Chapter Text
My day started off as any other day, with my mother screaming at me to get up before we missed the plane. Let’s rewind a bit shall we? Hi, my name is River, as of January I am 19 years old and still living with my parents. How sad is that right? My parents are what most people call ‘archeologists’, personally I would call them ‘more emotionally unavailable the older I get’. You see, it seemed that the older I got each year the more they’d withdraw from my life, always with a lame excuse. Like the time they missed one of my biggest school events (which at the time was my theatre performance where I played Little red riding hood in my favourite musical Into The Woods) with an excuse that their client dinner was accidently scheduled on the same day. There was no client dinner, they don't HAVE clients . After some time you get used to being ignored by your own parents though, even as their only child. This morning they had apparently remembered about me because my mother was shouting at me in rapid fire Polish that we were going to miss the plane if I didn't hurry up.
I practically fell out of bed trying my best to ignore the ear piercing screams of my parents downstairs as they looked for our passports. After laying on the floor of my room for a few extra seconds I decided to grab my chargers and throw them into my duffel bag along with my headphones, not wanting my mother to yell at me again. I didn’t dare put my noise cancelling headphones on just yet knowing that when my mother is stressed about something, ANYTHING could set her off, even taking a single step.
Once the chargers were away safely, I opened my dresser and looked at the clothes options with bleary eyes. If you think we’re rich because we’re archeologists, think again. My dad’s friend Professor Greenbloom is one of the best archeologists that I know of, or well I guess you could call him an archeologist but he more so specializes with fantastical beings (elves, dwarves, fairies the sorts), but he isn’t rich at all. I had never actually SEEN any of those creatures with my own eyes but the way Greenbloom talks about them, as if most of those creatures are old friends, makes me convinced that at least some of what he’s saying is true. Anywho, I practically live the average teenage life but I only see home every other month, sometimes even every two months if I'm REALLY unlucky. I do online work to keep up with basic school needs but I'm still not the best at communicating with my peers since there aren’t any at the archeology sites.
After getting dressed in my favourite black and green Beetlejuice shirt, dark brown baggy jeans and a black leather jacket that I bought when I was 15 and still fits like a glove somehow, I made my way towards the stairs. I could already hear my parents' screams all the way from my room but now that I was closer and could hear them clearer, it made my head throb as if someone was hammering my skull. The noise made me lose focus for a second and I tripped near the bottom of the stairs accidentally getting my mother’s attention. ‘RIVER! EAT WHAT YOU CAN NOW! WE ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR THE PLANE!’ she screamed at me before going back to lecturing my father. I suppressed an eye roll and scarfed down some cold leftover toast trying my best to tune out the screams. My leg was starting to bounce, I noticed the way I drummed my fingers in annoyance and suppressed my eye from twitching. I had always been what other kids said was ‘short tempered’, I call it being annoyed at the world. Recently my mother had also taken me to the doctor (she thought she was mother of the year for doing that) and they told me I had something called ‘asperger’s syndrome’ which could explain why I was so different from my peers most of the time. I had just shrugged it off at the time but it did explain things like why I wouldn’t eat my meal if any of the food was touching on the plate or the way I'd get angry whenever I was in a large crowd with big amounts of noise. I was snapped out of my train of thought by my father yelling for me to finish and meet them in the car. So I swallowed down the last bit of my toast, chugged the orange juice left on the table and grabbed my duffel bag.
Once outside, I helped my parents load the suitcases into the car listening to my mother berate my father that we should’ve done that earlier. I put my headphones on and chose my Ride the Cyclone playlist because if there’s anything in this world that can calm me down it’ll always be musicals (and gods dammit I LOVE the vocals in Noel’s lament and all of Mischa’s songs). I watched my parents get into the car, my father sitting behind the wheel because my mother had major road rage. I calmly looked out of the window, smiling slightly at the small house I hated living in so much. My mother put the navigation to the airport on and we were off.
The car ride was surprisingly peaceful, at least I assume it was. The second we pulled out of the driveway I let my imagination take me. For the first half an hour of the ride, I had my nose buried in my sketchbook. I was drawing everything I could think of from dragons, to fairies, to trolls and even borrowers. My parents would call this ‘living in fantasy too much’ but I call it being myself. I felt the car slow a few times, I'm guessing there was some traffic to the airport then. Apart from that, the drive went by smoothly and surprisingly calmly…too calm. I took my headphones off at some point and my parents were…talking calmly? Their mood swings confused me all the time but whatever worked for them. I just hoped we would get to the plane on time.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NOTE: I WILL ONLY UPDATE THIS FIC ONCE I HAVE THE FULL FIC COMPLETED! I HAVE NO CLUE WHEN THAT WILL BE AS I AM CURRENTLY WRITING HIGHSCHOOL FINALS! THIS IS ALSO UP ON WATTPAD UNDER THE SAME USERNAME! MY PROFILE PIC ON THERE IS NO FACE FROM SPIRITED AWAY WITH SEXY LEGS ADDED ON. IF YOU WANT TO LEAVE ANY STUPID COMMENTS I RECOMMEND DOING THAT ON WATTPAD SINCE I GET NOTIFYS FROM THERE! HAVE A NICE READING TIME NOW AND I'M SORRY IF THIS TAKES TOO LONG