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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 9, 2008 19:02:59 GMT -5
Alexander had done a lot of begging in the last twenty four hours. He begged for the rights to this dumpy little house, not that Aunt Illie hadn't practically put a bow on it when he asked. He'd begged cousin Finnie to install some electricity, which she had, but not without dubious reminder of his debt, since she could be solving world crisises or building transformers (or whatever she did in her spare time) instead. And he'd begged his older brother to help him get it halfway presentable before Nellie came, and together, they'd spent several hours scrubbing it roof to floor. Armand advised not even messing with the crypt for now, including keeping Nellie in ignorant bliss.
Alexander suspected Armand only helped because he was anxious to get his little brother out of the house, but maybe not. This was just the kind of irritating thing Armand would do because he was "such a good guy."
Alexander polished the gardening tools, relatively speaking, and went to work on semi-jungle around the cottage. After twenty minutes, he gave up and torched everything, instead putting his efforts to upturning new soil. He and Nellie could go into Dreamer's Hell another day and buy new plants and flowers and whatever else she wanted. He would even pay to have a Candy Apple tree planted right in the Cemetery of Lost Souls if she asked for it.
Simon helped him lug some of the furniture from his room to the cottage. Danny helped because he had nothing better to do, but he turned out to be no help, since his arms kept falling off at the sockets.
Now, at midnight, he stood on the sorta-porch, dismayed. It had to be barely bigger than his room. He hadn't actually considered it, but he'd never lived outside of the lap of luxury. Certainly he played around with things less than cozy, did things far from luxurious, but his home had always been a castle.
He pushed the thoughts from his head (he did way too much thinking lately), and shoved his helmet on his head. He never wore his helmet, but tonight he did, because that's what someone with responsibilities would do.
He sped through the night, the purr of the motor virtually the only interruption of the eerie stillness. He stopped at the bridge he'd told her to meet him at, and cut the engine, waiting, his fingers drumming restlessly on the handlebars.
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 9, 2008 23:17:09 GMT -5
“Alexander?” she whispered, peeking out from underneath the bridge. Really, no one else drove anything motorized in this part of Dreamland, but she felt the extra precautions were worth it. She wore her hair up in a ribbon and her least-pastel dress (which was still painfully Dreamy in tan and cream, with pink floral accents). From the look of her puffy eyes and shiny nose, she had been crying for a good while and only stopped rather recently. “’old on a tic, will ya?”
Her little slippers were coated in mud already, but Nellie apparently didn’t consider it sufficient. She buried one shoe up to the base of the heel in the mud, like she lost it while she was running. She tossed the other one and a bit of muslin from her nightgown into the rushing river, suddenly glad for the recent rain that gave the normally-peaceful river the strength to carry a person, at very least, a shoe, away. Nellie draped her pink hair ribbon across a cattail after dipping it in the mud. She was terribly systematic about the whole thing; apparently she had cried herself out underneath the bridge.
Her duties done, she tossed a small wicker suitcase up onto the riverbank, using the cattails as hand holds to follow it up. “I grabbed a few of me things, I didn’t want ta take too much, on accounta it’d look suspect, roight? Just brought wot was of total umportance.” She brought a few dresses—enough to make it through a week if she really stretched it, her stuffed lamb, her family portrait (safely wrapped up in her bloomers), and, carefully tucked away in her handkerchief, every piece of jewelry she owned. In addition, she snuck into her mother’s dresser and took the necklace she was promised to receive on her wedding day.
“Okay, let’s get outta ‘ere,” Nellie hardly had time to finish her sentence before realization dawned on her. “WAIT!”
She reached down the front of her bodice and withdrew what was apparently a note. She slipped it under a rock on the railing of the bridge. “Okay. Now I’m ready.”
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 10, 2008 0:03:28 GMT -5
With the lack of sunlight, her usual array of colors were dimmed, leaving a strangely depressing grayscale version of Nellie with a shiny nose and eyes. His mouth tightened and he frowned beneath the cover of his helmet visor. A part of him wanted to drag her back home, knock on her door and introduce himself to her father as the guy she should never be allowed to see for her own good.
But he didn't. Or couldn't... or something.
He raised an eyebrow, watching as she stuck the folded piece of paper beneath the rock. "Was that a suicide note?" he asked, and unable to himself, grinned, a soft laugh escaping. He extended the helmet to her. "Safety first."
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 10, 2008 0:48:22 GMT -5
“It wos,” she said nonchalantly as she took the helmet from Alex, and hopped on the bike behind him. Motorcycle-induced apprehension wasn’t the only reason Nellie snuggled so close to Alexander. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Before I started packin’, I asked me mum and dad, real mature-like, wot they’d say if I told ‘em I don’t want t’ get married roight yet. And me dad says, ‘WOT?’” She gave her best impersonation of her father’s voice, “’ow’d you know thatcher gettin’ married?’ and I says, ‘Well, dad, Peter knows already an’ I found out when I went to give ‘im lunch like mum told me to’ and ‘e yells at me, ‘Wots wrong wiff Peter McGreggor, ‘e’s an honest, god-fearin boy, ‘is family ‘as all kinds of money, blahblah, wot’s keepin you from wanting to marry im? You got some boy yer seein, y’ trollop, blahblahblah,’ and I says ‘no, I was just wonderin is all,’ and I go to my room and packed me suitcase right up.” She sighed after telling her mouthful of a story. If she wasn’t so mad, she probably wouldn’t have been able to go through with her plan. In her attempt not to grow up and get married, she had sure done a lot of growing up.
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 10, 2008 1:26:16 GMT -5
Alexander frowned. For living on a farm supposedly full of sunshine and goodness, Mr. Peep was pretty uppity. It made him grateful for the parents he had, who, despite faults, weren't overly judgemental, and certainly didn't force their kids into anything they didn't want.
He wanted to tell her how great Chimera was, about the energy the city always had. The ethereal beauty of the clouds (not many of those in Dreamland) on a full moon, or a "sunset". He wanted to say how serene and enchanting the cemetery was, but in the end, he knew what he thought was home, and beautiful, was not what she thought, so he reached up and squeezed her hand over his stomach. "We'll be okay."
Quickly, before either of them could change their mind, he started the motorcycle and sped off, back to the cemetery. They pulled in front of the crypt, cleverly disguised as a cottage, and Alexander parked the bike to the side of the north wall.
He twisted around to look at Nellie. He paused, some of her hair sticking out through his helmet, her cheeks just a little red from the wind. Cute.
"D'you remember my Aunt Illie? This is where she stayed when she was a fugitive in Chimera."
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 11, 2008 0:04:33 GMT -5
The graveyard?
Nellie was aghast.
She pulled off the helmet and climbed off the motorcycle and tried to absorb as much of her surrounding as possible by opening her eyes really, really wide. If she didn’t look a little ill from the ride over, she certainly did now. She didn’t know what to expect, but it sure wasn’t living next door to Dead People.
The cottage was cute enough, excepting the huge ring of barren soil around it. And the strange lack of windows. And the smell of funeral flowers that permeated the area. And her neighbor, who was six feet under. And the general creepiness of the landscape.
She felt like crying, but she managed to hold it back by giving herself a severe scolding in her head. Beggars can’t be choosers, Eleanor. Surely Alexander went frough alotta trouble t’ set this up for you. Nellie swallowed hard and lingered at the doorway, waiting for Alexander to lead the way. Her surprise was evident when he mentioned the crypt’s former owner. “Wot!? Yer aunt’s so nice. Wot was she in trouble for? Why’d she chose ’ere, of all places?”
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 11, 2008 17:31:10 GMT -5
He sighed at her expression. There really was no lightening up a cemetery, and even if he could, the citizens of Chimera would go on a rampage for destroying the beautiful park.
"It'll look better.... during the day." He couldn't even say 'when the sun comes up', because, the sun didn't surface much around here.
He snorted. "Nicest in the world, Dreams are just so...." He decided against what he'd been about to say. "Well, the old government with the Queen was a little nuts, in my opinion. And I know it seems bad, but we can buy some flowers to put around it. And I'm staying here with you, and am a certified ghostbuster, so you'll be fine."
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 12, 2008 1:00:56 GMT -5
“Dreams is just so wot?” she asked, hands on her hips, in the first instance of real Nellie-ness she had displayed all night. She listened, irritated, as Alexander talked about the former Dream Queen, buying flowers, staying with her, ghosts… Staying with her?!
“Wait, wait. Wot?” She dropped her hands from their spot on their hips in shock, only to return them again. “Wait a second, young man. Y’ can’t juss do that. Wot about yer mum and dad, hm? I mean, sure they’re probably glad t’ get rid of you, yer a horror, but I’m sure they’ll miss you a lot more than anyone could imagine. And yer sister. Wiff the way she’s been actin’ lately, yer just gonna ‘ave her there alone? No one to keep an eye on 'er.”
Nellie concluded her speech with a crinkle of her nose, “So, you can buy me some flowers, butcher not stayin’ wiff me.”
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 12, 2008 1:20:40 GMT -5
Alexander mimicked her pose, hands on his hip and chin set stubbornly.
"Oh yeah?" he asked challengingly. "What about your parents? And your home? I think, Sheep Girl, I might actually care about you more than myself and that means that if I left I'd feel guilty and if you think I'm going to feel guilty just for you, think again."
He had, in a roundabout way, just contradicted himself, but he couldn't imagine leaving her here by herself, especially seeing the horrified (and slightly sick) expression on her face.
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 13, 2008 1:18:13 GMT -5
Nellie watched him for a minute, awestruck. Did he really just say, out loud, that he cared more about her than himself.
Alexander cared more about anything than himself?
It took her a few more seconds to get over the initial shock, but once she did, she was very touched and her initial anger was much subdued. She slipped her hand into his and sighed, “Well, I guess, if y’ put it tha’ way. Yer faml’y ain’t gonna ‘ate me for this now, are they?” She asked, as she indicated for him to open the door to the crypt-turned-cottage.
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 13, 2008 2:04:48 GMT -5
Alexander could understand the shock. He was, after all, great. But Nellie.... Nellie was pretty much perfect.
"Nah," he said with a grin, kissing her forehead. "They'll probably build a shrine to you. Oh, but uh..." He blinked, trying to wrap his head around the foreign concept. "If you.. didn't want me to stay with you, then that's different."
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 13, 2008 2:31:31 GMT -5
“Nononono, thass not wot I was suggestin’.” The pink of her cheeks darkening something fierce, Nellie struggled to find some way to express how she felt. This apprehension-meets-pure-terror-plus-an-undeniable-bit-of-joy feeling that she had? It was completely unfamiliar, she couldn’t even name what it was.
She leaned against the cold marble of the crypt and looked out at the cemetery that stretched nearly endlessly in all directions. What a change of scenery. “I would definitely loike you t’ stay wiff me. Wot, ‘owever, I don’t want is fer you t’ ‘ave t’ change every…no…loik, fer you to ruin yo--…Ugh.” Nellie slumped her shoulders; her already nonexistent grip on eloquence was almost as dead as her new neighbors by now.
“Yes. I want you t’ stay ‘ere wiff me, fanks,” she finished, deciding to give up on trying to explain her trepidation.
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 13, 2008 2:43:19 GMT -5
Yeah, ditto, he thought in response to her rambling.
"Good. Cause I wanted to stay."
Which, also, eluded explanation. It was hard to explain that the worst possible circumstance became better than the best one if she was in it? She was like the undefeatable trump card for his opinion about everything. He wasn't sure if he entirely liked it yet, but it was the way it was.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, everything felt way too... fast-forwardy.
He held out a hand to her, a beckon to follow. "I want to show you some things before we go inside.
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Post by Princess Katie on Sept 13, 2008 22:45:21 GMT -5
“Alright,” Nellie said, taking Alexander’s hand. Anything he wanted to show her would be fine, she wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to see what the inside of the tiny marble building looked like.
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Post by Miss Jack on Sept 13, 2008 23:19:22 GMT -5
Hopefully this was a good idea. He and his brother and sister had found all the good tombs (mostly Genn; Armand was always concerned about "offending the dead"). It made him feel better, but he didn't know if Nellie would see it as a way to lighten the mood, or a morbid, unfunny joke.
He led her down the path, pointing to a chipped tomb that read: Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs From a forty-four. No Les No More.
He grabbed her hand pulled her a few over. "This was always one of Genn's favorites." Julia Newton Died of thin shoes, April 17th, 1839, age 19 years.
He chuckled to himself, remembering a nine year old Genn, looking down in horror at her own shoes, certain she was going to die from the lack of their thickness. "Oh!" he suddenly remembered. "This is my mom's favorite.... or, she made the tomb... something like that..." He pointed to a larger one, calligraphic writing.
Here lies my husbands 1 - 2 - 3 As still as men could ever be. As for the fourth: Praise be to God He still abides above the sod: Abel, Seth and Leidy were the first 3 names and to make things tidy I'll add his - James.
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