Y/N feel immensely uncomfortable being under the same blankets as them. 
This, of course, didn’t go unnoticed by Harry. “Hey, Y/N, come over ‘ere, get away from them love birds”
Y/N, a little surprised, got up, picking up her cup of tea (she wasn’t a big drinker) and walked over to Harry. Harry opened up the blanket signalling for her to get under.
Y/N, a little cautious but intrigued never less snuggled under the blanket.
Was she supposed to cuddle him? Did he want to cuddle her? Did he want her to be next to him or did he just feel bad?
If Y/N was being honest, with all she had heard from Glenne, she seemed to like the idea of Harry, him being completely gorgeous helped.
Harry, who found it in his nature just to wrap his arms around Y/N and pull her close, smiled down at Y/N as she began to think.
He just said there was no girl, no girl in his life for anything, was this him trying to initiate something? Would he even like her? Ultimately she was just a girl, living in a big city making coffee and watching too many rom-coms.
His unruly curly hair, his green eyes that blazed into your soul with every bit of hope that you had no idea what of. He had a way with making people feel comfortable, at home, welcome and not the slightest bit cold. 
Y/N was fucked.
But Y/N had to remind herself that Harry Styles was simply something she couldn’t have. She’d never fit into his big travelling lifestyle, or his other famous friends, his lifestyle, the buying Gucci without having to finance. 
She was little Y/N and he was big Harry, it would never work.
Somehow though, she begged for her mind to change.
_________
They’re full on cuddling now, everyones a little too tipsy, except them. Harry is the support of the cuddle, on his bag with his arms wrapped around Y/N comfortably. Y/n and taken it upon herself to snuggle in, her back against his chest and one of her small hands closed around his softly dragging her thumb back and forth against the smoothness of Harry’s hand.
What moisturizer does he use?
Y/N shifts, now a little uncomfortable in their position. 
“Can’t get comfy love?” Harry asks in a soft whisper, not that they had anything to whisper about, everyone was well aware of their cuddling.
Y/N shook her head. Harry shifted going on to his side and gently moving Y/N so that she was in front of him and in a spooning position.
“Better?”
“Much, thank you”
_______
“Something MUST have happened.” Glenne insisted.
Y/N shook her head, everyone left, he took me home and kissed my cheek.” Y/N steamed milk and gently poured it into the cup with a filled expresso, motioning her hand to create a leaf pattern in the cup.
“No” 
Y/N looks up at Glenne, who’s dressed ever so elegantly all the time. 
“I promise”
“I call bullshit.”
“Will you just take your coffee Glenne” Y/N giggled.
“So, do you fancy him?” Glenne asked.
Rolling her eyes, Y/N looked away. 
“You so do!” 
Y/N shook her head and giggled.
“I do, but don’t go raving about it, if anything was to happen I need to know him more and we need to spend some time together” Y/N smiled.
______
The second time they saw each other was another regular occurrence that Harry attended, which it now seems that Y/N does too.
Jeff’s pizza night.
Harry did his normal walk around the room and say hello to everyone with a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug, Y/N receiving the exact same treatment.
Harry seemed a little off with Y/N this time, not really talking to her as much as Nialls
The boys were chilling out on Jeff’s massive sofa that was adorned with loads of pillows to satisfy everyone and anyones preferences of a pillow.
Meanwhile, the girls were in the open plan kitchen chatting over a bottle of wine, or five. 
Harry however, had noticed that Y/N had only had two glasses and was taking her time. He liked that. He liked she wasn’t someone who drank loads and became frustrating after a drink or two. 
He’d looked at her a few times this evening. Maybe a few too many. Short glances and a quick turn of the head everytime he made eye contact, with his cheeks blossoming rose everytime.
What was it about this girl that had him almost putty in his seat?
Why was he so intrigued?
“Disney would be a fab idea.” Lux said.
“Yeah, we can all take the Eurostar and spend the weekend!” Sarah added. 
Sarah called the boys to come in the kitchen, each followed.
“We were thinking why don’t we all go Disney for the weekend?” Sarah proposed. 
All the boys began to nod and all Harry could think about was the numbering situation. Everyones in couples except him and Y/N.
“Everyone up for it?” Lux questioned and everyone was in, even Harry, even Y/N…
______________ “Hello sweetheart,” Anne said as she walked out of the lift and into Harry’s condo where he was sitting comfortably on his sofa.
“Hey Mum, you okay?” He got up and offered her a cuddle. “Tea?” She nodded.
Walking to the kitchen Anne began to start conversation.
“What’s been up with you recently?” She probed.
“Nothing much, just having some down time, found it really relaxing just taking time for myself. Done a few pilates class actually, thanks for the suggestion.” Harry thanks.
Anne smiles and takes a seat on his bar stool and watches him make her tea. “Two sugars love” she reminded.
Placing to sugars in her tea and none in his own he placed the tea in front of his Mum and took the seat next to her.
“Mum, I think I have a problem.” He stated.
“Must be from your father, nothing to do with me” She joked and Harry laughed a little. Anne motioned for him to go on.
“There’s the girl, real stunner Mum, something about her. Y/N. Can’t say I know her overly well, well, once at Nialls and once at Jeff’s but you know there’s a little something.” He said.
Anne smiled softly and placed her hand over his.
“So what’s holding you back sweetheart, never normally like this with girls. I’m pretty sure you know how to woo her.” She said lightheartedly. 
“I can’t do it again Mum, after Amelia, with the fame and money hungry, I just don’t want to go through it.” He sighed.
“I’m scared of putting myself in a position where I’m likely to get hurt. Do I need to focus on myself for a bit or what? But it just felt so good to have someone to hold at Niall’s the other night. To have someone to snuggle down with and be a bit infatuated with.” 
Anne felt for a son, truly. Amelia broke his heart. Stepped on it, smashed it, blended it and threw it away without a blink of an eyelid. Now here he was.
“You said yourself. You don’t know her yet, you don’t know if she is like Amelia, and I doubt she is. I’m sure Jeff and Niall are clued up enough to know what she’s like if they invite her round” Anne added. 
“She’s Glenne’s friend, think she’s trying to set us up if I’m honest.” Harry rolled his eyes at the thought.
“Then, I’m sure Glenne’s not silly. Why not just try things aye?” She rubbed Harry’s arm and Harry smiled at the affection.
“There’s a trip to Disneyland” Harry mentioned.
Anne raised her eyebrows. “A trip?”
“Yeah, Lux and Sarah kind of arranged it. Everyone’s in couples except Y/N and I.” Harry said.
“Okay, this is good! Text her, ask her if, because of the number situation she fancies catching a ride with you and then offer to book a twin room to save her some money on a room for herself. Put yourself out there babe.” Anne suggested.
Harry nodded. That was a good idea. That way, in the car on the way to Paris he can get to know her a little more, AND it's a nice thing to do. 
“How did you know Robin was right for you? How do you find the right person Mum?” Harry asked rubbing his face. 
Anne took a moment to collect her answer. Looking at her son, who was hurt, but wanting to love again, she came up with the best answer she could.
“One day, you’ll stop thinking about other women, you’ll stop thinking that there’s better, you’ll stop thinking about finding love, because you would have found it, truly. Someone will walk into your life and love you for you. They’ll love you because it’s something they feel rather than something they want. They’ll selfless, but also selfish when needed. You’ll wake up every morning to turn over to see a face that you feel you can’t live without. You’ll know my love, you will. That person will be your bread and water, and you theirs. It takes time, and time can be the best healer. We live in a world of instant. Instant coffee, Instagram, next day or same day delivery, but love isn’t instant, it takes time and energy and somethines, much like you now, you’ll have little energy, but darling, someone is out there for you.”
Harry took in his Mum’s words.
“And Harry, it might be this girl, Y/N may be it. But she also might not. And that's okay because everything in life is a lesson, and lessons are meant to be taught.”
“So, do me a favour Harry and try. One heartbreak in life isn’t the end.”
________
Harry  Y/N
Hey love, got your number off Glenne. Was looking at the numbers for the Disney trip, seems like we’re outnumbered. I’m going to drive in my car to Paris for it, I have a work thing the day before, want to catch a ride with me? H x
Hey Harry! Are you sure? That’s so lovely of you! I also have a shift the day before so that works perfectly with me x
Of course, without a doubt. Was also thinking, money wise, want to share a room? They’re expensive by themselves, though I’d just get a twin room. H x
I don’t want to intrude, only if you’re sure. Let me know how I owe you x
Don’t worry about it I’ll sort it and text you details of when I’ll pick you up. H x
_______
Harry and Y/N were going to Disney...
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jaybug-jabbers · 3 years
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My Favorite ACNH Villagers by Species
Hey all. I recently was gifted the new Animal Crossing game and have been playing it like mad. I decided to judge all the characters in the game and choose my favorites.
This list is extremely opinion-based, reflecting only my personal tastes. Also, I’m very picky. You’ve been warned.
As a final note, the list may be subject to change as I play the game and meet villagers and experience new stuff. Thus, this is a snapshot of my current impressions.
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Alligator: Drago
Standing out among all the other gators, Drago’s appearance as a mythical beast plus a laid-back attitude wins my affection.
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Anteater: Anabelle
Anteaters are cool creatures, but pangolins, which Anabelle is based off of, are even COOLER. Her cheerful peppy personality is also a plus.
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Bear: Klaus
The designs for all the bears, for some odd reason, seem to universally repel me, except for Klaus, who somewhat intrigues me. I’d never have him in my village, but I appreciate the distinctive design.
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Bird: Piper
Finding a Bird that I like is surprisingly difficult. Sparro’s design is nice, but he’s a Jock, which is kind of a killjoy for me. Piper just seems like a nice standard bird.
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Bull: Rodeo
While the bright-blue Bull Stu is also a very pleasing design, Rodeo has to be the winner here. His terrifying appearance is at odds with his relaxed personality.
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Cat: Raymond
Yes, he’s the super-popular among the popular; the truth is, I love him too. He’s a very striking character.
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Chicken: Ken
While Becky and Egbert are also nice-looking chickens, Ken must win for his beautiful dark coloration and the fact he’s a ninja chicken.
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Cub: Maple
Judy is immensely popular, due to her beautiful gradient coat and her intensely sparkling eyes, but I’m not sure she’s won me over. I think I prefer the plain, ordinary-colored, cute little Maple. Stitches is another popular Cub, but the stitch-eyes unnerve me terribly.
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Deer: Erik
There are so many Deer characters I love! Erik, however, is the sweetest for me.
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Dog: Shep
Most of the Dog characters don’t do much for me, just being rather ordinary dog designs. I’m not much of a dog person, anyway. Shep has that cool sheepdog fringe, though, and seems like a pretty cool dude.
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Duck: Molly
I’m repelled by all the Duck designs except for Molly. They really went a little nuts with the weird faces for the duck characters, y’know? The popular Ketchup was not selected because I don’t usually like food-based creatures.
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Eagle: Amelia
There are a ton of cool Eagle characters! I basically love them all, but I need to pick Amelia because she’s based on the fabulous Caracara.
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Elephant: Cyd
Tia is a very popular Elephant, for her adorable design based on a teapot. I admit she’s very cute. But Cyd is … I’m not sure what Cyd is. He’s really weird. I can’t help but be drawn to him. LOOKIT THOSE EYES MAN.
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Frog: Jeremiah
The frogs look kind of bad to me, overall. Their gigantic bulbous heads unnerve me. I know the art is a chibi-style, of course, but the heads of the frogs seem oversized even for chibi. Maybe I’m crazy. I dunno, I just don’t care for them much. Ribbot is a popular frog, and I kinda dig the uniqueness of the robot concept, but he’s a Jock, so ehhh, pass. I chose Jeremiah simply for his appealing colors and his name.
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Goat: Kidd
I love goats in real life, and I thought I’d like more AC goats, but I don’t really. Sherb is a very popular goat right now, and while he’s cute and all, Kidd seems the coolest to me. He’s purple with nice hair and a well-contrasting horn color.
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Gorilla: Boone
I do not like monkey and ape characters. I never have. So I’m very biased here. Boone seems the best of the Gorilla bunch, though, with his bright, eye-catching baboon markings and almost dignified presense. I wouldn’t have him on my island, but he’s the most tolerable.
Hamster: NOPE
There’s something about all the hamsters that troubles me greatly. I could never have any on my island.
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Hippo: Bertha
I think it’s hard to make a stylized Hippo character that isn’t at least kinda ugly. They have oddly-shaped honkin’ faces, and it’s awkward. But Bertha is a pretty sweet hippo gal.
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Horse: Victoria
There are a lot of horses in the game, including a Zebra, a sparkling Unicorn, a creepy dark horse, and a princely Colton; but I’m choosing Victoria soley for the racehorse motif. This may change over time, but for now I find it charming.
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Kangaroo: Walt
While they experimented with a number of eye-catching designs for the Kangaroos, Walt’s understated slate blues and intense face wins me over. Also, he has a cool scar and is a cranky boy.
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Koala: Yuka
The enormous noses and widely-spaced eyes of the Koala characters make it difficult to make them cute, but Yuka seems pretty sweet.
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Lion: Leopold
I definitely do not care for any of the Lion characters except for Leopold. Leo is a magnificent, regal-looking fellow I would want to have a cup of tea with.
Monkey: Don’t like any of ‘em
I mentioned previously my bias against ape and monkey characters. I can’t possibly choose a favorite from them.
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Mouse: Chadder
As with the Hamster characters, I also do not like the Mouse characters. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the body design, but … hm. Most of the faces for them are unpleasant. Chadder’s face is actually quite neat, though, and I like his little suit. The cheese motif is kinda cute, too.
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Octopus: Marina
I love the idea of having an Octopus villager. Octopi are awesome. It will take me time to adjust to the mouth they went with here, though. I think I would have preferred a beak, which is what actual octopi have.
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Ostrich: Flora & Julia
I adore almost all of the Ostrich characters. I would be thrilled with any of them. (Except for Queenie. Yuck.)
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Penguin: Hopper
Penguins are sweet birds, adored by many, and rightfully so. Hopper is definitely king of the bunch, though–based off the crested penguin, the eye-catching, cranky little fellow will waddle his way into your heart.
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Pig: Boris
I’m not normally a fan of pig characters. But there’s something about Boris! What presense he has! What magnificent fangs! What lovely colors and impressive attitude!
Rabbit: NOPE
They sure went all-out on trying out a wide variety of wild faces on these rabbits. I honestly hate ‘em all. Mira comes closest to being OK, but no.
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Rhino: Merengue
I previously noted I don’t really care for food-based characters. So I feel quite mixed about Merengue. Animals that are also food disturb me. But her design is admittedly well-done and very cute. She won’t be on my island, but I understand why people like her so much. She’s certainly the most interesting Rhino character.
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Sheep: Dom
OK. I know I said how much I dislike Jock personalities. (The reason is simply because it gets tiring to hear them talk about nothing else but working out.) But Dom gets a pass. He’s the only one I will tolerate a Jock personality for. His character design is screamingly adorable and pleasant to look at, and the contrast between a tiny, fluffy cute little sheep wanting to get crunk is hilarious.
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Squirrel: Marshal
There are several cute Squirrel characters, including the very lovely Poppy and the skunklike Tasha, but the highly-popular Marshal is popular for a reason. His sweet little grumpy face and simple but effective colors are wonderful.
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Tiger: Rolf
There’s something rather dull in the Tiger designs. I don’t know what it is, exactly. Rolf seems to have some attitude and toughness about him, so I chose him, and white tigers are pretty. But overall, the Tigers underwhelm me. This is surprising since I am a big cat fan. I dunno … I think it’s the snout in the big cat design I don’t like. It looks weird.
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Wolf: Skye & Kyle
The wolves look really nice in AC, and I like a surprising number of them. I could not settle on a single one, so I chose both Skye for her gorgeous coloration and cute eyes and Kyle for his pretty Wild Dog colors.
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phemon · 3 years
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After Our Lives
Aaaand part 3 is finished! sequel to “Reaping the Benefits”
Boy, it felt good to get this out. I have an update to that Hiatus statement I had a long time ago (aka the reason I stopped writing) that I’ll post sometime after this. I noticed that these fanfics got (literally) no traction on Tumblr, but massive amount on Ao3. Either Hololive isn’t as big on Tumblr? Or my account got shadowbanned, whatever. I’ll keep posting my random ideas here for the sake of keeping a record, in case Ao3 goes under.
Amelia and Gura never thought what happens when you go to the afterlife; but they realize now that it doesn’t really matter. It’s happening now. After getting transported via Calli Airlines, they’ve arrived in a cloudy, surreal area with large, imposing gates in front of them.
“You know, I always imagined pearly gates, but I never thought they’d ACTUALLY be made of pearls.” Gura remarks, staring up at the gates.
“They’re marble, idiot. C’mon.” Amelia rolls her eyes, taking Gura’s hand and head toward the gates. As they approach the gates, they notice someone sitting behind a pedestal of some kind, reading a newspaper. They’re an oni: red skin, horns, everything including a white robe. Along with a halo adorned on top his head. They stop for a second to notice that they too have halos.
They go up to the oni, and he stops reading his newspaper. He gives Amelia and Gura a long look, sizing both of them up, which they squirm under his gaze. He pulls out a slab of marble, which seems to have something written on it. 
“Amelia Watson?” He finally asks in a tired tone, looking over to the detective.
“Uh, present?” Amelia responds dumbly, kinda blown back by what’s happening.
“And Gura... Watson?” The oni makes a face at the last name, but addresses Gura the same way.
“Right here.” Gura also responds, giving Amelia’s hand a reactive squeeze.
“... You’re clear, go right ahead.” As soon as he finishes his sentence, the large marble gates open, signaling their admission.
“Uh... Thanks.” Gura thanks, eyeing the oni quizzically.
“Wait, you.” He stops Amelia, and heaves a long sigh. “We were wondering when you were supposed to show up, Mrs. Watson. Time-travelers always screw up the filing system.” The oni remarks then goes back to his newspaper. “That’s all I wanted to say. Enjoy the afterlife.”
“Uh, okay! Sorry for the trouble.” Amelia apologizes and gives Gura a shrug. They continue on through the large gates.
.
Amelia and Gura arrive at some type of plaza, and some large metal doors close behind them as they arrive. The architecture is very Greek; stone and clay buildings, tiled colored stone paths, an exit on the other side of the clearing, and  a large tree in the center of it all. And sitting under the tree, reading a book is...
“INA!!!” Gura and Amelia rush up to their old friend, giving her a hug.
“Amelia, Gura! I was wondering when you two were going to show up!” Ina reciprocates the hug. “I knew Gura was going to take a long time, but I didn’t think Amelia would take just as long!”
“Well...” Amelia and Gura relay the whole story.
“Aww, that’s so sweet, so you decided to die in each other’s arms together?” Ina remarks, which the two blush at. “Man, you two are still adorable. Hey Kiara, Amelia and Gura are finally here!”
Before Amelia and Gura can even react, they’re taken down by an orange blur and are faced with a hug from a (former) phoenix. “AME, GURA! I MISSED YOU TWO SO MUCH!”
“We missed you too, bird-brain.” Gura chuckles, hugging her back. “I kinda knew what happened to you after I couldn’t find you in the real world, but Calli never gave a proper explanation. You’re a phoenix, how the hell did you die?”
“Oh, that!” Kiara lets go of the two. “Well after Ina and Amelia disappeared, Calli lost her human body, and you stopped communicating with me...”
“I feel we both needed some time alone...” Gura defended sheepishly.
“Hmm. Well, I gave up Hololive and just flew around the world, trying to find something to occupy myself. Turns out, I wasn’t thinking well and died a couple stupid ways. Getting run over, hit by a plane, mauled by bears, tripped into a volcano...” Kiara sweatdrops.
“Geez, kinda morbid, don’t you think?” Amelia winces.
“Hey, we’re all dead. What’s the harm?” Kiara states matter-of-factly. “Well after the 15th or so death, Calli chastises me for dying so many times so quickly. She mentioned that my phoenix soul didn’t have enough time to rematerialize in the real world. She equated it to me losing all my lives, like in a videogame.” Kiara chuckles to herself. “I was kinda sad to leave Calli, but she mentioned I could keep Ina company until you two showed up! Plus she gave me a hug right before she reaped me! If I knew I’d get a hug after killing myself for realsies, I would’ve done it a long time ago!”
“Jesus, Kiara. Care a little more about your mortality, please?” A 5th voice appears behind the group, surprising all four of them.
“CALLI???”
“Hey guys. Sorry I had to be last to the party.” Calli apologizes. She’s in casual attire: no tiara, no jacket, no familiar scythe on her back.
“CALLIII!!!” Kiara practically takes down Calli, whom grunts from the impact. “How are you here? I thought reapers couldn’t go to the afterlife? Can I hug you more?”
“First off: No. Get off me, you stupid bird, and I’ll explain everything.” Kiara lets go reluctantly and Calli dusts herself off. “Well, to explain how I’m here: Reapers can’t hold feelings for any of the souls they reap. Ever since I had to reap Ina, my powers have slowly been diminishing since then and have completely disappeared once I reaped you two.” Calli motions towards Amelia and Gura. “Needless to say, you four made quite an impression on me during my career as a part of Hololive.”
“Aww, we love you too, Calli!” Gura exclaims, holding Amelia’s hand harder.
Calli smiles at this. “So I contacted Death Sensei and asked him about a reaper “reaping” themselves. He was surprised, as a reaper has never requested this before. But my request was accepted, on the grounds that I’d lose my powers altogether. I accepted that, and here I am.” Calli finishes her explanation and breaths in slightly. “And now that that’s done: Yes Kiara, you can continue hugging me.” Kiara squeals and latches onto the former reaper again.
“Aww, she’s finally being honest.” Ina remarks, staring at the two happy couples.
“You shut your face.” Calli retorts as she puts an arm around Kiara. “I was kind of worried I wouldn’t be able to find you four, but you didn’t even make it past the entrance.”
All five of them stare at the opposing exit. “Yeah, we were waiting for you guys.” Ina mentions as she stares at the exit. “I wonder what happens now...”
“Well it doesn’t matter.” Gura states. “Now that my wife’s back by my side, she ain’t leaving it!” She pulls Amelia closer, and Amelia pecks her cheek.
“I forgot you two got married...” Calli off-handedly mentions, then stares at the former phoenix still bear-hugging her. “Sounds like a good idea...” She murmurs under her breath.
“You say something, Calli?” Kiara pipes up, having her face inches away from Calli’s.
“You didn’t hear anything, you stupid bird.” Calli pushes Kiara’s face away in a dismissive gesture.
“I hope you two aren’t going to act like this the entire time.” Amelia teases, getting a death glare from Calli. “Almost flirting is going to get boring after a while.”
“Well, no time like the present, right?” Ina chimes in. She grabs Gura’s hand (who in turn is holding Amelia’s) and Calli’s hand (who in turn is still being overwhelmed by Kiara). “Let’s find out together! As a family!”
“Yeah!” The four others exclaim.
“It sure is going to be awkward when we find our actual families.”
“Oh god, don’t make me think of that!”
Amelia, Gura, Calli, Kiara, and Ina never thought about what happens in the afterlife; but they realize now that it doesn’t really matter.
Just as long as they’re a family.
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lepetitmondedeju · 6 years
Text
Lots of time to spend with you
Prompt : Sunday morning in family
Word count : 1 637
Author’s note : This is my entry for @supersoldierslover‘s 3K celebration. Congratulations again Taw :) As always feedback is appreciated and even needed.
Warnings : none
Song of the title : Sunday Morning, Spanky & Our Gang
Masterlist
You are my one and only, and you can wrap your fingers ‘Round my thumb and hold me tight, and you’ll be alright masterlist
Part 1
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Sunday mornings. Days off when none of us have a mission. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, the noisy Tower becomes the most quiet place on Earth. I love them, especially when Bucky is here and not on a mission, what doesn't happen much those last times.
I'm still sleepy when I feel two strong arms wrapping my waist and lips kissing the shell of my ear.
“Doll, are you awake ?”
“No”, I answer, with a tired little voice.
“Yes you are, I know you”, Bucky says, gluing his body to mine, and I can feel his morning boner against my butt.
“What do ya want Barnes ?”
“I think you know. And I think that with the way your body's moving, you want it too”, he responds, a sly grin on his lips.
And he's right, my ass is grinding against his bulge. I whisper a small, 'go on', and he hooks his fingers on the band of my pajamas' pants, before sliding it down my legs with my panties and his boxers in almost the same movement. He starts to position himself, my back still to his chest, his metal arm around my waist, keeping me in place, my right arm hooked behind his head, my hand in his hair and at the moment he's ready to push in, a little voice makes us stop.
“Daddy !!! Daddy !!! Mommy !!! Mommy !!!”
“Your son's awake, that mean no sex for you soldier”, I playfully tell him, turning my head to meet his bright blue eyes.
“Can't he wait that we finished it ?”
“You know we'll not have time to.”
“Please, just fifteen minutes, he can wait for fifteen minutes ?”
“Daddy !!! James hungry !!!”
“Okay, okay, I'm going”, Bucky sighs, pulling up his boxers. “But you'll have to make up to me tonight”, he adds, leaning to kiss my lips before going out of our bedroom to reach our son's one.
“Count on me.”
I pull my pajamas up my thighs and stretch my muscles.
“Daddy !!! Daddy !!!”, I hear James saying probably when Bucky passes his door.
“Hey pal”, Bucky answers him, “did you sleep well ?”
I hear James babbling an incomprehensible amount of words and Bucky chuckles at this. He's barely eighteen months and except for a few words he manages to properly say, the rest is still a babble. He now walks towards the whole Tower, well walk like more runs sometimes, James is a real bundle of energy, looking everywhere, even where he's not allowed like in Tony's labs, once, we even found him in the gym, he managed to take the elevator and as someone called the lift downstairs and didn't see him pass the doors and ran towards the mats. Everyone in the Tower loves him when I would have tought that he would annoy the mighty heroes living here.
After a few minutes, I hear the stove being turned on and the sound of the whisk in a bowl. I raise from the bed and take a look down at my belly, trying to push away a very sad memory. I feel better now, but I still think of it sometimes. I start to walk my way to the kitchen, where I find my son sitting in his highchair, chocolate all around his little pink mouth and my husband in front of a stove, his back to me, cooking pancakes. I peck James' cheek and then goes to Bucky, wrap my arms around his middle and put down a kiss on his shoulder.
“Look who's here baby !”, he says, partially turning away, passing his left arm around me to pull me to him, grinning at James.
“Mommy !!! Mommy !!!”, he happily shouts, clapping his hands full of the chocolate his father gave him.
“Take a sit sweetheart, breakfast is coming.”
I take the stool next to James, looking at him eating greedily the pancakes Bucky put in his plate. I look outside by the window at the shy sun shining on New York.
“So what are we doing today ?”, I ask Bucky, referring to our Sunday usual program when he's here. “Where are we going ?”
“Well, even if it's fall, it's sunny and it's not that cold, I was thinking that we could go to Coney Island. We can go to the Wonder Wheel, go to the aquarium, walk on the beach and maybe have a picnic there. What do you think ?”, he asks, putting a plate with pancakes in front of me, another one in front of the stool he's gonna sit on, before preparing two mugs of hot cocoa, as he always does on our Sunday mornings.
“That sound good for me. What do you think James, are you ready to discover a place that your dad used to go when he was a kid ?”
James simply clap his hands, giggling softy, his laugh reasoning in the kitchen. Each day I see my son's progress in learning and I still marvel at it. James discovering the Tower, James discovering music, images, animals, other human beings...
After that copious breakfast, I scoop my tiny boy in my arms, looking at his face and hair full of chocolate, his piercing blue eyes, his father's eyes, looking through me.
“Let's give you a bath, and then we will go.”
I pick James up from his chair and go to the bathroom while Bucky is cleaning the dishes. James quietly lets me wash his hair and his little body, giggling when I dry his soft mop of brown hair. I dress him with a little pair of black jeans and a cute little light blue checked shirt. Barely a few seconds later, his father appears dressed the same way, drying his long hair with a towel.
“Did you do it on purpose ?”, he asks, seeing our little boy sitting on the couch in front of some cartoons he likes.
“Would you believe me if I say no ?”
“I don't think so”, he smiles at me.
“I'm gonna take a shower and then, we can leave.”
Something like fifteen minutes later, I go out of the bathroom, wearing a black and grey dress with a pair of black tights. Bucky is sitting in the couch, James on his lap, and they both are glued to the TV screen airing Paw Patrol, a cartoon that James likes. From time to time, he points it and shouts 'dog, dog' and sometimes, I wonder if my baby doesn't feel alone, only surrounded by adults and that maybe, he needs company, a puppy or maybe a kitten.
“You're ready to go, doll ?”, Bucky asks me, looking up from the TV.
“Yep, we can leave whenever you want.”
“So lets put our shoes and coats and let's go”, he smiles at me, lifting James from his legs and standing up.
No sooner said than done, we were outside of the quiet Tower, on our way to the nearest subway station, James in his stroller, his Winter Soldier bear in his arms, looking around him still amazed by the world around him. In the subway, Bucky and I sit hand in hand, James in front of us in his buggy, babbling to his precious and favorite bear.
When we finally reach Coney Island, the weather is still beautiful and the temperatures are as good as in summer. James looks around him again, pointing and screaming at what he sees, making us laugh.
We join the line to the aquarium, waiting for our turn to buy tickets, sorta relieved that no one recognize us and that maybe, we can have a quiet family Sunday, just the three of us. After a little time in his stroller, James starts to growl, wanting to walk, Bucky puts him on the floor, while I'm still pushing the stroller, watching my son trying to pull his father to one of the aquarium, running on his tinny chubby legs. He puts both his hands on the glass, and raises his little head to watch above him the blue water and the lights inside of it, illuminating the different fishes in the tank. I take my phone out of my pocket and take a picture of Bucky, crouching next to James, showing him the animals.
“Look baby, that's a fish, you see, and there is another one, oh and there, there's a turtle. You see.”
James' eyes are wide open, looking at all the colorful fishes, and animals that he didn't know until today.
“Fish, fish !!”, he says, happily showing what he just learned, and clapping like each time he learns something new.
We continue our walk, James walking hand in hand with Bucky or with me, one of us taking pictures of our perfect day away from all the stress the SHIELD or The Avengers are, we are just a family, a happy random family on that day, seeing the shows, the lives from different places, James falling in love with otters and penguins, at whom he shouted 'birds'. Before we leave, we pass by the shop, James looks at everything, and we buy him an adorable t-shirt with a baby penguin printed on and a soft otter plush toy.
“Mama, James hungry”, he says, very serious, turning his little face to me.
“We're going to eat little man, don't you worry”, his father answers him.
We reach the outside of the aquarium, walking towards the food's cabins, choosing food from different ones, buying some fresh drinks, and then, we go to the beach, unfold a blanket and the three of us settle on it, looking at the sea and eating the delicious food we bought. If this is happiness, I want it forever.
Tag list : @captain-amelia-bradley, @feelmyroarrrr, @amrita31199 , @allandnothing90, @hellomissmabel, @mrs-lamezec, @totheendofthelinepal, @howlingbarnes, @belleetlabeast, @panickedpandaposts, @theashhole, @sebbytrash, @crazychick010, @bionic-buckyb, @callamint, @just-another-fangirl777, @lokid-by-winters-child, @flammy-whater, @learisa, @hello-sweetie-get-the-salt, @mokacoconut, @marvelbase001, @thefiregypsy, @iamthemaskhewears, @bellejeunefillesansmerci, @theycallmebucky, @buckysberrie, @amypond14, @youandb, @you-and-bucky, @fangirlwithasweettooth, @kiwi71281, @tequilavet,  @iamwarrenspeace, @melconnor2007, @emilyevanston, @buckyappreciationsociety, @mrshopkirk,  @poealsobucky, @gondorgirl01, @jurassicbarnes, @hollycornish, @summerbummer2001, @abovethesmokestacks, @arawynn, @sebbys-girl, @captainrogerss, @caplansteverogers
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hockyeah · 7 years
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Mind Candy (6)
Chapter: 6/?
Ship: Marliza
Summary: Of all the things Maria wasn’t doing, bribing her misbehaving child with candy just to talk to her incredibly attractive teacher was very high on that list. Definitely.
Word Count: 2807
Warnings: N/A
_____________
“For future reference ma’am, it is encouraged to at least call before showing up to eat lunch with your child.” the secretary smiled painfully as she peeled a bright green visitor sticker from a large roll of glossy paper. She was the same one that had signed Susie in late earlier that same week. She seemed, if possible, even more tired than before, and Maria couldn’t tell if she was tired of Maria or of her job in general. She made an extra point to be very polite and kind to her, as Maria would hate having her job.
“My bad, I’m so sorry.” she apologized profusely, and the secretary gave her another tight-lipped smile, handing her the sticker. Maria shifted the packages in her arm to place the adhesive on her blouse and opened the door to the school. The big metal hinges gave a slight squeak as they moved open. Maria waved goodbye to the secretary before stepping out and letting the door close behind her with a dull thud. She had stopped at a coffee shop on the way to the school, picking up two coffees, a juice box and two bagels with cream cheese. Maria had made the last minute decision to pick up a coffee for Eliza, but she had run into the problem of not knowing how Eliza drank her coffee, so she had simply gotten her one with cream and a touch of sugar, the same way Maria drank hers. She held the brown bag of food to chest chest as she traveled down the long colorful hallway leading to the cafeteria.
A horde of third graders shuffled past her, moving in a disjointed line. Maria paused as she noticed a pigtailed girl in a striped shirt, recognizing her as Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron Burr, an old family friend. The sight of Theodosia also reminded Maria that Susie was staying the night at the Burr’s tonight, meaning that she wouldn’t have to worry about cooking a real dinner. Theodosia noticed Maria standing to the side smiled toothily, waving at Maria silently. Maria waved back, smiling at the girl, grateful for the unspoken reminder. She brushed past the end of the line, finally reaching the cafeteria.
She spotted Susie’s class easily seated towards the center of the cafeteria. Of the many teachers sat at the teacher’s table in the middle of the cafeteria, Eliza was not one of them. She scanned the tables, wondering where she was. She spotted the distinctive pencil stuck out of the back of her updo seated at a table with the rest of class. Maria thought it was sweet that she sat with her students, and, she assumed, talked to them at the table. It truly showed that Eliza cared about her students.
She maneuvered through the countless kindergartners eating lunch, heading towards Susie’s table. Susie looked up from her conversation and frantically waved at Maria, who smiled as she finally reached the table.
“May I join you lovely ladies?” she asked, setting down the bag of food.
“Mommy!” Susie exclaimed, springing up and grabbing the bag, looking through it and pulling out the juice box, both bagels, and a single container of cream cheese. She pulled the paper off one of them, examining the everything bagel with a look of discomfort. “I don’t like this kind.” She admitted, studying the bagel intensely. Maria laughed.
“That’s why I bought it for me. The other one is a plain one, just the way you like it.” she explained. Eliza looked over and caught Maria’s eye, smiling with the barest hint of what just had to be a blush.
“Oh.” Susie replied, setting down the bagel and grabbing the other one. “Thank you!” She cheerily ended, taking out a plastic knife and spooning out obscene gobs of cream cheese onto the bread.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” Maria concluded, sitting down beside her daughter and across from Eliza. She looked up at the incredibly attractive woman and smiled before remembering the other coffee she had bought just before.
“Oh, and Eli- Miss Schuyler, I brought you a coffee.” Maria stumbled out, her heart hammering in her chest for no reason other than being in the presence of her. She held out the cup, and Eliza raised her eyebrows as she reached out and wrapped her hand about the cup. Their fingers touched, and Maria’s face flushed as she quickly dropped her fingers, letting the cup slide effortlessly into Eliza’s perfectly manicured hand. Eliza let soft a soft breathy giggle and turned back to her students.
“Did you see the turtle yesterday?” One girl with impressively long blonde hair and bright blue eyes exclaimed. Another girl with tanned skin and short slick straight dark brown hair gasped excitedly. Maria tuned into the conversation as she carefully spread cream cheese over her bagel.
“He said her name was Frances!” she added, and then, after another questioning pause, “What kind of name is Frances?” Eliza let out a small titter as Maria looked at the girls, confused.
“What in the world are you guys talking about?” she asked. Susie laughed.
“There’s a new art teacher and his name is Mr. Laurens and he has a turtle in his classroom!” she spewed off all the information in one long sentence, not stopping to take a breath. The other two girls nodded vigorously, Susie having explained everything as clearly as them deemed fit.
“It had a pretty green shell and he said that we might could hold it one day.” the blonde girl continued. Maria looked at her and smiled. Her face was unfamiliar, and Maria didn’t want to keep identifying her by her hair color.
“What’s your name?” she asked the girl, then facing the entire table, “Actually,” Maria corrected herself, “what’s everyone’s name?”
“My name’s Amelia.” the blonde smiled, her long hair flopping off her shoulder and trailing to an impressive length on her back. She was poking at a thermos of chicken noodle soup with a half eaten roll laying on top of a napkin on the table.
“I’m Angelica.” she girl with short dark brown hair spoke next, her face speckled with light freckles. Her bangs were hastily clipped back with a pink clip, and she was takings bites of a grilled cheese sandwich off of a lunch tray, taking intermissive sips of her strawberry milk.
“My name is Abigail and people try to spell it with a a-l-e but it’s actually a-i-l.” A quiet and portly girl with thick glasses hunched over her school-prepared chef salad and large book spoke up quickly before returning to her reading.
“You know me, silly.” Susie said playfully, tilting her head and looking up at her mother. Eliza laughed again at Susie’s antics.
“Of course I do, Susan Michelle Reynolds.” she said back equally playfully. Susie’s eyes widened as she sat back up at her seat, not expecting the use of her full name. The gaggle of girls laughed and continued their conversation. Maria tried to follow along, but her focus kept wandering back to Eliza who sat, engaged in conversation with the girls. They talked and Eliza spoke with the same sparkle in her eye that Maria loved to see and wanted to lose herself in.
“Oh, my!” Eliza exclaimed, glancing back at the clock. She stood, sliding her tupperware back into her floral bag. “We have to get going, don’t want any of you to be late for recess.” she wiggled her eyebrows and spoke with the air of a storyteller moving to the next chapter in a book. She walked to the end of the other table, dismissing the group of boys who sat at it. She walked back to Maria’s table and did the same, asking the girls to go throw away their garbage. The lunch had seldom lasted thirty minutes, and Maria was left to wonder what else could she do with her time.
“Thank you for eating with me, Mommy” Susie said, wrapping her arms around her mother before hopping up and following her class. Maria stood, ready to collect her garbage and leave, but Eliza looped back around from the garbage can with a washcloth in hand, wiping down the two tables before turning back to Maria, who was planning to make her exit.
“Stay? I’d love to talk for a little longer without all the girls.” She asked quietly, balling the cloth back up in her hand. Maria felt the blush creep up her neck and spread plainly across her cheeks.
“O-Of course.” she stuttered out, knowing that she was very clearly bright red. Eliza smiled at her before going and speaking with another teacher and placing the dishcloth back in the kitchen. The other teacher nodded her head, lining her class up alongside Eliza’s. Eliza walked back over past Maria, beckoning her to follow her out the big double doors. Maria shakily took a step towards the door, turning back to wave to Susie and followed Eliza, taking step after tentative step until she had reached the door.
She walked down the hallway with Eliza, her heart fluttering wildly, Eliza taking intermissive sips of her coffee and shifting the flowered bag up into her arm. She was wearing a simple white blouse with a small and subtle blue pin on the right of her collar. Her pants, however, were neither simple nor subtle, instead featuring hundreds of small multicolored birds that flowed together into a beautiful pattern of blue, purple, and red birds. Frankly, Maria loved it. She tuned back into real life just as they passed the teacher workroom and Eliza abruptly stopped. Maria stumbled to a halt.
“What?” she asked. Maria saw no reason to stop, and craned her neck to look inside the teacher’s lounge. A tall man with long curly hair stood at the refrigerator, looking for something.
“I think the new art teacher’s in there, and I haven’t introduced myself yet.” She explained, looking at the man. Maria’s mouth made an O shape, and she wondered if she would go in follow Eliza or just wait awkwardly outside. Eliza entered the door, but looked back at Maria.
“You can come with. We’ll just say you’re here for a parent-teacher meeting which, until recently, would probably be true.” Eliza giggled and continued walking. Maria followed, walking past a hallway of mailboxes and into the small teacher’s lounge. The man had stood up and shut the refrigerator, turning to face Eliza. He jumped back slightly at the sight of her, clutching a tupperware to his chest.
“You scared me.” he laughed. Maria heard his laugh and suddenly felt like she knew he would be a good person. It was odd, completely irrational, but she somehow knew it to be true. He looked at Eliza questioningly and held out a hand.
“I’m John Laurens,” he said, shaking Eliza’s hand cordially, “the new art teacher.” He smiled, his face and arms coated with a thick layer of freckles. He was wearing a soft green short-sleeved button up and well fitting khakis, his long dark curls pulled up into a ponytail, revealing a shaved undercut. Eliza smiled, releasing the grip on his hand.
“I’m Eliza Schuyler, kindergarten teacher. You had my class yesterday during specials.” She replied. He nodded, laughing.
“Oh yeah! They were more interested in the turtle than me!” he laughed. Eliza smiled. Maria let out a small chortle as well, and Mr. Laurens turned to face her unexpectedly, holding out his hand again. “And you?” he asked.
“Maria Lewis, parent of Susie Reynolds.” she warmly smiled, shaking his warm hand. She blushed, realizing he may still think that she worked at the school, and rushed to clarify,
“I’m here for a parent-teacher meeting with Eli- Ms. Schuyler.” she stumbled over her name, unsure how to address Eliza properly. He smiled and nodded, shifting his tupperware under his arm.
“Well, I’ll leave you ladies to it. I have a class in-” he looks down at a worn leather watch or his wrist, “Oh, shoot. Fifteen minutes.” his brow contorted. He walked briskly, exiting the room, and turned back to wave at the pair. Eliza gave a short wave and Maria followed suit. Eliza looked over at her and began exiting the room itself, remarking,
“He was nice. C’mon, let’s go.” Maria nodded and followed, entering the large hallway that divided the hallways of the school. At one end, the cafeteria sat, and at the other, the main lobby of the school. Maria had never really taken a good look at the school itself, always rushing to get Susie were she needed to be without consequence.
They reached Eliza’s room, Maria stopping to study the number art outside of classroom, she turned back to Eliza, absentmindedly reaching for the doorknob, to discover the door was already open, her hand falling into the open air. Her gaze traveled to the open door, Eliza holding it open, grinning, her cheeks bright red.
“Ladies first?” she asked playfully. Maria blushed a shade deeper than before, doing a mock-curtsy and entering the classroom. Eliza followed, shutting the door behind them and going to sit at her desk. Maria spotted the only other adult-sized chair in the classroom and pulled it over, facing Eliza.
“I like your pants, they look good on y-you.” Maria stuttered, immediately regretting saying anything, for her speech wasn’t as eloquent as it could be, as she was sat across from a woman who had seemingly flipped her entire world up down.
“Smooth as always aren’t you, Lewis.” Eliza raised her eyebrows, her glowing cheeks shining through her sarcastic tone. Maria loved the way she blushed. A simple elegant pink spreading her her cheeks and sharp cheekbones. Maria could feel her ugly, blotchy, unapologetic red blush taking permanent residence in her face.
“Smooth as the yogurt you managed to get in your hair.” Maria responded, playing back into her tone. Eliza sat up abruptly, a hand going to her dark hair and and trying to feel for it.
“Seriously?” she exclaimed, frantically pulling her hair out of it’s loose bun. Maria laughed and nodded.
“Yes. Now come here, I’ll get it out for you.” Maria leaned over the desk as Eliza tilted her head, revealing the small dot of yogurt that had lodged itself on the side of her head. Maria picked it out, letting it fall to the ground, and then realized the closeness between her and Eliza, the proximity nearing one of more than just casual closeness. She took these few seconds to study Eliza’s beautiful face, her milk white skin and dark eyes, her sharp cheekbones with the more prominent blush resting lightly on top of them. Maria realized how much time she had spent staring and quickly pulled away, sitting back in her chair.
“Did you get it?” Eliza asked, touching the spot of her that Maria had pulled yogurt out of only moments ago. She, too, was flustered from the close proximity and she leaned back in her chair, let out a long held breath. Maria nodded, laughing quietly. Eliza looked at her, her face bright red joining in on her laughter.
“I can’t believe I introduced myself to the new teacher with yogurt  in my hair!” Her words dissolved into laughter, placing her head in her gentle and elegant hands. Maria giggled alongside her, her pulse racing. Eliza took a large breath sitting up in her chair before letting out another loud guffaw. Maria didn’t know if it was the anxiety of the situation, or the mild hilarity of the event taking root in the nervous energy of the room. Her sides hurt from laughing, and Eliza finally looked up from her hands, straightening her clothing and twisting her yogurt-free hair back up into a bun.
“You missed a piece,” Maria said, leaning over the desk and tucking a few stray strands of hair behind Eliza’s ear. She hesitated momentarily, her gaze lingering on the cheeks of the beautiful woman sat across from her, contemplating the probability of kissing Eliza on the cheek. It would just be a simple peck, meaning nothing. Her reasoning took place in the blink of an eye before Maria felt her lips being pressed against Eliza’s cheek, brief and unexpected.
Eliza’s mouth formed an “o” shape while the retreating blush resurged on her cheeks. She moved her hand to her cheek, her fingers gracefully running over the spot where Maria’s lips lay only seconds before. A wide grin split over her features and she locked eyes with Maria, her cheeks glowing.
“What an interesting way to fix my hair.” She remarked, raising her eyebrows. Maria grinned sheepishly, shrugging. Eliza spoke again,
“Of course, I wouldn’t mind if you decided to fix my hair more often.” Maria’s eyes widened.
Was Eliza flirting with her?
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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years
Text
Bright Wall/Dark Room April 2018: "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower: On 'A Little Princess' and 'The Secret Garden'" by Corbin Dewitt
We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the latest edition of the online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room. The theme for their April issue is "Magical Realism," and in addition to Corbin Dewitt's essay, it also includes new pieces on "The Double Life of Veronique," "3 Women," "Her," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Wings of Desire," "Streets of Fire," "Stranger than Fiction," "Jane," "A Life Less Ordinary," "Portrait of Jennie" and more. 
You can read previous excerpts from the magazine by clicking here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or purchase a copy of their current issue, click here.
It begins in green, deep green, accompanied by a low persistent hum that seems to rumble from within, as though heard from inside the resonant chamber of a huge stringed instrument. A golden-yellow script, seriffed with arabesques and meant to appear exotic though the words it spells are Warner Brothers presents, fades in, fades out. Then the voice—a girl's, American, soft but inflected with the canny singsong of storytelling: "A very long time ago, there lived a beautiful princess...in a mystical land...known as...India." Sitar springs up, shimmers. The title, golden-arabesqued too, blooms gold against the green.
Cut to two years earlier: A different girl, in a different film, leads a boy into a walled garden to ask him if it is dead. The boy and the girl snap their way through a tangle of branches, dull brown-grey. He takes a knife from his pocket, slits the bark, peels it back to show her what’s beneath. “This part’s wick,” he says, the music of his Yorkshire accent floating through the register just above adolescent voice-crack tenor. “See the green?”
It’s there—barely there, but there, a pale sliver amid the nothing-colored sticks and the dry grass and the dark russet knit of the girl’s hat. “Wick. What’s wick?” she asks.
“Alive,” he answers, with a shrug and a little smile. “Alive, as you or me.”
*
The girls are Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox: Only children, wealthy, white, 11-ish, born and raised in India under British colonial rule, and, long before appearing in the scenes detailed above, the heroines of novels by British-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett. The films are A Little Princess and The Secret Garden. Released in 1995 and 1993, respectively, neither holds the distinction of first adaptation. It would be difficult to draw any simple connection between the original author of the stories and the two directors tasked with reimagining them a century after publication (although, if inclined to use magic, which can collapse any difficult task into a simple one, all three—like me—were born with sun in Sagittarius). 
One, Alfonso Cuarón, a young man from Mexico City, had only a single feature-length directorial credit to his name—1991’s Sólo con tu pareja, decidedly not a children’s movie—when he found himself facing the opportunity to make A Little Princess. Initially indifferent, he sat down to read the script and, as he told The LA Times later, it was "like it was vibrating. Like it was glowing. I was at Page 17 and I called my agent, and said, 'I've got to do this movie.'”
The other, Agnieszka Holland, read and reread The Secret Garden as a girl growing up in Warsaw during the final years of Stalin’s rule. Already well established as an auteur focused on overtly political stories, like 1990’s Oscar-nominated Europa Europa, Holland wanted a chance to reimagine the book that spellbound her as a child. “'I was very tired of the big subjects—the dead, the war, the Jews, the communists,” she told the UK Independent in 1993. “I decided I wanted to spend one year in The Secret Garden.”
*
Thus the stories begin. Sara—cherished, imaginative, and preternaturally serene—must leave India for an all-girls boarding school in New York, as her beloved father Captain Crewe has been called away to serve in the Great War. Mary—dour, stiff, unloved, and unloving—survives the earthquake that kills both her negligent parents, and sails to England to live with her next-of-kin at a gloomy manor called Misselthwaite. 
Sara of Burnett’s book is black-haired, green-eyed, unpretty in the parlance of children’s books, i.e. secretly more pretty than girls whose prettiness smacks of something standard-issue. In Cuarón's film, she’s played by Liesel Matthews, real-life heiress to the multi-million dollar Hyatt Hotels fortune, who more closely matches Burnett’s original description of Sara’s doll Emily: "naturally curling golden-brown hair, which hung like a mantle about her, and her eyes...a deep, clear, gray-blue, with soft, thick eyelashes which were real eyelashes and not mere painted lines.” As Mary, Kate Maberly manages the slow softening from rude, miserable orphan émigré to cautiously joyful friend with such grace and aplomb that she whirls all the way around the circular gauge of visible child-actor technique to arrive back at the beginning, where you dare to wonder whether she's acting at all. 
Both girls were industry unknowns prior to casting, and, perhaps more critically, both faded from the public eye as swiftly as they entered it, choosing to decline passage into the world of career acting and thus into a different kind of magic tale, that of the child star. Their present-day anonymity relieves their performances from the burden of later celebrity—no need to watch for the sparkle of fame earned, then seized or squandered. You can just pay attention to what they're doing, and to the worlds they move through, alongside them.
The worlds are green, and they mirror their girls.  Like Sara, A Little Princess carries its carefully considered, more-than-real palette and its sympathetic magic as fixed certainties, so self-assured that neither seems a conceit. Cuarón’s team constructed an old-fashioned soundstage universe, stretched its proportions to mimic the vaulted hugeness of the world as seen in childhood, and colored it all in green. The effect looks less Emerald City and more sepia-toned photograph, copper softness patinated into subtle shades of moss and chartreuse. In the film’s production notes, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki explained that "green is the only color in the spectrum that can be lit in either warm or cold tones; that kind of flexibility gives us a range of emotion to work with on every set." As such, the look of the film is artificial, but not in the least cartoonish—the olivine sateen and curlicue embroidery of the girls’ school uniforms glow against a backdrop of browns and tans and creams, grounded by the solidity of “real black stockings and real black boots,” as costume designer Judianna Makovsky put it. 
Like Mary, The Secret Garden is a film that greens by degrees—as the murk of English winter thaws to spring, she thaws too, and grows brighter alongside a dappled infinity of leaves and flowers and fields. The visuals are looser, less constructed, more naturalistic; I am reminded of Hayao Miyazaki, another master maker of magical childhoods, who, in an interview with Roger Ebert, explains the crucial function of silence in film. “If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness,” Miyazaki says. “But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension.” In this fashion, scenes of strict realism become a kind of magic. Whole minutes pass devoted to whispering curtains of ivy, candlelight and shadow yawning across walls, the snap and flutter of birds’ wings. “The house seemed dead, like a spell had been cast upon it,” Mary narrates in voice-over as she wanders the halls of Misselthwaite, looking like a ghost herself in a white nightgown and rubber boots, but the house appears to the viewer as a labyrinth of lively faces, watchful tapestries and polished-wood gargoyles, and its halls echo with low moans issued from an unseen source. Every frame seems to breathe, recalling the era of childhood when any place or object or creature stood ready to reveal itself as a secret living being—that is to say, wick, alive as you or me.
*
One gets the sense that every moment in these films, green or otherwise, is wick. Many films for children flatten the world, rather than deepen it, such that adults find them unwatchable; these two stories honor the truth that adults and children live in the same world and simply see it differently. Take out a knife, peel back the bark, and you’ll find all sorts of forces flowing underneath.
Death is here; a bellowing elephant, a popped black balloon, a creaking wooden swing, a soldier’s limp hand smeared with mud. Sex is present too, though held at a distance: the aura of mystery that cloaks Mary’s dead mother and her secret twin; the drip of silliness that ripples the smooth flow of storybook romance pursued by Miss Amelia, the boarding school’s blowsy and soft-hearted second-in-command, who lusts after the milkman—when he comes to the kitchen door she pants, trembles, extends the rack of empty bottles like a hand to be kissed as the girls in her charge look on and laugh. The boys of Misselthwaite aren’t milkmen yet, but they’re on the way: Colin Craven, Mary’s haughty, ailing cousin and the source of the manor’s ghostly wails, has skin like a sweating glass of skim milk held up to sunlight, bluish-translucent and unwholesome; Dickon, a young Andrew Knott plush with dimples, is the cream off the top of the pail, purest product of hot-breathed animals and the clean grass of the Yorkshire countryside, rich in the sense of nourishment rather than capital. (A friend and I once theorized that every man in the world can be typed as either a Colin or a Dickon, and if you imprinted on either as a child you’re fated to find something of their spirit in anyone who turns your head afterwards. Guess which one I liked.) Holland’s adaptation treats their relationships with Mary with the requisite subtlety and intensity: in late-childhood, almost-adolescent friendship, sometimes grabbing someone’s hand is nothing, but sometimes a force of mutual curiosity shivers in the air like a wall of ivy waiting to reveal hitherto unseen doors.
When conflict enters, it is not as a supernaturally powerful nemesis to be battled but as garden-variety human cruelty and indifference, much harder to weed out. The closest thing these movies have to villains are Miss Minchin, school headmistress, and Mrs. Medlock, Misselthwaite’s head housekeeper—played with waspish grace and iron-grey pompadours by grande dames Eleanor Bron and Maggie Smith, respectively. As front-line enforcers of socioeconomic boundaries, Minchin and Medlock snip at their charges as though they were privet hedges, pruning the curiosity and openheartedness of the children in their care towards more callous and correct adult behaviors. 
Moments after Sara arrives at school, she is chastised for trying to befriend Becky, the school’s scullery maid. Cuarón cast Vanessa Lee Chester, a black actress, in this role, bringing new dimensions of particularly American tension into the moment when Sara ventures upstairs to say hello and startles Becky, who drops the ice she’d been using to soothe her throbbing feet and says, “Begging your pardon but we’ll both be in trouble if you stay.” Through earlier scenes of Sara’s life in India, we are meant to understand that she’s accustomed—encouraged, even—to socialize across divisions of class and race, giving her a veneer of righteous empathy that obscures details like, for example, what she and her father are doing in India to begin with. Miss Minchin icily tolerates Sara’s whimsical disregard for such social conventions insofar as her father’s checks keep clearing; when a black-suited solicitor appears to explain that Captain Crewe has been killed in action, she slams down the piano lid mid-ragtime razzle-dazzle, sends Sara’s schoolmates scurrying, and explains to the stunned girl that she is now a penniless orphan who must work for her keep alongside Becky. Exiled to the servant’s quarters up in the attic, Sara finds a piece of broken chalk and draws herself a clumsy circle of protection, then curls up on the floorboards and sobs for her father. No one answers. The camera lingers on the room’s cavernous darkness, the pouring rain outside, as if demonstrating the universe’s indifference. It’s a moment that harkens back to Minchin’s earlier jibe about Sara’s blithe insistence on making up happy endings for every story: “I suppose that’s rather easy for a child who has everything.”   
Mary, on the other hand, demonstrates a calcified certainty in her place in the world, standing stiff and stony-faced in the opening sequence as two unnamed Indian women dress her in lilac linen. She tries this same pose on Mrs. Medlock, only to become hotly embarrassed at the latter’s expression of incredulity that she cannot dress herself. "My Ayah dressed me," she says, as though such an arrangement were a law of nature. Unimpressed, Medlock sets her back with a curt reminder that she won’t be dressed by servants now that she’s come to England—“we’ve far too much work already,” she says. 
That work, of course, comes from maintenance of the vast estate in addition to caring for the bedridden Colin, whose own imperious commands and temper tantrums keep the staff at their wits’ end. Behind all Medlock’s fussiness and anxiety, and all Colin’s attention-seeking morbidity, lies the specter of Colin’s father, Lord Archibald Craven: a remote Byronic shadow whose grief-stricken indifference casts a pall of misery over the house. When Mary finally sees him to ask, circuitously, permission to revive his dead wife’s garden, he waves her away with a spindly aristocratic hand. “Take your bit of earth,” he says to her, “but don’t be foolish enough to expect anything to come of it.”
To my adult eye, these films have become stories about class, race, colonialism, patriarchy. That Sara and Mary are wealthy and white is integral to understanding their stories; the upending of their previously stable social hierarchies is what drives their narratives forward. The lives of the laborers necessary to create Sara’s world seem indistinguishable from her own until she’s forced to inhabit their circumstances herself; Mary, on the other hand, learns to see her servants as people in the country where they’re white.  Meanwhile, their lives hinge on the whim and resources of the men in their worlds. Cuarón and Holland both lay out moment after moment depicting the decidedly unmagical forces underpinning the worlds onscreen and off—so much for Holland’s exhaustion with “the big subjects.”
*
The other major force in these worlds is magic. Unlike the universe of, say, Harry Potter—where magic is linked to questions of heritage and education, and functions as an element or resource over which mastery is encouraged—Frances Hodgson Burnett's worlds posit a magic already present everywhere, in all substances.  As Sara knows and Mary learns, this magic becomes accessible to anyone capable of recognizing that if this immanence is real, they’re already part of it, and not the other way around. 
When magic in these films crosses from implicit to explicit depiction, it’s often accomplished using India as a vehicle. The most striking visuals of A Little Princess appear along with Ram Dass, manservant to the school’s wealthy next-door neighbor. He illuminates the austere green universe of the film with the colors of Sara's remembered India: bright cream, warm orange, glowing gold. Nowhere is this imagery more iconic than in the scene of the saffron yellow breakfast. Sara and Becky, banished to bed after being promised a day of starvation as punishment, fall asleep make-believing a feast and wake to find their barren attic room transfigured into a sunshine-colored dream: billowing curtains of silk, quilted robes, gilded slippers, vases of sunflowers, table laden with gleaming china and silver trays of sausages steaming in the morning light. Ram Dass gives them a wordless nod of acknowledgement from the window next door. This moment is more beautiful to recollect than any of his stilted, vaguely mystical dialogue, or indeed than the moment Sara wiggles her fingers and chants at a cruel classmate in order to cast, in her words, “a little curse I learned from a witch back in India.” Mary’s India is yellow-orange too, dim and dull like the flickering firelight in the scene where she and her companions cast a spell around a bonfire to call Colin’s father back from a trip abroad. They, too, wiggle and chant, playacting at exotic witchery. 
Such inclusions of India, in myth and fragment and stereotype, can accurately be summed up with the term cultural appropriation, but to do so risks oversimplifying.  To the contemporary eye, it’s clear the thorny questions of identity—of who tells which stories, and how, and why—had not yet grown to flourish in public discourse as they do today. That the most cringe-inducing moments happen where the films depart from their original source material only tangles matters further—for example, Cuarón’s choice to include a portion of the Ramayana as a frame story recounted by Sara becomes a choice to paint Liam Cunningham, the Irish actor who plays her father, a lurid indigo so he can double as Prince Rama. If the film were to be released now, it’s easy to imagine the discursive spiral weighing the positives of representation and attempted inclusivity against the clumsy overreach and exotification present in the final product. Then, of course, there are the source texts themselves, written by a white woman who’d never even been to India. The stickier truth is that both Mary and Sara are canonically from there—as white colonizers, yes, beneficiaries of systemic exploitation and cruelty, but also raised by women whose stories shaped them, seeped into them, regardless. As Mary and Colin put together a puzzle depicting a map of the world during a rainy day, she tells him that when it rained in India, her Ayah used to tell her stories—like the one of a boy who lived with cows but kept a whole universe down his throat. Incredulous, Colin presses her to explain how such a thing could be possible. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says.
“It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s the idea of it,” she counters.
“It’s so stupid,” he says, tone tightening into his customary derision.
“No it’s not,” she says, her tone tightening, too. “It’s magic.”
“You can’t really be that stupid,” he says.
“I am not stupid,” she says, shoving the puzzle back at him, scattering the pieces of their unfinished picture of the world. “You just don’t understand. You don’t want to.”
*
What is green is new, is inexperienced. I admit that my heart belonged to these movies before I was old enough to grasp the flat facts of them, let alone the world around them: A Little Princess is the first movie I ever saw in a theater, so in a way it is the movie, bound forever to the memory of what going to the movies means, a memory less of the mind and more of the muscle, rooted in that breathless moment when the lights go dark and the throat tightens at the first strains of music. I remember these films with my whole body. 
When my mother tells the story of bringing me and my best friend to see the film together, the standout anecdote comes at the movie’s denouement: a harrowing, high-gothic escape across dizzying heights between two top-floor garret windows, where, lashed by sheets of rain, Sara lowers a slippery plank out of the attic to flee Miss Minchin and a cadre of black-suited police. As Sara's boots slipped and clacked on the shaky board, my friend and I leapt from our seats to cheer her on, crying YOU CAN DO IT! YOU CAN DO IT! and thrusting our hands towards the screen to channel our pure belief. Our words echo back to me in the terse murmurs of Mary and Dickon urging Colin to take his first few unsupported steps across the garden. You can do it, they say, you can do it, low and firm and certain, like a spell. Sara's board tumbles into thin air, but her hand snaps up to grip the wet concrete sill and she hauls herself bodily out of free-fall; Colin, half-crouched and cautious, stumbles across the picnic blanket and into Dickon's wide waiting arms and a lamb bleats and the three children shout with joy; at 3 years old, I sobbed in the dark cinema aisles with fear and wonder and relief. Now, having watched and rewatched, I am amazed to find that something in me still lights up every time: green, of course, meaning go go go.
*
It is not about what happens, in the end. Many fairytales end in death and ruin but in Hollywood a fairytale ending means happily ever after. At one point, jaded, I convinced myself that the impossible endings to these films—Captain Crewe back from the dead; Colin and his father healed, physically and spiritually—invalidated their beginnings, their beauties. In my reality, any promise of salvation feels unrealistic if it wears the shape of a father; beyond that, there’s the bitter certainty that thinking beyond the confines of the story necessitates remembering the joyous resolutions won’t last. No magic can erase the conflicts and forces that will ultimately tear their protagonists out of the world of childhood magic and into an uglier world of adult realism. 
It’s this last truth that drives the stories towards their conclusions—a fear that the adults in the story will behave in accordance with this knowledge and fail to see the magic, fail to see how a universe could fit in a human throat, fail, in other words, at empathy. What would a realist say? Take your bit of earth, but don’t expect anything to come of it. 
Or, perhaps, as a derisive Miss Minchin tells Sara: “It's time you learn, Sara Crewe, that real life has nothing to do with your little fantasy games. It's a cruel, nasty world out there and it's our duty to make the best of it—not to indulge in ridiculous dreams, but to be productive and useful!”
Sara acknowledges she understands this. But as Miss Minchin turns to go, satisfied at having instilled the lesson at last, Sara says, quietly: “But I don't believe in it.”
“Don't tell me you still fancy yourself a princess!” Minchin says, face twisting into a mask of incredulous fury. “Good god, child, look around you!”
“I am a princess,” Sara says, stepping forward. “All girls are! Even if they live in tiny old attics, even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young, they're still princesses—all of us!”
I have never once seen any woman get to the end of this scene dry-eyed—including, actually, Miss Minchin, who slams the attic door and, by the light of an iron candelabra, wipes angrily at her wet cheeks. Everything about the speech is too corny, too dramatic, too ridiculous and yet—and yet. To hear in tones of clear conviction that your circumstances do nothing to diminish your worth does not feel ridiculous at all. 
Roger Ebert, reviewing The Secret Garden, said "watching it is like entering for a time into a closed world where one's destiny may be discovered." Any fairytale is like this: Suspend your disbelief as you listen to what you know cannot be real, then emerge transformed. You can hear "all girls are princesses" and understand its meaning as a series of beautiful surfaces, thinking yes, each of us deserves the status, the hair-bows, the yards and yards of yellow silk, the attention, the accolades, the father-protector, the huge bedroom with carved sandalwood doors flung wide to the lush and sprawling estate in India, built with money and security that has materialized from means and processes and dull details with which we need not concern ourselves. This would be, as Miss Minchin says, “to indulge in ridiculous dreams.” 
Or you can hear "all girls are princesses" and then hear what comes after it, an idea that is simpler but in no way easier: that every human person is in possession of an undeniable essential dignity—“even if they dress in rags,” Sara says, “even if they’re not pretty, or smart, or young”—and it is the duty of any person alive in the world to recognize and honor that dignity in every other. When peeling back the bark this way, the moral is less about claiming what one is owed, and more about learning to see not only how a universe could fit down a human throat but how, in fact, it’s already there. There’s a universe inside every human throat. You just have to be willing to understand.
*
The most beautiful scene in either of these two films, in my opinion, is one that occurs halfway through The Secret Garden, as spring comes to Misselthwaite. It’s a time-lapse sequence: roots dig into earth and flowers unfurl into air with visceral, almost flesh-like liveliness. Crocuses, harebells, daffodils, roses—petals split wide, multiply. A monarch butterfly pulls itself from its sticky chrysalis. Light and shadow race over the mauve-brown moors until they flush into sudden, gorgeous green. 
It was this scene I thought of years later when I first encountered Dylan Thomas’ poem: 
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Time, here, seems a destructive force, ready to crush youth into decay, health into sickness, a living body into a corpse at which the worms go. It’s easy, when talking about childhood, to slip into a similar stance—we grow older, familiar spaces shift, simple stories open into complex ones. The passage of those first green moments can feel like a loss. 
But there's a beauty in returning to old places and finding them changed. The rooms of buildings known years ago seem to have shrunk, but the trees outside have gotten taller. It's the beauty of time made visible, tangible—the beauty of finding not only a change in the world around you, but within yourself, too. Each time I watch these movies—though I know them by heart—I live the impossibility of my earliest memories returned in flawless clarity. Some moments have come to feel like too-small rooms, cramped and uncomfortable, but some have burgeoned and bloomed into arrays of beauty I never could’ve imagined when I was a seedling myself. 
These stories insist that the aliveness of the world is irreducible and everywhere, that it moves through everything, and that despite this, it is often invisible to us. Sara, as a storyteller, and Mary, as a gardener, discover ways to bring that aliveness to light. I no longer find redemption in the hermetic promise of happy endings; instead, I see it in the muddled, moving centers, in the gestures and attempts the girls make to channel the magic into something that can be shared, even as their attempts are met with indifference. The process itself is enough. 
A storyteller does not invent, but reinvents, taking familiar elements—dirt, water, light—and transforming them into something new. No magic is bound to occur with raw material; sometimes a mound of mud in the sun is just that. But with the right conditions, and a scratched seed, sometimes something grows. Movie-making, as a form of storytelling, could just as easily be called photosynthesis: images of light, strung together in sequence, blossom into something beyond their beginnings.
A Little Princess is a little princess because, as Sara says, all girls are princesses. The Secret Garden is the secret garden because, as Mary says, if you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden. Their stories, their roses, live beyond and outside them. Thomas’ poem ends at the worm, but worth remembering is what happens after: The worm eats the corpse in the winding sheet (and the poet in turn), excretes rich dirt. The blood and wax of the body, sucked in by silvery roots, sprout back up, twice digested, as a plurality of new green fuses. We die. The story continues without us. Realistically, the perpetual process of change is the only magic there is.
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