Work Text:
A fixer-upper, Efia called it.
Tala harrumphed as she planted her foot on the shovel's lip and speared it into the earth. The ground was hard underfoot, and even harder when she needed it tilled. It was a wonder she'd managed to plant what she already had.
With sweat beading across her brow, Tala wrenched her body into heaving up the earth, spooning a mass of earth and twisted wood roots up and over itself.
"Holes in the roof," she muttered to herself, and straightened up to swipe her sleeve across her forehead. It came away wet. "Ancient mattress. Stink of mildew in the house. Trees and weeds overgrown up to the doorstep. Not even a path from the house to the town."
It wasn't what she'd expected, to be sure.
Tala remembered what the farm had once been. She'd spent a year here when she was little, too sickly to be in school. Her doctor had recommended she get as much fresh air as she could, and with her parents both so busy with work, it had been a no-brainer for Tala to go and live with her Lola for a while.
It had been beautiful, then, with varnished wood walls that had since rotted over and needed replaced, a gorgeous field lush with homegrown fruits and vegetables, and a massive pot on her Lola's stovetop that had always been simmering something or other.
It had been a long time since then. Tala supposed she couldn't reasonably expect the farm not to have changed in twenty years, but she could never have imagined how terribly it had degraded since her Lola had gotten sick.
Her shoulders ached. The shitty mattress hadn't made for the most restful sleep, and she'd woken up in more pain than she'd gone to sleep with the night before.
"Hays…" she heaved a sigh and tossed her shovel to the ground, giving up. "Need to go buy some seeds, anyway. May as well take a break."
She glanced across the sorry excuse of a field to the ramshackle scarecrow she'd fashioned the previous day. It was falling apart, with bits of straw poking out from between its ragged seams and a scribble of marker pen for a face.
"Talking to no one, right? Unless you want to fashion yourself a mouth and answer me."
The scarecrow stared mutely back at her.
She went to say something more, but a crow let out a sudden kark! in one of the nearby trees, and Tala flinched. Her jump was both in shock, and in embarrassment at having been caught having a conversation with a scarecrow, and she stormed off with a fierce blush. Definitely time for a break.
She hadn't spent much time in town, yet. Truth be told, the thought exhausted her. She'd already had to make a charted list of who lived where, and which shops she'd need to frequent.
Liam Byrne is the mayor. Efia and Varun are married, scientists but they handle carpentry projects when someone needs it done. Sabine runs that old lab down by the blacksmith's, and the smith is that guy that pissed me off. Was his name Vincent?
She ticked her list off on her fingers as she made her way into town.
Li Zhao Yu runs the general store. He lives over the shop, next to Ling Ying Wei, the doctor. Erik Torsten runs the local inn, and he rents rooms to Iselin and Ollie. They work for that shady old guy and that less shady lady friend of his up by the mines, although they wouldn't tell me what kind of work they do.
She was so lost in thought that she didn't see the group of townsfolk relaxing under the shade of a tree.
"Good morning, Tala!" Someone called out, and Tala looked up to see a cluster of vaguely familiar faces smiling up at her.
"Oh." She offered back a weak grin and an even weaker wave, and hoped it wasn't too obvious that she couldn't remember their names. She'd need to check her list again, later. "Morning. Enjoying the sun?"
"More than you, I bet." One of the almost-strangers grinned, not unkindly. "Shovelling dirt in this heat sounds real sketchy."
He had green hair cropped short, and Tala thought he was renting a room with that red-haired woman who ran the ranch just south of her farm. She hadn't paid her much heed beyond a passing glance at the side of her muscles - from the boundless energy she exuded, she scared the life out of her.
"Yeah," Tala grimaced, rolling her shoulders. "I'm lucky that I don't burn too easily. The farm being so overgrown probably helps keep it shaded, too."
"Can't complain about that," the green-haired man shrugged. Tala nodded, backing away with her smile still plastered on her face, and they mercifully bid her farewell with a chorus of goodbyes and waves.
Tala hurried away from them, ducking her head in the hopes that it might discourage further conversation. She had been meaning to swing by the store to see if she could afford a pack of cauliflower seeds, but her frayed nerves were ruffled, and now she only wanted to hide.
The beach would do.
Tala had visited there almost right after moving in. She remembered it fondly, with its tide pools and warm sand that scalded her between her toes.
Unlike her farm, it was much as she'd pictured it, although the bridge to the stretch of beach with her tide pools had rotted into disrepair. She'd enjoyed what little beach she could access, with its sand just as soft and inviting as she remembered, and best of all, it had been blissfully empty.
"Perfect," she whispered to herself as she crossed the town bridge to the little beach and saw it empty again, now. She crossed the beach to the shoreline, until the lip of the tide just barely kissed her boots.
Peace at last.
Tala put her nose up, drinking in the salt breeze. A pair of gulls were fighting over a washed-up starfish a little way down the beach, and the sea was the only other sound.
That near-silence was, perhaps, the reason why she was so easily spooked.
Something soft brushed suddenly against her ankle, which promptly stopped Tala's heart and sent her launching sideways.
The wet sand slipped underfoot. She sprawled to the side, her footing lost right out from under her, and whatever had touched her yowled as she splattered it with sand-sludge and seawater.
She landed in the shallows of the water, just deep enough for it to lap right over her. When she pushed herself to sit up, she saw a little mackerel cat hunched by the waterline, bristling with rage.
"Shit." A woman's voice sounded from across the beach.
Tala looked up and over, at the little wood cabin she'd hardly noticed was there during her last visit. It didn't look abandoned, but it was shut tight, with curtains darkening its windows and no sound from within. She'd assumed it was the local fisherman's shed, or something along those lines.
She certainly hadn't expected her.
The woman who emerged from the cabin was tall and bone-thin, olive-skinned, with a dusting of freckles across her cheeks and a wave of curled hair swept to one side, shot through from black to white. She was in all black, with ripped tears up the arms of her shirt and chains hanging from the belt loops of her jeans, and as she drew closer, Tala could see she was pierced across her face and ears, all of them black and shining, as if pinpricks of obsidian ornamented her rather than stained metal.
"Are you all right?" She ran her eyes over Tala, and shit, did she have two different colours in her eyes?
"Uh," Tala licked her lips and tasted sea-salt. "Yes. Thanks."
"Are you afraid of cats?" The stranger glanced between her and the cat, who had shaken the sand off of itself and now mewed pitifully up at her.
"No?" Tala rushed to defend herself, and her voice ended up coming out a little too urgent to be believable. The stranger cocked her brow, staring her down for a few long, painful moments, but then shrugged and turned to her cat. Apparently, if she wasn't hurt, Tala was unimportant.
"Come here," the woman spoke softly to the tabby, scooping it up in her arms. "Hanimiş benim Mantım?"
Tala stared after her as she turned and carried her cat back to her cabin and disappeared inside. She closed the door behind herself, and aside from her footprints in the sand, it was like she'd never been there.
"Ay, gago…" Tala pushed herself back to her feet, although she was feeling much heavier now her clothes were soaked through. She limped back to town, feeling even more sorry for herself than she had before, and dripping a trail that marked her embarrassment.
The familiar group spotted her again on her way back to the farm, and rushed over to see what had happened to her.
"Woah, Tala," the white-haired woman grimaced as she took in the state of her. "Teo was only kidding about the sun, you know. You get that overheated?"
"It wasn't on purpose," Tala mumbled, her cheeks burning. One of them took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, and she gratefully clutched it tighter about herself, shivering.
"You'll need to get warm and dry fast if you don't want to catch something," another one said, a man with sharp cheekbones and a dash of deep blue dyed through his hair. "Did Efia and Varun fix up your boiler?"
"Well enough." Tala thought miserably about her shower. It worked, but its water pressure was lousy. At least the drier works.
She glanced back towards the beach, curiosity cutting just briefly through her misery.
"Um…" she swallowed, and overcame her nerves. "Who was that woman?"
"Woman?" The group squinted, and Tala pointed puckered lips towards the beach.
"Living on the beach. She has a cat, I think?"
"Oh," the white-haired woman scowled. "The witch."
"Witch?"
"She's no' a witch," another person cut her off - Ollie, the only one of the group that Tala remembered off the top of their head - rolling their eyes. "Tall, dark, and handsome?"
It was a joke, Tala thought, but a pretty apt description. She shrugged, and nodded.
"That's Hazal," Ollie answered. "She's an author, working on some manuscript about criminal psychology. She mostly keeps to herself, doesnae come into town much."
"Oh. Thank you."
Tala excused herself after that, but rolled the name around on her tongue as she headed back to her farmhouse.
Hazal. It was a pretty name, but not one she'd heard before. Tala hadn't recognised the language she'd spoken, either, now she thought about it. I wonder where she's from.
She replayed the encounter in her mind as she shucked off her wet clothes and stepped into the shower.
It had been rude of her to leave her in the sea, but then again, Tala had kicked seawater all over her cat. They were probably pretty even, now.
Guilt prickled in her chest. She felt bad for the poor little thing.
"I wonder if she likes vegetables." It would be a decent gift, she thought, if she could grow something fine enough to offer her.
She supposed that if nothing else, that goal gave her something to aim for.
She rinsed off the seawater and changed into a clean outfit, and headed right back outside to continue her tilling.
"Well, then, Hazal," she murmured, and plunged her shovel back into the earth. "Seems you'll be seeing me again."