Work Text:
It was never an official promise because it didn’t have to be one. Even though they were kids Emmeline knew, the same way you could count on snow for Christmas and flowers to usher in Spring, that she was going to learn English for Giselle. It made Giselle beam—she was happy to teach her, and of course Emmeline would return the favour by teaching her French. Deal.
Now it’s a couple dozen years later, May in the twentieth century, and Emmeline’s English is perfect or a near thing. “Take care, I hear it’s snowing again. Keep warm!” Giselle would be proud, except for the fact Giselle and Emmeline haven’t spoken for the better part of a decade and that last conversation ended without a “see you next time”.
These days, most times she borrows Giselle’s language Emmeline feels a pang of guilt that melts into roaring grief.
How did this happen?
-
Start when they were small, just met. The seeds of the pact were sewn here.
Emmeline remembers the day—an unusually cold November Tuesday. She didn’t mind the weather, to be quite frank barely noticed. The hill is always cold, and winter days stretch longer when all you have for company are the fog of your breath and the blue at your finger tips.
She sits on the edge of the hill, a good watching-point where you can peek without being seen, and sets up to observe the going ons below for the next several hours. It’s her daily fascination, pressing her face against the view into the lives of everyone else.
Always, always, Emmeline watches from the outside.
On this day Giselle bounds over the hill and into her life. She’s bold and unfazed and a funny kid who is obviously just like Emmeline. Cue mutual delight. They can’t exactly understand each other but they make do with exaggerated hand gestures and a dash of similar-sounding-helper words. For once, talking comes naturally to Emmeline’s dusty vocal cords and she finds herself tossing kindling onto their conversation without end.
They talk eight hours straight, and then they were friends.
-
It is really very difficulty to notice how cold you are until you finally brush that touch of warmth.
Silence—no life but the wind and snow—goes from tranquil to an awful sort of creeping dread and makes you want to clutch fuzzy comfort to your chest. You see people wrapped in jackets, holding hands and humming around the hearth, and you, you are painfully alone.
There is fire in the distance. She dances and shoots off sparks and allows you to join her.
You dare to think, maybe you could take a step closer to that beckoning flame. A step, and the frost slips away. A step, and she surges into your life with a force like the blazing sun over the hill every new day.
-
Learning another language is hard even with how similar French and English are. Doesn’t help that Giselle and Emmeline have no idea how to teach each other, but they make up for it with boundless energy and devotion. Every time Giselle flashes her a smile Emmeline stretches to capture another new word, and every day they get a bit more invested in their game. It’s a challenge and a competition and they’re both going to win.
Emmeline earnestly fumbles through motions and tries to chain a variety of actions to mouthed words to help Giselle along. The first time Giselle makes the connection from Hi to Bonjour Emmeline glows and giggles. Yes, that’s it!
Giselle (Giselle, that’s her name, Emmeline learns. It’s pleasant to the ear) is so serious and determined to make everything click. When Emmeline pieces together her first English sentence (after many encouraging nods and nudges), Giselle claps cheerily and barks laughter.
It comes slowly, slow like falling leaves, but they get there. By the middle of Winter, they can hold a short conversation with their mish-mash of English-French.
To an outsider, it sounds positively alien. To them, it’s each other.
-
It was a flash fire friendship, moments from spark to open burn, then and done. So so quick—A few months, and you trust her with everything. Your connection: intense and rapidly growing and blazing.
In retrospect,
What is quick to flare is quicker to burn out
-
January makes Emmeline shiver.
She’s known Giselle a few years at this point and she’s always a delight. Giselle has this ease to her movement, shares this bright warmth in her laugh, makes every conversation endlessly fascinating.
Emmeline stands by their meeting place and casts her gaze out to greet the other girl, readying herself for the wait.
Giselle never misses their daily meets, but this past month she stops getting up with the sun and arrives late more often than not.
Today, she can’t make it until afternoon. She heaps apologies and Emmeline shrugs them off, but it really feels like Giselle is melting away.
For the first time in a long time, Emmeline’s hands feel like ice.
-
You know her well.
She knows you better than anyone here, she to who you have spun your innermost thoughts over spit-roast fire.
You think you know her well enough. But she’s older than you, she has an unknowable history from before you even thought to breathe.
Sometimes, turn for a glimpse, try to read her and all you see is the inscrutable mountain face.
-
February.
Giselle is not there.
(This is the pin-drop moment when everything really, really comes apart).
Giselle is not there.
(It’s into the evening and Giselle has never once missed a meeting before no matter how late she would be. She would never miss it, because she’s consistent Giselle, but it’s far too late now to accept any other possibility.)
Giselle is not there, and Emmeline has been standing outside on her own for the past ten hours.
Giselle is not there, and Emmeline walks herself home.
Giselle is not there, but a letter from her is waiting. (Sorry, it reads among other things. Sorry, Giselle writes instead of saying and it’s a cold prickle. Sorry, and the rest in polite English.)
Reading the first few lines makes Emmeline feel feverish. It’s not real.
(I’m not saying goodbye, says her letter, but you’ll see a lot less of me. This isn’t goodbye, except this is advance notice. I think we have to put our languages on hold.)
Every word after that is an icy clench of her chest, winding tighter and tighter until she can barely breathe. The letter ends, and falls from her hand, and her heart is glass, and the cold grip grinds it to snowdust.
Giselle is not here, and Emmeline feels nothing but numb.
-
How could she just give it up like that?
It had always been her game. The game was both of yours, but she was the one who had laid out the groundwork, and she was the one who upped the ante, and she was the one who always whispered about where they could take it.
Undeniably, it had been everything to her. (It was so precious to you.)
And then, and then she just gives it up. What. How??
The thought that keeps coming back to your mind is like a child: It’s not fair.
She painted such shiny futures and she’s never going to walk down those paths.
She convinced you just before abandoning everything.
She left something so dear behind her. Who’s to say you aren’t next?
Your throat burns in the blizzard.
-
It’s so horribly selfish to tell someone, "Please don’t leave me" when you do it with no strings attached. Well, it’s more of an ask than a tell.
Because—What do you want? What do you even want?
The minimal amount of selfish. You know not to be greedy, were taught to be small and quiet and unseen, need nothing more than an assurance.
Do not leave, please.
If you leave you will take the warmth and the whimsy and the everything else too—somehow it all rests on you.
There is this problem, see, where the fire you covet is one of comraderie and not fairy-tale passion. You don’t want her, don’t want to give yourself to her or care about being the one and only.
You want to trust that someone will stay without that contract, though you can never guarantee it. Will you keep me in your life?
Now you take slow breaths and wait for the other shoe to drop from this slow-burn fuse.
Please don’t leave me behind.
Please don’t ever leave me.
(But you can’t do that. You can’t promise someone that, and you certainly can’t ask it of someone else. Instead you say—
"You know I’m your friend, right?"
—And hope fiercely, though you know otherwise, that it will be enough.)
-
This March she doesn’t see Giselle more than a sparse handful of times. All their conversations peter out to English English English, because Emmeline can want what she wants but Giselle can make her own choices.
Some days she feels like she’s yelling across a mountain ravine to no reply.
-
She was here just one yesterday ago.
Sat where you are now, she teased sarcasm out of you and brought forth a thousand fascinating questions and returned all of your smiles.
Close your eyes and you see her, right there, always about to say something wicked—
Open them. She’s gone. The her you have now is frozen silhouette, she has left no trace except in the way you talk a little like her—the day you notice this you laugh bitter-bleak.
It is so easy to imagine her still by your side, the most difficult thing in the world to ignore her absence in every conversation. In every pause you know she would have filled, grief crawls up you, leaving marks as it scratches its way through.
How can anyone stand it?
If she were here, what would she say? (She’s not here. Stare intently at the space she used to occupy and maybe you could delusion it true.)
What are you doing? Well, what are you doing?
-
Hold your breath and count to ten.
Un-deux-trois-quatre-cinq-six-sept-huit-neuf-dix.
Do it again in English, for good luck.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-
You can wait and wait and still nobody is coming.
-
It’s April again, snowing, the next time she sees Giselle.
The weather is unusual this time of year. Every conversation with a stranger bundled in tuque and sweater starts the same way, "Odd seeing snow this time of year."
Cold.
Emmeline fights off shivers in her thin-thread cardigan. Giselle, seated beside her on the bench before the hill, offers her her scarf. "Want my scarf?"
Emmeline shakes her head. She won’t take more from Giselle.
Giselle shuffles back.
There is this awkward painful space between them, maybe ten-twenty inches that feel instead like ten-twenty meters. Is that distance normal? Emmeline isn’t sure how she’s supposed to hold herself.
"So how have you been?" asks Giselle.
Emmeline swallows. English, when it’s just the two of them, in this part of town? She matches Giselle anyways. "Oh, good. Good." At least Giselle is making the effort to start a conservation.
"That’s good. I’ve been really busy. It’s been a lot." Her eyelashes flutter.
"Right, those expansion plans you mentioned?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah yeah—we wrapped that up a few months ago. I can’t believe you still remember that!" (Emmelines cheeks go pink. Right, because Giselle has been too busy for her for months if not years.) "You busy too eh?"
"Yeah, sure," Emmeline says. Just never too busy for a friend.
Giselle hums.
Emmeline watches the falling snow.
"Are you planning anything new?" she asks a few moments later.
"Oh yeah, plenty. Looking forward to the new year," Giselle laughs.
"That’s good. I’m excited too—finally biting the bullet and starting."
"Mnhm." There’s a funny look in Giselle’s eye. "Hey, you’re still on learning English?"
"Of course." Not a beat before her —Honestly, Emmeline is almost offended. (The selfish upset thing to say: I wanted to keep up my English with you. The normal thing to say: ) "I looked for English teachers."
"That’s cool." Again, that look in Giselle’s eyes. "I…I respect you for that. I haven’t kept up with French."
"Would you want to practice?"
"No, no, it’s okay," Giselle says simply. "I-I’ve probably forgotten everything."
"You know, I’d be happy to teach you again!"
The smile on Giselle’s face is tight. "Désolé, sorry, I probably don’t have the time."
Hearing crisp French out of Giselle’s mouth after all this time is an odd thing, it strikes such a bitter chord to hear how Giselle still manages to hit the accents. Emmeline wonders when she started to forget just how the other sounded in the language. She almost can’t remember the last time she heard Giselle speak it before today.
Wading through words that don’t belong to her, Emmeline says, "It’s fine. I understand." The sentence sits like charcoal in her throat.
Giselle doesn’t have an answer.
They sit and look down at the snow-dusted path in long silence.
Emmeline tries to summon up words to fill the sinking glacial emptiness, but really what is there to say?
Silence.
Everything unsaid lies in front of them in a blurred, scribbled mess. How do you start to untangle this a long time coming? What does it take to look back and think for certain, oh, I missed our last chance.? When do you realize other people have real lives and you are but a little matchstick girl?
English, French—none of it could be enough.
More silence.
Giselle shifts her arm, moves to stand up. Emmeline stares but makes no move to stop her.
"I have to go now, but it was really pleasant talking with you, Emmeline. Don’t be a stranger—take care." She does a little half-smile, and Emmeline returns an ashy version of it.
Then Giselle turns to leave and return to down the hill. Her steps are slow or maybe it’s Emmeline’s perception of time—she watches, fixated, and sears these final moments into her memory.
Emmeline follows her back as Giselle climbs back up and over their little hill, and then she’s gone for the last last time.
-
Sometimes people break their promises in snowy April.
And sometimes people leave your life in early May.