Work Text:
As Matilda, now 11, was playing in Miss Honey's garden, she heard a voice saying "Come." She looked up and saw a girl about her age appear through the tall hedges. She had brown skin, black glasses, braces, straight brown hair, bangs, and a friendly smile.
"Who are you?" Matilda asked as she approached the girl.
"My name is Mariah. What's yours?" Mariah asked.
"Matilda Wormwood. It's nice to meet you."
"You, too. Come."
"Where are we going?" Matilda asked.
"You'll see," Mariah said, pulling her arm.
"Ow, ow!"
"Sorry, I just get excited at times like this!"
They arrived at a big, horizontal, wide stone, where part of the stone was open to the outside world so there would be an entrance. There were about four teenagers sitting on cushions at a stone table. There were lanterns of several different colors sitting in the top right corner.
"Everyone," Mariah announced, "meet Matilda Wormwood."
Everyone bowed their heads. A peppy, tall, blonde, fair-skinned, 14-year-old girl with round white glasses, got up from her cushion and approached Matilda
"I'm Moriah, said just like her name, but like this," She introduced herself, looked at Mariah, and wrote on the stone wall "Moriah" with chalk before washing it with a bucket of water.
A 16-year-old boy with tan skin, an unbuttoned plaid shirt, jean shorts, and a white shirt, said: "I'm Aaron." Matilda was automatically smitten. After a few seconds, she snapped out of it as another boy, less attractive, came up to her.
"I'm Frederick." He was wearing a plaid shirt as well, but it was buttoned up, and instead of the shirt having blue and white checkers, they were red and white. He had glasses and dark blonde curly hair that seemed to be clumped up. Matilda wanted to cringe, but decided that it would be impolite. He sat back down as the last one, a motherly looking character, came up.
"Hello. I'm Carol," she said in a sweet voice. Although she was another 17-year-old, she looked sort of like an elderly woman and had the presence of one. She had short red hair that looked a bit like Margaret Thatcher's, although not as big and it covered her forehead. She was the oldest in the group.
And for the first time, she began to… smile. Genuinely. And she felt certain that she would begin to belong with equals—nay, misfits—like these.