Chapter Text
It was a rainy night in the area they lived in. They were both a bit happy about it, for the farm did not need their tending to, but they were also sad that they could not play outside or sit under the tree in which all children in the area read books under.
The fifteen year old boy’s name was Percival Caldwell. He was the brightest boy in his school, and moderately popular, despite not being involved in idle chatter or gossip in school. He had a fancy pocket watch that he carried around everywhere, not to flex, but to honestly check the time and quickly put it away. The girls and boys at school had made a rumor that the pocket watch had been bought brand new at his birth, because of how wealthy his family was, but to Percival himself, it was preposterous. The pocket watch had been given to Percival at birth, yes, but it was passed down from generation to generation. It was a tradition in the Caldwell family to loosely tie it around the newborn baby’s wrist when they are born.
This boy shall be further known as Percy.
Now, you may think, since there is a boy, there must be a girl. You are correct. The fourteen year old girl’s name was Anneliese Baker. She was the brightest girl in school, and was, like Percy, a very likeable character. She was very sensible, which was what was valued in a girl back in a year like 1910. She had read lots of books, and had often lied awake worried about what books she would miss out on if she had died soon. She made an awful lot of requests to her family, one of them being to bury books near her grave when she died so she always had something to read. She was always found with a book, whether it be at lunch or underneath the tree aforementioned, and some girls found her admirable, while others found her quite performative, which was not the intention of her actions.
This girl shall henceforth be known as Ann.
While others think that the two brightest children in school must get along well, they were often quite wrong, although you would never tell if you did not know the boy or girl personally. In public or important settings, the two would act professional. They would greet each other by saying, “Hello, Miss Baker,” or “Hello, Mr. Caldwell,” but anyone who knew the two well knew that they were only addressing each other by their last names because even the thought of saying the other’s first name aloud made them want to gag.
Sometimes, the two would be assigned to work on projects together, which was often, as the teachers knew about their secret hate for each other. They would watch the two as they tried to work out a solution where they could work together peacefully and never interact. The two’s learning styles did not agree with each other, making the common goal more difficult to reach. While Ann’s style was to approach everything head on with an actual plan, Percy liked to approach things blind, trying to challenge himself in the process of trying to complete a task. Their tasks, while supposed to be done together, would always end up being split into two parts, Percy’s part and Ann’s part. The papers were separate, the wording of the paper was not related to the other, and the two main things different about the papers were the top parts that specifically stated that both parties consented to their grades being based on the parts that they did, and not the project as a whole. The teachers complied, but most of the time the two of them had to redo the project with someone much more agreeable.
Their hate for each other was only shown in private moments, like when they were at gatherings with their small group of friends. It was the two rivals, a boy named Garret, his girl August, and her sister Connie. They would often gather under the tree mentioned two times now, and they would begin to have a picnic.
Garret, August, and Connie, since they were close to the two rivals, often witnessed their heated debates when they had picnics. Today, fortunately, was a very organized picnic on Saturday, September third. The five friends had no reason to worry about going to school, and, an unfortunate event for the fourteen and fifteen year olds in the quintet, there were many smaller children running about.
Ann leaned her back against the tree, opening a book and putting it on her lap. She wore a nice afternoon dress, colored white and a nice shade of yellow. A hat laid beside her, decorated with a crown of flowers made by Connie. Her brown boots were untied but not taken off, and her hair was tied in a ribbon the same shade of yellow as her dress.
Connie sat next to her, engrossed in the canvas she was currently painting. The colors were random but ultimately came together in Connie’s eyes, and she smiled, as she viewed the painting as a whole and held it up to the light, to admire it better.
August was making a flower crown with Garret, trying to successfully train her partner on how to make them correctly, so they could stack their finished products onto Ann’s hat. August, also known as Auggie by her close friends, was laughing at her partner’s fumbling fingers, as they were quite large, and way more useful in practically anything but making flower crowns.
Percy did not have a book in his hands or a painting or a flower crown, but instead he had his pocket watch, and was tracing his fingers around the design of a silver dancing bard. His main friends in the group had been both Auggie and Garret, but as he watched them have their own time away from the group, he decided not to interrupt. Although he had nothing else to do, he had his own mind to keep him occupied, and that was enough for him.
After Auggie and Garret concluded their quiet private time, the quintet had gathered up on the blanket they had laid out and opened up the basket in the middle. It was all made by Auggie’s dear mother, who didn’t have much else to do this morning, and decided to make her daughter and her friends lunch.
The five of them ate quietly, and Garret had noticed something unusual. Percy was sitting right next to Ann, and Ann was next to Percy. Ann was glaring at Percy, maybe it was something he had said, and Percy was defiantly glaring back, trying not to crack an amused smile at the sight of Ann’s frustration with him. Garret grinned, although he kept it a secret, since nobody else had seemed to notice the tension between the two.
Ann had often just started glaring at Percy even though she didn’t know what for. He was always doing something anyway, and the smile that had broken free from his lips confirmed that he was trying to hide that fact from her.
Ann smacked the hand holding his sandwich, and it almost fell if not for him being mid-bite. Now it simply hung from his mouth in an idiotic position for such a mature boy at a mature age. He quickly picked it up in another hand so as to not look like a fool to passersby.
Ann leaned in close to him, so others wouldn’t hear the way she had berated the loud manner in which he was chewing his sandwich. He so badly wanted to throw his head back in a long laugh, but he knew it would be inappropriate in his current situation, and he did not want his ear to be pulled by the angry girl next to him.
He leaned in to whisper to her, “How about we fix how loud your whispering is first? My chewing may be loud, but your idea of whispering, in reality, is practically bursting my eardrums. How about I enroll you in a class on how to whisper?”
Their altercations often started this way, and this current one, which is in fact so insignificant to the story that it is mind-boggling, shall be skipped over. I am hoping that you get the deal now. Ann and Percy often found themselves disagreeing over something as simple as the loudness of which one chews or the manner in which one is whispering. There was once a time where they argued over the way a page in a book should be marked, but that will be saved for sometime else.
These two, Ann and Percy, will be involved in many more altercations as time goes on. These are the unfortunate troubles of time, troubles that will increase with each chapter you manage to go through. Though, before you decide that you will read further, I’d like to advise you that each bit of this story is an accurate retelling of the events told by many people over the years, despite the fact that most people were old and most likely had some form of dementia.
A trouble made of time indeed.