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 Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:32 pm
||. Beginnings
Jane Greystone had stopped loving God when she was twelve and stopped believing in God when she was twenty four. She had written down all the words she associated with God on the sidewalk one cloudy day and waited for the rain, watching from under damp brown curls as the drops washed it all away. Gods, she thought, had no power. They were, in the end, merely shells made of words, comfortable places for humans to take shelter from the mysteries of the world. But get the right words together, and people would kill in their name, swear by them, start wars for them, cause chaos.
All her undirected passion had funneled itself into words, and she had collected them, listened to them with relish, and above all, thought very carefully about what she said and wrote. No one knew what would change with the right or wrong word, after all. She studied words, saved up her meager pay to collect them and kept up with the latest sound systems carefully. Records, speeches, albums, songs, she collected them like a magpie. Though she didn't have her mother's beliefs, she had her mother's passion, and the tone in her voice when she talked about words was admiring, as close as the sensible woman would ever get to worshipful.
But there was one thing the words could not replace, and that was community. Religions, empty shells that they may or may not have been, had community. She had a mail truck and old speeches and could feel herself retreating into complicated silences every day that passed without company. Jane was lonely, and despite the old cat, Cicero that came every once in a while to kill some time, she felt like by trying not to use her words to make a stir she would waste her life away without even making a difference.
So she had decided to get a child, and if one knew Jane, and hardly anyone did, this was not as simple a decision for her as it sounded. She had spent long hours awake at night, measuring, always measuring herself. She had struggled over her income, her house size, and her ability to love, the latter more than the rest. It had been a long time since Jane had to continuously love someone. She wasn't quite sure she was in good practice.
Either way, she was getting a bit peculiar from being alone all the time. An if she adopted, which she would if she was going to have a child on account of being unwilling to get knocked up by a bloke with a bad idea, someone else would be a little less lonely too. Not to mention, she would have someone to talk to about the words. So an older child then, one who could understand. And if she could just teach one person about words, raise one person to become basically good, to become happy...
Well, then all her words would be worth it. Jane Greystone went to her computer, determination flashing in brown eyes. It was time to make a difference.
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Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:54 am
||. Beginnings pt. II
The first thing Casia ate in her new house was cereal fruit-o's and that was because Jane hadn't thought ahead to consider maybe some people who weren't going a bit odd from being alone would not appreciate cereal for dinner. She hadn't thought to buy anything else and had looked around futilely for enough ingredients to make something before pouring the bowl for the siren and feeling a bit embarrassed.
She was feeding a siren fruit-o's and the thought alone was strange. But then again, when she had thought about adopting a child, 'siren' hadn't even entered her mind. But the center she went to had one, and after saying 'excuse me?' and 'come again?' until she believed it, Jane had gone home with a stack full of information and what was probably going to be one of her worse ideas. Adopting mythological children was seldom wise, especially when one's father was named 'Ulysses'. An omen of sorts, she supposed, but there was something about the girl that made her an irresistible choice for a woman wrapped up in language.
For Sirens were sort of language masters, weren't they? They wrapped people up in words, pulling the towards their demise, and their songs did not apply to the flesh like many seductresses, but to the mind. And a very young, somewhat hurt siren who perhaps didn't quite know all about words could take comfort in them. Sirens needed language to feel at ease, and Jane was just the slightly odd mail carrier to teach them about it.
She had to admit Casia was somewhat different from what she had expected. She had expected a little girl, yes. Blonde, charming, yes. Big brown wings, oh definitely. But she had not expected the girl to look like she had just stepped out of the 1960's. She had looked at Casia's file more closely after that. A siren who sang the Beatles, deary deary me.
Being a postwoman who collected language however, she felt like she did not have the right to find this odd. Casia sang the Beatles, well, everyone had different tastes. And who said the Beatles didn't have power? They had considerable power. Perhaps it was only natural for Casia to be drawn to them. Either way, she would have to dig up some old records. She had decorated a room with a Greek motif but now it was obvious this would have to be redesigned into something less retro, more groovy. And she had that record player in the attic, too. This could all work out, it really could.
Casia had finished the cereal and was sitting at the table, humming. The song sounded almost-but-not-quite familiar, and Jane called "What song is that, Casia?" There was a brief silence, but it felt like far too long indeed. "Blackbird." said a small voice, and she didn't pick up the humming again. Ah, right. She really had gotten out of touch with people, hadn't she? In all this hustle and bustle to prepare to adopt a siren, she forgot that Casia was a person first and foremost. The Beatles hadn't clued her in, the quirks hadn't clued her in, it had taken the silence, an expression of hurt that was very human indeed. Jane shook her head at herself and walked back into the dining room.
"Let's scare up some ice cream for dessert." she said, and marched to the freezer decisively. She could start to deal with realizing the million and one things getting a child meant later. Right now what she really wanted was something sweet before everything could catch up to her.
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Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:42 pm
||.Epilogue- Act Naturally
Jane glanced back at Casia as her car waited on a red light. The Siren was staring out the window, a pensive look on her face. The woman felt the urge to distract her, to say something motherish. In books the mother slyly and tactlessly would say 'Well, he was awfully cute.' and laugh as the spunky heroine burst into heated protest, but as Jane opened her mouth to do so, the words caught in her throat. She didn't feel comfortable teasing Casia yet, and she was sure the girl didn't feel ready for motherly anything from Jane.
So instead, Jane turned on the radio, listening to the comforting flow of words, grave chatter about the Situation of the World, and what was going on where. The news was her old standby, her friend in trying times. She listened for a few moments to the speaker drawling on about the current crisis they were in, letting the words soothe her. Casia didn't seem to hear it, but was thoughtfully making drawings of what appeared to be weird, fat rabbit-humans on the car window with a smudgy child finger. "Oy." Jane said over the news noise. Casia stopped, brown eyes glancing at the front seat reproachfully from under blonde curls.
Well, she might as well try to make SOME attempt at bonding while she had the girl's attention. She thought furiously. "How was your day?" she settled on desperately. In return she received a somewhat awkward. "Good." The two sat once more in embarrassed silence, the kind that happened at family reunions with one's distant relatives. One was supposed to act close to them, but didn't know how. Jane stared at the road. "He seemed nice." she offered tentatively. Casia shrugged. "Yeah." Jane waited for more, but nothing came. Apparently the boy was just full of a sort of general niceness, or Casia was simply too stubborn to articulate what made him nice. "And you practiced singing?" Jane asked, a woman prepared to connect even if it killed them both. Casia nodded. "Yeah." she repeated. Jane's shoulder sagged. They spent the next minutes in silence until finally Casia broke it for once, asking a question Jane had definitely not expected.
"What's an algorhythm?"
It was going to be a long evening.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:28 pm
||.Promises
Casia's knees were level with her face in the dusk-tinged attic as she leaned against the old bedframe. She wasn't supposed to be here, but it felt better than being in the big Greek bedroom, murals of Anthemusa on the walls, leering at her while she slept. She knew that she was a siren, supposedly Greek, and very mythological. Jane had made this all very clear, from the room, to the new wardrobe that Casia had refused to wear, to the dinners, which had been cereal and other bachelorette foods so far but had had the definite suggestion that if getting sailor corpses wasn't morally questionable, they would be on that table. Casia liked to feel like a girl, not a monster though, and every time Jane told her about the island of Anthemusa and how Sirens acted, and read to her from mythology books, Casia wanted nothing more than to scream as loudly as she could and run and hide. But until the guardian had gotten the message she had counted to ten as quickly as she could over and over again, which meant that though she had missed the history lessons, she had the distinct advantage of having restrained herself from killing the woman who had taken her in and moving onto parent number four.
Number four. She didn't even think she would have reached number three. Hugging her knees, she hit her head against them on the assumption that the faint knocking was better than the hollow feeling in her mind that the thought of Number four brought. It wasn't worth thinking about, and it made her stomach tie itself up in knots. She was supposed to be dealing with the parent she had now, not shadowy future parents.
She could tell that Jane was trying at least. The woman was a mail carrier, she must have spent a lot of her money trying to make the house into a home for Casia, but she had just been misguided. Casia felt a stab of guilt, but also a rather rebellious contempt lurking around at the bottom of her mind. What kind of idiot assumed that just because she was a siren she'd like all this... This junk! She knew about sirens, yeah, but that didn't mean her goal in life was to be one. They murdered people, for heaven's sake. And they were awful, foxes, seducing men to their island. how dare anyone think that Casia would actually want to be like that?
That kind of thought, the kind that made her clench her fists and gnash her teeth, had been coming more often. When she let her guard down, they crept traitorously into her mind, burning up her compassion and common sense until all that was left was petty frustrations and aimless anger. In these moments she felt so unlike herself that it scared her, and when the moments passed, she clung even tighter to old friends, old memories, making her smiles stretch wider, her voice more enthusiastic, and her step livelier. Anything to reconnect with the girl she had been, before the siren murmurs and the anger came to her and made her feel zappy and vulnerable. She had been counting to ten so much lately that she felt it was seared into her brain, when she wasn't thinking anything, her hands moved of their own accord, balling into fists and releasing each finger one by one.
She felt like the more she tried to be Casia, the less she felt like Casia. It was moments that caught her off guard, people who surprised her, that was when she felt most real, most alive, like a sailor had finally come to her deserted island. It was a weird sort of feeling, but it felt really good to be her in moments like that, when she could be angry or affronted or sad to someone without feeling worried.
Of course, that brought up trust. Who did she trust to be like that around? Who wouldn't tell anyone, wouldn't think less of her, wouldn't leave? She wasn't sure she was ready to trust anyone yet, but there was one obvious answer that would have to become true soon or she would have a much harder time growing up. She had to at least make some sort of connection with Jane soon, because if she couldn't even trust her own guardian she'd be in a sorry state indeed, and she couldn't count on strange boys that she had loads in common with coming into music rooms while no one else was around all the time. Not only would that be freakily coincidental, it would be too creepy. No, she had to find some common ground with Jane and try to trust her a little, just try. Despite her misgivings about guardians, she thought if other people could get used to new ones, she would get used to this one. She didn't have to love her, she reminded herself, getting onto the old bed that was comfortingly not surrounded by Greek murals. She just had to learn to trust her, for her own sake. Because no matter what happened, she was going to rise above, right? She had promised herself that.
It was time to start making good on that promise.
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Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 10:19 pm
||.Breakfast
Casia watched the woman cook, brown hair tied up carefully, as she turned over eggs, added mysterious lumps of something or other, and hummed. She noticed that Jane cooked differently than Anna had, insofar as that Jane followed recipes as exactly as humanly possible. She wasted no time, waited as long as the books suggested, and had everything ready beforehand. It was almost like a machine, the way Jane cooked. Anna had seemed more human.
Human was a loose term though, a vague word describing almost anything you wanted to describe. People acted inhuman, too human, good human, bad human, human was at the same time a positive and negative quality. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more confusing, people like Casia came along and didn't know whether they were even human or not. Casia didn't trust the word 'human'. It was too tricky for her.
She didn't know a lot about Jane, but Jane seemed to like all words pretty much equally, and even the siren who had been living in her own self absorbed bubble of mistrust and bruises had taken notice. Words flooded the house, recorded words, books, music, stenciled quotes, scraps of poetry, and word the woman seemed to collect and add to the growing hoard, like a magpie decorating its nest. She didn't know what was so great about words. They were untrustworthy and slippery at times, and though they were useful, the times they were painful more than made up for that small advantage. But if Casia was going to start to learn to trust Jane, it meant she would have to find these things out. And that meant that eventually she'd have to actually start talking to her new guardian. She looked at the tablecloth. She could get it over with now, or she could say maybe tomorrow until she was carted off to the next loving parent in her life. One way would be painful immediately, the other would be painful later. She bit her lip, clenched her fists and made a choice. If this didn't work, so be it.
"What's so boss about words?"
Whatever effect it had on the guardian was instant. The sound of efficiency in action stopped, and was replaced by the sizzling of food with nothing better to do than to sizzle. It had only been a pause of half a second, but it had been there, plain as day, a skip in the record of Jane's perfect routine. Casia noted that she didn't turn around or stop cooking to answer, but continued on, trying to pretend it hadn't bothered her. "They change things." Jane answered, and Casia frowned. Words, just words? "Not that much." she insisted. The guardian shook her head. "No, they do, they affect our world! If you find the right words, you can do anything, open any door, change the world to suit you."
Casia raised an eyebrow. The statement didn't make sense, if any word could change anything, why didn't things change more? "If you believe all that," she said carefully, "Then why are you a mail carrier living in a tiny house?"
"Because I want to deliver mail. I want to deliver words, let them travel between person and person and create that change. Why do you sing?" Casia frowned. "It's different. People listen to singing. It's nice." As she said it, Jane turned off the burner and looked at her young ward. "People listen to words too. Sometimes more people than you think. You have to have 'It' though, to really get peoples' attention."
"It?" Casia said, and so as not to admit ignorance, added quickly, "Oh yes. Right, I forgot about it. I have that. Tons." Asking someone about a belief was one thing, but showing someone you didn't know something that they did was another.
"Prove it." Jane stated flatly. This caught Casia off guard. "Prove?" she echoed dimly. Jane gave a curt nod. "Prove it. Make me feel something, an emotion, make me believe." Casia thought rapidly about the challenge, caught up in the dare and eventually fell upon her old standby. Music, but what would she make Jane feel? She bit her lip and eventually realized the only thing she herself believed in right now was Casia. All she could really make Jane feel was how she felt herself. She opened her mouth and began.
"Anna, you come and ask me girl
To set you free, girl .
You say he loves you more than me
So I will set you free
Go with him. (Anna) Go with him. (Anna)
Anna, girl, before go now
I want you to know, now
That I still love you so,
But if he loves you more,
Go with him.
All of my life
I've been searching for a girl
To love me like I love you.
oh now
But every girl I ever had
breaks my heart and leaves me sad,
what am I, what am I supposed to do?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
Anna, just one more thing girl.
You give back your ring to me,
And I will set you free,
Go with him.
All of my life
I've been searching for a girl
To love me like I love you
But let me tell you now
But every girl I ever had
breaks my heart and leaves me sad,
what am I, what am I supposed to do
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
Anna, just one more thing girl
You give back your ring to me
And I will set you free,
go with him (Anna)
go with him (Anna)
You can go with him girl (Anna)
go with him."
She gave a shuddering stop. The song wasn't exactly right, she knew, but she had felt that way, reluctantly letting Anna go and feeling... Feeling like she would never find someone to care about her again. She would never care about anyone as much again, she couldn't. She looked up at Jane expecting to see tears or at least pity. The guardian's face was impassive. "Nice." she said flatly, and Casia opened her mouth to retort. Jane raised a hand. "Nice, but how well did it fit, Casia? Whose words are those? The Beatles'? If they're the Beatles' words, whose feelings are they? You can express your feelings with them very well. But what about what Casia says?"
Her face softened as the girl looked flummoxed. "You do have It," she informed her, and Casia listened for the 'but'. "But It is about remembering you have words too. You don't need to use someone else's."
With that said and done, Jane put Casia's breakfast in front of her. Their first real conversation over, parent and child ate in silence, chewing their food and the new thoughts, hopes, and fears that had arrived with it.
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Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:53 pm
||.Epilogue- Masks
There wasn't much to do that Saturday, because Jane had work. It was snowing, but snow could not stop the mail and Jane had made a brief pep talk to herself about duty, which Casia had more or less heard and after making sure the siren ate breakfast, she had gone off to brave the cold. Casia had waved goodbye as sweetly as possible. Jane was getting all the just desserts she needed from the weather, after all.
So, alone with her thoughts, Casia had tried to remember her dream. It was, she felt, unusual, as far as her dreams went, but the siren was not good at recalling such things. Trippy night fantasies weren't things she had ever thought were important, but this one she felt she was supposed to remember. Her siren side remembered and was screaming at her to pay attention; something was not right last night.
It hadn't felt like a bad thing, but there it was. She couldn't remember dreams, but she could remember music because music was a firebrand in her mind. She remembered dream music and something had been wrong with it last night. She listened for a while, to the strains that were hazy and distorted. But it had ended with "Blackbird" and the siren smiled distractedly as she replayed it, sliding off the couch. Her dreams usually ended with nothing but silence, and whatever had gone wrong, it seemed like once again something going wrong had ended up feeling right. She was beginning to make a habit of it, and with the issue settled for now in her mind, she went to get some poptarts, humming the tune as she went.
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Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:44 pm
||.Walls
"She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah..." Jane hummed under her breath as she cut carrots for dinner. The Beatles were turning out to be more contagious than the plague, but at least they weren't the only thing that was sticking. Casia had never said anything aloud about it, but she couldn't help but notice that the siren's begging was getting more persuasive when she wanted something. Her chats about words were going somewhere, even if the two could hardly find anything else they could safely talk about.
There was a sort of symphony of complex silences between the child and the mail carrier, and she didn't know how to change the score. The siren didn't tell her much, not even about school, and the few times she had managed to catch her ward talking to other children, she had been quickly shooed away. If she was going to do responsible, motherly things like organize parties and bake cookies and, oh, she didn't know, make lame jokes designed to publicly humiliate Casia and give her a valid excuse to complain to her friends, she would have to at least know who Casia associated herself with.
Well, she did know, sort of. There was Vest Boy and Cat Boy and Sphinx Girl and really, she was getting alarmed at the ratio. She wondered if it was just a siren thing. Maybe Casia just attracted boys, maybe she and the people she talked to didn't even notice. She was a siren, after all. They were built to attract, and who knew if it only worked when they sang? But Jane fervently hoped this wasn't the case. She herself had never been considered much of a catch, and if Casia really did tend to attract the company of men, things were going to get hectic in a way Jane had little experience with around the teenage years.
Casia herself didn't seem very interested in love though, she noted. The siren had wanted to buy Valentine's day gifts, yes, but Jane hadn't felt it had been to express her undying love to people. More just to do something, to go somewhere, and the woman recognized with an inward cringe that she wasn't really around enough in her daughter's life. She stopped cutting vegetables to sneak a sideways glance at the girl. Maybe she should take time off from work sometime. Go camping. Do something that would force them to bond or at least to recognize each other's presence more. She stopped cutting carrots altogether and picked up a few pieces before going to sit down near the siren.
"Want some?" she asked, offering her a piece. Casia shook her head. Undaunted, Jane pressed on. "They're deliciously tender and garden fresh," she suggested. Relenting, Casia popped a piece into her mouth and chewed it up. "Mmm." It was obliging in a way that wasn't really sincere, and Jane knew when not to push her luck. Instead, she looked to see what the siren was doing. "Homework?" she asked. In return, she received a negative head shake. "Drawing." Casia mumbled. Jane raised an eyebrow. "Speak clearly, please."
The siren rolled her eyes. "I'm drawing." Satisfied, the guardian looked at it, and presently she said "That's a lot of blue." Casia nodded fervently, briefly distracted from her sullen responses by the urge to explain her creative muse. "It's the ocean. I'm drawing adventures." Jane nodded. "Ah. Adventures. She briefly imagined Greenpeace and people tying themselves to harpoons. "Well, whatever floats your boat, then."
And then what came next was surprising. Maybe it was because Casia had been distracted, or maybe it was the unexpected joke, but the siren laughed. It was a brief note, and stifled quickly, but it happened, and Jane seized upon it as a ray of hope, a new note in the symphony of silences. She resisted the urge to try to use the moment to say something motherly, but kept the memory and flashed Casia a brief smile. "Well, I'd better get back to the carrots." Casia looked at her drawing intently, trying to pretend nothing had happened. "...Yeah." she said carefully and as Jane got up, she bit her lip. "Thanks for the carrot." Jane paused and gave her an approving look. "Anytime." Maybe she didn't need to know about how to change a symphony of silence. Maybe it worked out on its own.
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:26 am
||.Epilogue- And Some Have Changed
Casia ran downstairs with her chocolate. Valentine's day, she wanted to go somewhere and do something, and hopefully she would at least run into one of her friends so she could give them candy. And everyone knew that it was the parent's job to take kids places on holidays and Jane was all about responsibility. "Jane, Jane!" she called, running into the kitchen. There was no Jane but there was a note and a box of chocolates on the table.
Dear Casia,
Happy Valentine's Day, and I hope yours is nice as can be. Sadly, the mail doesn't stop even for the day of love, but when I get home we can watch movies or something. These chocolates are for you, don't overdo on them, and I left you lunch in the fridge.
Love, Jane
Casia read it and quietly fumed, marching back up to her room. Fine. Fine, deliver the stupid mail. It wasn't like she had plans or anything, it wasn't like today was a holiday. She would just listen to Beatles records for the rest of her life and she would never come downstairs again, then Jane would be sorry and the mail people would too.
An hour later she snuck back down for the chocolate, and two hours after that for her lunch. Revenge was short lived when no one was around to suffer by it.
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Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:57 pm
||.A Crazed Girl
There was beauty in the morning, quiet soft thoughts thronging into Jane's mind as she made pancakes. The sound of the pipes running, Casia in the shower. They were music, those pipes. The sound of company, of Jane's solitude broken and life injected once more into the waking dream of life. Putting the pancakes on a plate, she set them to the side and took out the syrup and some strawberries, starting to slice them. Ah, life, that blissful miracle. She would never get used to the strange bliss of having someone else make noise while she made pancakes. All lonely imaginings were abandoned, replaced by warm comfort.
And Casia was growing up to be a beautiful girl. She hadn't known her long, but the more she knew, the more she grew fond of the little siren. The obstinate girl with the expressive brown eyes and the easy smile she had trouble hiding, despite her obvious misgivings about her living arrangements was becoming a fixture in the postal worker's life. She could only hope Casia was getting used to her too. She wanted to play a role in Casia's life.
Her fingers turned pink with the blood of strawberries, her mind turned lyrical with the zen of the moment and the thoughts of a doting mother. She recalled a poem, muttering the words of William Butler Yeats to the fruit she sliced. "That crazed girl, improvising her music..."
"Don't mutter." someone commanded, and she saw Casia, hair still wet from the shower, looking triumphant. She laughed and acquiesced. "All right, then. Would you like to hear it, Casia?" The offer was received suspiciously. "What is it?" Jane shrugged. "Just a poem I remembered. Spoken music, you know." The siren considered this and nodded. "Groovy." Smiling, Jane began, clearing her throat dramatically. "'A Crazed Girl' by William Butler Yeats, recited by Jane Greystone."
"That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.
No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'"
Casia had smiled, faintly but surely. "I like that." she admitted. "What else've you got?" Jane shook her head, putting the pancakes on the table. "You have to give it time to sit before you read another. Enjoy it like pancakes." And they sat down to eat, birds singing in the thawing February air and poetry in the thawing, tentative family.
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Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 5:57 am
||.Grandma
Jane collapsed and sunk to the floor as the door closed. Safe, safe at home. Next to her, she was vaguely aware of a stunned Casia dropping her coat to the ground and looking perplexedly at an oatmeal prune cookie in her hand as if trying to figure out how it had gotten there. She wasn't surprised. The look the siren wore was the one most people wore after meeting Jane's highly religious, single minded mother, that deer in the headlights expression was unmistakable. Though the girl hadn't said anything yet, she knew, just KNEW that if Casia tried the first sound that would come out would be 'fwuh'. Jane's mother was that kind of dominating woman and Casia had gotten a double dose of her.
"Fwuh." said Casia vaguely, and Jane chalked up a point for her. Silence descended again, and Casia looked helplessly at the cookie. Finally, she looked slowly at Jane and said "She raised you?" Jane nodded grimly and Casia goggled at her. The siren and the guardian were both headstrong, but they had just been outmuscled by a tiny old lady, her cat, and Jesus. "But... But..." She dropped the cookie and staggered into the living room. For once Jane didn't tell her to pick it up. Instead she followed her and the two collapsed gratefully on the old couch. Finally, Jane opened her mouth and said "She was raising the sin out of me. It was hard to have friends over." She thought about this statement, brow knitting in complex thought. "It was hard to have friends." she corrected. Casia nodded slowly. Jane giggled like a madwoman. "And boyfriends... She wanted to meet them." The siren winced. No wonder Jane was single.
"...The cookies?" Casia asked after another long silence. "No one remembers them happening. But if you have one when you leave it's probably a good sign." Casia nodded slowly. "She said..." The siren's brow furrowed. "I was an angel being led off the path of sin?" Jane nodded miserably. "Brown wings, no halo, angelic voice." she said hollowly. "Didn't you tell her I was a siren?" Jane gave a spasm of wild laughter. "Can you imagine how she'd react?" Casia tried to but her mind shut down to be kind to her. "Oh. Sinning angel. Yeah, that's cool then." Defensively, Jane added "She means well." Casia thought about all the driven people she knew. "Yeah," she said carefully, "I can see that."
"Still," said Casia, "How did you survive?" Jane laughed. "Sometimes I fantasized about being an orphan." she admitted. Casia let out a mad little giggle too. "It's not all that groovy." she assured Jane. They looked at each other, still stunned from the large dose of Jane's Mother. "Grandma!" giggled Jane, the drunken relief of surviving the ordeal still strong. Slowly, she began to hum a sad, stammering tune, and then Casia started to sing in a low, bluesy voice.
"As I was slowly passing
an orphan's home one day,
I stopped for just a little while
to watch the children play.
Alone a boy was standing
and when I asked him why,
he turned with eyes that could not see
and he began to cry."
Jane laughed and Casia grinned. Jane began to sing along, imitating the same low, bluesy voice as the siren.
"I'm nobody's child,
I'm nobody's child.
Just like the flowers
I'm growing wild.
I got no mummy's kisses
I got no daddy's smile.
Nobody wants me,
I'm nobody's child."
They made it as far as 'No arms to hold me' when their laughter finally escaped and they burst into a fit of gleeful mirth at the melancholy song, Jane's childhood, Casia's childhood, pretending to be an orphan, and all the slightly sad, scary things that would have seemed serious at any other time. The horrible visit to Grandma's house made anything seem hilarious. Presently, Casia straightened up for a moment. "You're not bad at singing." she choked out, and Jane gasped "Choir!" which started the laughter again. By the time they collected themselves enough to remember that they felt uncomfortable around each other, it was too late. They had bonded through the sheer uncomfortable embarrassment that came from visiting Jane's mother.
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Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:59 am
||.Epilogue- Singing, Speaking, Silence
Casia came home and closed the door quietly. She touched her hand to her cheek. She wasn't... Wasn't QUITE sure what Devakanya was trying to express with a kiss, but she had a few things she had to check. As much as she hated to do it, she'd have to ask Jane. Peering worriedly from room to room, she called "Jane?" Presently, the guardian hurried from Casia's room, a paintbrush in her hand. "Casia, I have a surprise for you." she announced grandly. The siren seemed too distracted to care much, and Jane put down the paintbrush. "What's up?" she asked. Casia looked down and bit her lip, looking like she was having some kind of internal struggle. Finally, she asked "What's the rule for first kisses?"
The awkward pause that happened next was long and embarrassing. Jane was as good at romance as fish were at living on land. She tended to flop around uselessly. "Casia..." she said carefully. "Who have you been kissing?" The siren reddened. "It's not like that!" she protested. "Someone kissed me. On the cheek. It was a surprise, okay? Don't go ape on me!" Jane felt a wave of relief wash over her. She wasn't ready to deal with hormones. "Oh, well surprise kisses on the cheek don't count." she assured Casia quickly. The siren relaxed. She liked Devakanya, but she wanted her first kiss to be with someone who could make her feel the kind of love Beatles songs sang about, if they even existed. At least with someone she had known for more than an hour, if nothing else.
Now that that issue was resolved, there was one more pressing matter on Casia's mind. "Surprise?" she said warily. The last one had not gone over well, and had involved a lot of mythology and depressing stuff like that. Jane grinned. "I think you'll like this." Pulling Casia to her room, she threw open the door. Painted on the doorframe, around the edges were the lyrics to Blackbird. it had been the first song Jane had heard Casia hum, the day she had arrived, and Jane thought she had to do SOMEthing to make up for the rocky beginning they had had. She looked anxiously at the siren, who was running her hand down the trail of words.
Finally Casia spoke, slowly. "Cherry." she announced. "Very cherry." She blinked quickly, because her eyes were stinging. It was a reminder of the past, but it belonged there, and it wasn't Anthemusa or anything. It was home. And all the problems and surprises that came today had been good. Life was starting to settle down for her, and it was painful but it was all part of the healing process. She looked back at Jane, who looked relieved. "Thanks." she said carefully. She didn't want Jane to get too used to it, so she grabbed her hand and led her downstairs to distract her. "Let's get some lunch." she said firmly.
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Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:07 pm
||.Epilogue-If You've Got Trouble
Casia flopped onto her bed and opened up her bag full of records. Finally, she pulled one out. Since Jane loved words so much, she also loved sound systems and had managed to drag a record player out from her attic for Casia to use. It sat in her room, reassuringly familiar. She went to it, putting one of the albums on and listening. Eventually, she sang along.
"And anytime you feel the pain,
Hey Jude, refrain.
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it's a fool
who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder."
Oh, how cold she had felt outside that record store.
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Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:35 pm
||.Epilogue- Roll over, Beethoven!
Jane stared at Casia's new dress. Casia grinned. "Do you like it?"
It was something Jane had to consider. It wasn't quite what she had been expecting, but... "Very nice, Casia." she said finally. "Very... Colourful." In then end, Casia had decided that a style didn't have to define you, but that didn't mean she couldn't HAVE one. She knew she had a style and she liked it. The dress she had picked showed that.
Jane would never understand how Casia had managed to find a dress that screamed the 60's so loudly in a modern department store.
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Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 4:00 pm
||.Mornings
Casia stepped out into the brisk predawn air. It wasn't quite spring, but there was a murmur in the earth, like the world was holding its breath for the first notes, waiting for the sun to sing winter away. She stood poised on the sidewalk, looking around to make sure no one was watching. She felt kind of dumb, she had to admit. Anna had taken her on adventures, journeys to the woods and to old record stores, and the siren had felt free. Anything had been possible, the sky could be touched with her outstretched hands. It had been golden.
At Jane's house, she was usually left to her own devices, to listen to The Beatles over and over, to watch musicals until she expected people in real life to start to burst into song, to stare at her ceiling and count to ten until her brain was numb with icy patience. There was no adventure, no 'us', and the worst thing wasn't the absence of it. It was the fact that she wasn't even sure she wanted an 'us'. She didn't feel like she could trust people yet, especially not a person who was stepping into a role two people had already abandoned. The fact she couldn't trust Jane stripped her even of the power to blame the guardian.
This all made it hard to try to fly again, but the hardest part was that at Jane's house she didn't have any convenient quiet place to give it a shot. The most she could do was go out so early that the sky was still dusky if she wanted some privacy to flap her wings and try to drag her body into the heavens. The last time she had flown had taken a huge effort, all the energy she put into it was fueled by her desire to impress Anna and love had driven her to fly. Out in the dawn air, all she had to motivate her was a cocktail of fear, nerves, loneliness, and longing. She wanted to be airborne, she wanted to be able to look down and see the world below her feet, but she didn't feel light. She had never felt so heavy, and she wasn't using the word in the Beatles sense.
She gave her wings a tentative flap and startled as a car drove by. Nervously humming, she looked around quickly and ran back into Jane's house. The siren wasn't ready to take wing again yet.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:08 pm
||.Epilogue- Pickles
Casia hadn't expected much from the visit to the deli, but as she sat in the car waiting, she had to admit Jane was right. It had been better than hamburgers, and apart from being horribly, mind numbingly embarrassed by Jane's hapless friendliness, she had enjoyed it. She had liked meeting Shiraz, the mumbly little panda had seemed so cherry, unbothered. It had made her miss being that age a little and also made her smile.
Not that she would tell anyone. The stubborn siren still hated being wrong, and no amount of The Beatles, family bonding, and pandas would cure that. If she told Jane that she had been right about the deli, then she'd start deciding all sorts of things for Casia. The siren leaned her head against the window, cheek smushing against it as Jane came into the driver's side. Her brown eyes slid over to the back of the woman's head, watching it carefully. Jane looked back and raised an eyebrow. "Bored?" she asked amusedly. The siren sat up. "Yeah." she said with false conviction. Jane frowned. "Sorry. I thought the deli would be interesting. We can get some hamburgers next time."
Casia's eyes widened. Foiled! "Wait!" she called before Jane started the car. The guardian's foot hovered over the pedal. The blonde girl bit her lip, going through some sort of mental struggle before she finally admitted "Maybe it was better than hamburgers."
Jane smiled faintly. "Don't worry," she assured the siren, "I won't let it go to my head."
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