Work Text:
Maude Darlington was like many children in some ways. In others, however, she was separated—different—and yet no one knew the exact words to describe that sense of oddness, not even herself. It trailed behind her steps, noticeable and also invisible. How could it be both in the end? There was no answer, it seemed. It simply was. She carefully hid the dreams from her parents, how she would desperately cling to sleep because she loathed to be awake.
They were already concerned. She had no wish to elevate it, least of all for dreams and unexplained feelings. No. She wouldn’t tell them; she wandered instead.
She left her shoes by the door and dug her soles into the dirt. Like a weed, she thought, she was like a weed. Something that…that…
Did not belong.
If her parents noticed that dull light in her eyes, they never mentioned it. Much like she never mentioned anything herself. Just like that weed, she noticed the longer she was here the more she seemed to threaten the peace of her family. They wilted. Decayed. And she was simply a ghost that choked out life.
Maude stared up at the cracked ceiling and thought it looked like the sky. She blinked. She was no longer six-years-old.
The eleven-year-old girl strayed more and more. Never far, but far enough for her mother to poke her head out of the window and call for her at random times. Eventually, her brother was sent with her on those walks. He did so glumly, but with a seriousness she knew well.
“What are you doing?” her brother asked one long evening. He had been watching as she repeated a circle in the dirt, her bare feet long stained by the earth. Energy was humming just under her skin, just waiting to burst free, but it felt stuck. It made her want to scream or cry or maybe both at the same time. She wouldn’t, though.
She instead stared at the horizon, her answer slow and carefully even. “I’m waiting for something.” She continued the circle, never-ending, until the sun drowned behind the hills.
At the door, their mother a hovering shadow inside, her brother knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder. His wild hair fell into his hazel eyes as they searched hers. Looking for what? She wasn’t sure, but she forced herself into stillness. He was like a wolf—she was like a rabbit. “Maude,” he faltered, voice breaking, “What are you waiting for?”
It was silent except for her heart in her ears. She wondered if he could hear it, could hear her lies even before she spoke them. “I don’t know.” At the corner of his eyes tightening, she continued, “Really. I don’t know.”
“Then what do you know?”
“It…” she trailed off and bit her lip, her gaze falling off to the side, “it hurts here.” Uneasily, she pointed at the center of her chest.
Her brother said nothing for a long time. She fiddled with her hands and closed her eyes tightly.
Maude opened her eyes again and she was no longer a child. She was twenty-years-old, a young spinster living in her brother’s home; the strange young aunt of her nephews and niece. Walking through the small house towards the garden she was often found in, she would avoid the mirror on the wall. Still, she heard the whispers coming from it: Not you. You’re not you. If you’re not you, then who are you? She cringed and carefully wrapped her brother’s scarf around her ears. It seemed to grow the more she wore it, but surely that was her imagination. Things cannot grow. Just as that cow in that painting was surely not pink.
Only children grow, the mirror replied. Only pink cows are in fields unreachable.
“Shut up,” she hissed, face growing hot under the imaginary attention.
There was a knock on the door. Her heart jumped to life, and she placed a hesitant hand to her chest in response. Maude carefully answered. For once, the mirror was silent; it buzzed with the same energy inside of her.