Chapter Text
1.1
Laura didn’t mean to kick her ball over the fence separating her garden from the neighbour’s sprawling back yard. It just sort of happened and the next thing she knew, she was hesitantly knocking on their door, praying that it was one of the children that answered. Her shoulders sagged with relief when a girl around her age appeared at the door, eyebrow raised.
“Um, hello, I’m Laura, Laura Hollis, from next door? I don’t want to intrude or anything and I hope I didn’t damage any of the plants in your garden but I may have accidentally kicked my ball over and I was wondering if I could perhaps get it back, or you could get it and I could stay here or – ”
“You’re rambling,” the girl drawled, sounding impossibly unaffected for an 11 year old
“I’m sorry, really, my dad says that I talk too much and that – oh, I’m off again, aren’t I?”
The girl simply laughed, stepping forward and pulling the door shut behind her, “I’ll take you round the side, Mother is home,”
She said this as if it explained everything. Upon further thought, Laura supposed that it does. They’d only lived in the house for a couple of weeks yet Laura was already accustomed to their mother scolding her children at all times of day with varying levels of contempt lacing her words.
Laura reached into her pocket and dropped a couple of jelly beans into the girl’s hand, as way of thanks. She looked down at them and shrugged before popping a couple into her mouth and winking at Laura.
She could feel the raven haired girl’s eyes burning into the back of her head as she made her way back along the meandering path to her house, ball tucked under her arm.
The next day, a football came careening over her fence, landing directly in the moat of the island fortress Laura was constructing. From her spot on the grass, she could hear the faint voices of two children.
“– I swear to Dickens if you do that again I will –”
“You’ll do what? Tell Mother?”
The sound of rustling leaves.
“Ok, ok, ok, OK! Calm down sis, I won’t do it again!” this is punctuated by laboured breaths
“Good,”
“You’re going over to get it,”
“Will, I will castrate you,”
“I’ll tell Mattie that you stole her vintage poetry collection,”
“You wouldn’t dare…fine,” a heavy sigh, “Wait here, willy-boy, let the mature one do the dirty work,”
A minute later, the girl’s head popped over the fence. Laura tried to raise her eyebrow and smirk. It ended up as more of a confused grimace.
“Fancy seeing you here,”
“A very good morning to you too, cupcake,” the girl replied
“As you no doubt heard, my imbecile of a brother –”
“I can hear you!”
“Shut up William. Anyway, my brother is the worst footballer the world has ever seen,”
“I haven’t magically lost my ability to hear,”
She briefly turned around to glare down before gesturing to the ball sat beside Laura, who stood up and attempted to throw it back.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, eyes following the ball as it bounced pathetically before rolling back at her feet. She opted to pass it to the girl instead, still red faced from her frankly awful attempt at throwing the ball, perhaps the reason that she’d managed to kick her own over the fence the day before.
“Thanks poptart,”
“No problem…”
“Carmilla,”
“Laura,”
“I know, you told me,”
“Then why do you keep calling me various baked goods?”
Carmilla simply winked before disappearing.
Laura returned to her fortress, collapsing on the patch of worn grass beside it. It was going to be a long summer.
“Happy birthday, Carm,” Laura grinned as Carmilla climbed through her window, landing gracefully on her bed.
“You didn’t have too…” She mumbled when she caught sight of the clumsily wrapped gift and cupcake that Laura produced from behind her back.
“Of course I did! You don’t get to turn 12 every day! Wait a second, let me light the cake,”
Carmilla eyed the match in Laura’s hand warily, “Are you sure you can be trusted with that?”
She just rolled her eyes at that, “You sound like my dad,”
“I’m offended, Hollis,”
“You should be, Karnstein,”
Once she managed to light it, after several attempts, Laura nudged Carmilla, prompting her to blow out the candle.
“…happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to grumpy cat, happy birthday to YOU!”
Carmilla’s hair fell over her eyes as she smirked into the camera suddenly thrust in her face, tickling Laura’s sides and leaving the cupcake forgotten as Laura fought back, targeting the sensitive spot on her neck.
They lay back, breathlessly laughing with messy hair and red cheeks. Carmilla turned the gift in her hands, carefully unwrapping it. It was a charm bracelet with a small star on it. In an uncharacteristic show of emotion, she initiated a hug, pulling Laura closer to her because her mother only ever gave her things she had no use for. Generic gift cards and floral dresses, the latter hanging mockingly in her wardrobe like a pathetic reminder of the fact that she was a disappointment.
Laura doesn’t quite understand why she had to wait on the doorstep of Carmilla’s house. Why she was never invited inside even when it’s pouring with rain and the wind is blowing fiercely. She caught sight of Mattie, once, through the crack in the door as Carmilla sorted through her various keys. Elegant and haughty, impeccable posture as she began her ascent up the stairs.
“Locked out?”
Dark brown eyes stared up at her, through a messy fringe and long eyelashes. William was curled into her side, snoring lightly and covered by her jacket. Carmilla’s mother had a habit of leaving for meetings while she and Will were at school. Mattie usually returned home before the temperature drops, ushering her siblings in – or carrying them if they had fallen asleep, but they never dared speak a word of that, and the shouting begins the second their mother meets steely eyes.
This time Mattie was out at some business mixer and Laura suspected that the two had been sat on the doorstep for a while, Carmilla stroking Will’s hair subconsciously as she finished her algebra homework.
“I guess so,”
Will began to stir, mumbling nonsensically.
“He’s always been a weakling,” Carmilla said, trying to cloak her fondness for her brother and failing miserably
Later, when Will was sprawled on the Hollis’ sofa and her father sound asleep, Carmilla crawled into bed with Laura and whispered her into a deep slumber.
Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when she woke in the middle of the night to erratic flashes of light creeping through the gap in her curtains. Laura stumbled out of bed and pulled on a sweater, only to find Carmilla sat astride their shared fence, waving at her to come down.
“Tell me about the stars again?”
“Sure,” Laura watched as Carmilla shifted in her periphery.
She feels Carmilla’s hand encircle her wrist and gently guide it upwards towards the constellations.
“The Japanese say that Vega,” a finger pointed to the constellation Carmilla informed her was ‘Lyra’, “is a goddess, an immortal princess, known as Tanabata. She falls in love with a mortal, Altair. But when Tanabata’s father finds out, he is furious and tells her that she is forbidden from dating the mortal – he is not worthy of her love. Altair and Vega were placed in the sky, separated by the Milky Way. Every year, on the 7th night of the 7th moon, a bridge of magpies forms across the Milky Way, and they are reunited. Sometimes Altair’s annual trip across the Milky Way is treacherous, though, and he doesn’t make it. In that case, Tanabata’s tears form raindrops that fall over Japan,”
Carmilla was voice is wistful and distant and Laura felt her eyes prick with tears when she whispered the last few words, sliding her hand out of Carmilla’s grasp and entwining their fingers instead, bringing their joint hands down between them and brushing Carmilla’s knuckles with her thumb.
They were lying in Laura’s garden, atop a hastily strewn blanket and an assortment of pillows. Carmilla buried her nose into Laura’s favourite yellow pillow and squeezed her hand tightly.
“Carm?”
“Hmm?”
“We’re going to be friends forever, aren’t we?”
“Sure, sweetheart,” Carmilla mumbled in reply and Laura realised that she was treading the fine line between sleep and reality.
Laura was the first to wake up, cracking her neck and frowning at the stiffness of her limbs. Carmilla looked infinitely younger and peaceful as she snored softly, hair madly strewn on the pillow. By her watch, it was 4am. Enough time for Carmilla to get back home. And for them to marvel at the sunrise together before Carmilla legged it over the fence, still hugging the yellow pillow to her chest.
Laura isn’t exactly well versed in physics or even philosophy, but she’s pretty sure that forever is longer than the 2 and a half years she had with Carmilla before her father announced that they were moving to some far away town.
She supposed this is how they were destined to end, her hand pressed against the glass of the moving van as Carmilla stood, stoic demeanour cracking, at the gate of their house.
That night, as she slept in their shell of a new house, Laura pulled the duvet tighter around her, vaguely registering that Carmilla never returned her yellow pillow.
Carmilla stared at the ceiling listlessly. It was over. Her heart thrummed in her ear, threatening to burst at any second. She held the notebook Laura had gotten her for her 13th birthday under the light of her lamp, tracing the words carefully written on the first page in Laura’s neat script.
Write me a constellation.
1.2
“Bet you can’t climb higher than me!”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Whoever gets to the top branch the fastest buys ice-creams later?”
Laura quickly shrugged off her school bag, depositing it at the base of the tree, “Race you!”
They returned home, an hour later, shoes scuffed with mud caked soles. Carmilla’s mother tutted at her and spat out that she’d have to hand wash them herself. Laura’s father askd her why she’s always hanging out with that girl from next door and Laura, honey, I’m just worried that you won’t make other friends.
“Lauuuura,”
They were walking home from school, side by side on the pavement.
“Oh come on Carm, it’s only one week,”
“What will I do without you here to walk to school with me? I’ll become some sort of recluse and live alone in a hut on a hill,”
“You’re being melodramatic,”
“There’s nothing melodramatic about eternal solitude, creampuff,” she said seriously, bumping Laura’s shoulder with her own.
“You know I’d stay if I could but my dad’s family are super into the whole reunion thing. It’d be like renouncing my heritage if I didn’t turn up,”
“Fine,”
“Good to know I have your approval,”
“…I’ll miss you,”
Something inside Laura melted at the way Carmilla’s voice cracked slightly and she pulled her into a tight embrace.
“I miss you more,”
“I’ll miss you the most,”
“I’ll miss you the mostest!”
“I’m not even going to ruin that for you, Laura,” Carmilla whispered it into her hair and Laura tried to ignore the shiver that ran down her spine when Carmilla pulled back and brushed her cheek with her thumb.
“You’re insufferable,”
“When did you learn such a long word, creampuff?”
“Shut up, popsicle,”
“We both know that doesn’t work,”
She was building a TARDIS out of yogurt pots and cardboard boxes, Carmilla perched on her bed, flicking through Mattie’s book on architecture and critiquing the structural soundness of the police box, showing Laura diagrams of solid foundations, hopping off of the bed and running back to her house to grab a torch. Laura couldn’t help but beam when she returned brandishing the flashlight and held it in place as Carmilla secured it with copious amounts of tape.
Laura was aghast when she revealed that she’d never watched doctor who and Carmilla didn’t bother arguing when she was all but pushed onto Laura’s desk chair and the laptop was booted up.
“So, I’ve got all of them on DVD, where should we start?”
“Wherever your heart takes you, cutie,”
Carmilla smiled at her lazily over the top of her sketchbook. They were sat opposite each other, sipping milkshakes. Well, Laura was sipping a milkshake and Carmilla was taking glances at the glass occasionally, commenting on the sugar content.
“I guess that’s just what makes you so sweet, eh cupcake?”
“You’re such a dork,”
“I’ll have you know that I’m punk rock,”
“Yeah? I’m sure the smudges of pencil lead on your nose are very punk rock,”
Carmilla stared at her in disbelief, quickly checking her reflection in her glass. Sure enough, grey streaks of lead littered her nose.
“Awh, don’t pout, grumpy cat! Whatcha’ drawing?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? And I don’t pout, cutie,”
Laura kicked her shin underneath the table.
“Ow…ok, how about this: I’ll show you when I’ve filled up this entire sketchbook? Deal?”
She only agreed because she reasoned that Carmilla spent eighty percent of her waking hours with a pencil in her hand, absent-mindedly recording the landscape around her and was bound to finish it soon.
Carmilla would later deny that she let Laura smudge cat whiskers on her cheeks with her fingertips, even though she knew that Laura had the polaroids to prove it.
Carmilla could tell Laura would freak out.
“Ohmygodohmygodomygod,”
“Breath cupcake,”
“You’re wearing my owl sweater,”
“So?”
“I have to go get my camera wait here!”
When Laura returned a minute later, Carmilla was still sat on her bed, looking entirely unamused.
“It’s not my fault that your dad spilt milk on me,”
“Hey, at least you’re not crying over it!” Laura puts on possibly the cheesiest grin ever to grace the Earth and Carmilla doesn’t bother to hide the smile creeping onto her face.
“That was shocking,” She said with mock-distaste
“You love me anyway,”
Carmilla grasped her chest dramatically, dropping onto one knee, “Indeed, it is the curse of my existence,”
“You’re silly,”
“You love me anyway,” Carmilla echoed her words between laughter as Laura tackled her with tickles.
“Laura no!”
“Laura yes!” She replied as she prepared her run-up
“You’re going to kill me. This is it. I’m going to die. Tell Will that I hate him,”
“Awh come on don’t be a wimp, grumpy cat,”
“…Alright then. Bury me with my first editions,” Carmilla closed her eyes and braced herself
“Here we go…yeeeeehaaaawwwww!”
And with that, Laura launched herself into the air and jumped onto Carmilla’s back.
“Carm, come on, we only have 1 minute to complete the course,”
Carmilla sighed as she steadied Laura, acutely aware of the tanned arms flung around her neck. Laura had set up an obstacle course with pipes and tyres. It was all going so well, until the paddling pool filled with water that led to a pipe they both had to crawl through.
“Uh, Laura, I,”
“What’s wrong?”
Her heart rate began to pick up.
“Nothing, it’s fine, we’ll be fine,”
Laura hopped off of her and dove into the pool.
Breath.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
When Carmilla sunk down into the water to begin the trek through the tunnel, it all caught up with her.
The water attacked her in waves, swallowing her limbs. Her breathing became ragged and it was only when Laura stood up at the exit of the tunnel that she realised that Carmilla had not followed her out.
“Carm? Carmilla? Shit,”
After she had hauled Carmilla out of the tunnel, she threw a blanket around her and held her close. The girl was shaking and looked so small under the cover of garish tartan.
“I’m sorry,”
“Nothing to be sorry about. In fact, I should be the one apologising. I had no idea,”
“No, it’s just…she…”
Her mother, then. Laura felt the rage bubbling up inside her. Carmilla’s mother had done something to her.
“We can talk about it if you want?”
Carmilla shook her head and turned to nuzzle into Laura’s neck, breathing evening out.
Her sketchbook sat in her lap as they sped down the motorway, tears barely drying before new ones were streaming down her cheeks. There were shadowy sketches of mystical creatures hiding in plain sight, in parks or the library, and poetry scrawled in the margin.
She loved them all, like little pieces of Carmilla dancing on the page.
She couldn’t bring herself to turn the last page. Her heart was heavy and her hands trembled. She pushed the sketchbook under her bed and it lay forgotten, hidden by storage boxes and old toys.
1.3
Laura Hollis doesn’t remember much about her first home. Vague images of playing football alone in the garden, never daring to kick it over the fence, faint echoes of sky blue slats of wood on their side and burnt umber on their neighbour’s side. There was no real heartbreak as the town blurred past her on moving day.