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 Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 10:21 am
{part 1}
It was quiet in Leah's apartment.
Sitting on her couch, smoking a cigarette, she drew up her knees to her chest and peered across the room, trying to sneak a look into the kid's bedroom. It was mostly closed, but through the thing crack left open Leah could see a snatch of brown feathers, a gleam of red scales. They were investigating the room, though what they were looking for Leah couldn't quite say. She thought about going in and checking on the girl, but decided not to. The kid would come out in her own time. In the meantime, Leah sat quietly on her couch, smoking cigarettes and wondering how this..this D-Corp place, whatever it really was, had chosen her, and why.
In her room, Harper was putting away books and folding clothing, trying to feel comfortable in her new home. It felt instead as though she was in a motel room, cheap and temporary. The woman who had been tapped to take care of her wasn't exactly swimming in cash, and the apartment was on the small side. Reflecting on memories of another home, Harper sharply shook her head and ignored them. Her dragon looked over at her from his roost on her bed.
"Sorry," she said randomly, sitting down beside him. The dragon laid his head in her lap, and she stroked his coarse mane absently. "Y'know, I've had you so long and I've never really given you a proper name, have I."
The dragon snorted out his nose wryly, making Harper smile and duck her head.
"Alright, alright....how about...Longwei."
The dragon gave her a speculative look, and Harper laughed.
"It's Chinese, don't give me that look."
Longwei gave another snort and craned up his head on his sinuous neck, giving her a rough-tongued lick on the cheek before settling back down to nap. Harper sighed and fell back onto the bed, looking at the popcorn ceiling and thinking about nothing in particular at all.
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Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:44 pm
{part 2}
The walls were thin in the apartment. Harper could hear everything that went on above and below, and on either side. Leah seemed immune to annoyance by the eternal pulsing white noise of life, cooking and trying to clean and occasionally tripping over her cat. She was trying very hard to make Harper feel at home, it was obvious. She had taken to smoking outside when Harper told her the smell of cigarettes was giving her headaches. She ordered out for them both when Harper said she'd grown tired of grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. She'd started locking the cat Buster in the bathroom when Harper told her he and Longwei were fighting.
It still didn't feel like home.
Listening with half an ear to the drama of the family next door and the surprisingly skilled saxophone practice upstairs, Harper was curled up on one corner of the couch and attempting to read. She realized after ten minutes she'd just been staring at the words without making sense of them, and closed the book with a snap. Leah, busily scrubbing at the stovetop and fighting four years of burnt-on grease, started and looked over at the girl.
"Everything okay, Harper?"
The careful kindness in Leah's voice made Harper's heart twinge.
"I'm fine, thank you," she said quietly, picking at the loose spine of the book.
Leah twisted the filthy dishrag in her hands and tossed it into the sink. The kid was impossible to reach. That mask of politeness covered something, and she refused to let anything crack it.
"I was thinking," Leah said mildly, waiting until Harper looked at her before continuing. "Maybe...you and me, we could go out tonight and do something. Maybe go catch a movie? There's a really good theater downtown, best popcorn in the whole city."
"If you like," Harper said, nodding absently. "That sounds fun."
Leah sighed and ran a hand over what little hair she had, mussing it even more than usual as she plopped down beside Harper on the couch.
"I know this probably is pretty hard on you, kiddo," Leah said. "I'm doin' my best, y'know? If there's something you need, you gotta tell me. I want you to be happy here."
Harper looked surprised, hugging her book to her chest like it was a well-loved stuffed animal. Her expression grew shuttered, and silence spiralled out into the room.
Leah sighed. Well, she'd given it a shot. She supposed she'd just wait a couple days and try agai-
"Can you take me up to the roof?"
---
It was early autumn, and the evening held a biting chill already. Leah was bundled up in a well-aged hooded jacket, fingers frozen as she held a cigarette to her lips.
"You sure about this?" she called to Harper.
Harper stood on the lip of the wall, looking down at the street. The apartment building was very tall, and the street was very far below. It had taken a great deal of persuasion to convince Leah to let her do it.
"I'm sure," she called back. Longwei shuffled uneasily beside her, shaking his great heavy head and mane bristling. "Long, c'mon. Don't chicken out on me."
Longwei gave her a silently skeptical look, snuffling as he climbed up onto the wall beside her.
Leah shifted from foot to foot, ignoring the cold and a growing knot of anxiety in her belly. This was stupid. Sure, she had wings, but c'mon she couldn't fly, not really. Right? Right.
"Harp, kiddo, maybe we should do this tomorrow. From a safer height," she said.
Harper looked patiently over her shoulder, expression neutral.
"Let me do it," she said. "I won't fall."
Leah's grumbling reply was all the answer she needed. Harper spread her wings, stiff primary feathers that had seemed dusty and soft with disuse flaring in a fall breeze scented with the myriad smells of the city street. She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes, feeling a long-absent lightness in her chest where a tight, anxious knot was slowly coming undone.
She took a step forward, and fell into the empty void between the city and the ******** ran to the wall and reached out to grab Harper two seconds too late, hands grasping at air. Harper's wings bellied out against the rushing wind and spread full, and Harper suddenly soared upwards, carried up on a draft. Longwei, butting Leah's shoulder once in something like reassurance, launched himself off the roof like a snake slithering through water. Leah gave a shriek, certain the creature would fall and splatter onto the street, but he flew. He flew, and Leah for the life of her could not imagine how he managed it. She watched as Harper landed running on a roof across the street only to launch herself off and freefall once more, laughing in pure joy as a hot thermal draft from the car-jammed street pushed her upward.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Leah said under her breath, head shaking in disbelief as she watched Harper and Longwei fly.
Wings beating a vivid tattoo against her back, Harper felt the knot in her chest loosen more and more. It wasn't gone, and she doubted if it ever really would be, but for now, at least the cold pain of it was dormant. She flew, and she laughed, and for a few moments Harper felt very much alive.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:56 am
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Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:57 pm
{part 4}
Harper was certain Leah would be frustrated with her for leaving the house without telling her first. She was even more certain that the woman would be frustrated and puzzled that Harper had taken a two hour bus ride out of the city, but at the moment she didn't really care. She'd left Longwei behind in the apartment, a temporary abandonment he'd taken very resentfully. The n** on her hand hurt enough to prove it. She rested her forehead against the scratched and cloudy glass of the bus window, watching the scenery roll past.
Nearly there.
It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, but it was one Harper felt she'd needed to make. It didn't do well to hold onto old grudges and old memories. She was tired of nostalgia. She had woken that morning, as she had for the past week, to the sound of saxophone music in the apartment above hers. Through blind luck or divine intervention, the music was good, a mournful rich sound only very rarely marred by a squeak or missed note. Harper liked to wake up to the music each morning, and to go to her little window and look down at the street far below. Harper liked the street, and the apartment building. She liked the people, something that had surprised her. Yes, she, Harper, actually liked other people...
The bus slowed to a clunky halt and the door hissed open. Harper blinked, jarred out of her reverie as passengers shuffled past her. Gathering herself together and hosting her bag onto her shoulder, she left the bus as well, fixing Leah's hand-me-down headphones over her ears. The walk was another half hour. Harper could've flown, but she preferred the walk. She hadn't been down this street for a while. She had the odd sense of deja vu, as though her mind could not quite remember that she had once traipsed these streets until she knew every crack in the sidewalk by heart. All that remained of memory was the faint sense that yes, maybe she had been this way before, once or twice.
The house was at the end of the block. There were lights on inside it. Harper paused, wings flexing and feathers puffing out against a burst of wintry cold. She had no desire to go inside, nor to even knock on the door to say hello. She opened the bag slung over her shoulder, and pulled out a thin, ratty notebook. Inside were the rough makings of a scrapbook, mostly her own notes and doodles, though here and there a photo was haphazardly taped to a yellowing page. Harper flicked through the notebook almost idly, thinking. She looked up again at the house at the end of the block. A figure moved in front of a window, shape obscured by curtains.
The wind picked up again, blowing a fine veil of snow into Harper's face. She brushed it away, rubbing it out of her eyes. Her wings folded around her like a cloak and she huddled into the warmth of her own body heat, the notebook clutched in sweating hands. The house at the end of the block sat benign and quiet, as though it was just waiting for her to go through its door once more.
"Hmn," Harper said. Her wings unfurled and she dropped the notebook onto the slushy sidewalk. She raised her hands and gave a final single finger salute, not at the house itself but the memories and the old life and everything she herself had rejected and wasted. It was too late, too much damage done. Whether she really willed it or no, Harper was out of the old life. She was gone from the first house, and the second, and the fostering at the D Corp center. She was no longer the ill-tempered brat or the ignored charity case or the lonely, miserable stray. She was Harper Cade, who lived in a cheap apartment with a chain-smoking punk who liked her and just wanted her to be happy.
Harper's hands dropped to her sides and her wings stretched out so wide it hurt. They beat a sharp tattoo against her back once, twice, and she was airborne, leaving the tatty old notebook on a sidewalk corner where the snow turned over by a plow would bury it.
Flying fast and high, bursting through a startled flock of crows back towards the distant city, Harper was jubilant and gloriously free.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:30 am
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Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:14 am
{part 6 - Harper's Journal}
So I've decided that since I read so much, I might as well write too. I don't think I've got it in me to write stories. It'd be nice, but really, c'mon. Not plausible.
Not much has been going on lately. Longwei and Buster still hate each other, and they got into another fight a couple days ago. I don't think there's anything more pathetic than watching your dragon hide under a bed because a cat whipped his a**.
Leah introduced me to her friend Sunday the other day. She's pretty nice, I guess. Doesn't talk much. And by much I mean at all. Leah said she doesn't even know Sunday's real name. I asked how she knew to call her Sunday, and Leah said she named her after the day she met her.
I think they're in love. I can't really tell.
I wonder if I'll ever be in love.
I went out last night with Longwei to the roof. I wanted to look at the stars, but since we're in the city it's impossible to see them. So I jumped OFF the roof, and flew for a while. We live towards the middle of the city so I couldn't just go outside of it just to stargaze for a while. I think maybe I will next time, though. I mean, who's gonna tell me not to? Leah lets me do what I want. Within reasonable bounds, anyway.
She doesn't seem to think that I should be in school during the day. I don't think it's occurred to her, common sense stuff doesn't really take. I don't want to be in school anyway. I want to learn about something, I'll go down to the library and learn it. Maybe I'll look at books about math.
...yeah, maybe not.
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