→ (signpost) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-09-09 21:48:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, wren henry |
[Narrative.]
Who: Wren
What: Narrative
Where: Around Marvel
When: Let's say the past week or so
Warnings/Rating: None
Life was quiet, and life was still, and the woman with the cinnamon hair and gray eyes, she was happy. The children were at school, a lunchbox with giraffes, a diaper bag filled with teething rings cooled overnight. And it was pretty out, Summer melting into mild Fall, and the leaves would be down soon. Wren loved Fall, and it was a new romance. She'd loved the sticky heat of the South, and now it was replaced by an appreciation for the crackle and burnt-wood smell of chimneys. And things were good this year. Still, still, and she was preparing.
Luke wouldn't like it, the things she was doing, but they weren't dangerous. She was just reading, really, mostly. She was researching, finding, looking. Dance classes, and then libraries and bookstores, and she was studying doors and what was inside them. It was all quiet, harmless, and nothing to make anyone worry. She had Dim Sum with Evie, and she filled the lonely gaps with lists.
Wren considered work. Cameras, flashbulbs and a darkroom gone quiet and ignored, but she never quite managed to put in any applications, and she never quite managed to update her resume. Money was okay, and maybe it was starting to get a little bit low, but the things she was working on were important. Luke living forever, that was really, really important.
She had things she'd already crossed off her list, because they were bad, and Luke wasn't bad. Vampires, no. Demons, no. She'd started looking at those things first, ways to make him live forever, ways to change him. And then she realized maybe, maybe that wasn't the best way. Maybe the best way was to make a deal herself, so that he wouldn't have to pay any price at all. He'd live forever, and she wouldn't sit scared at cold windows after the sun fell.
Because that was maybe becoming a bigger and bigger worry. Large and looming, and she woke from dreams where someone in uniform knocked on her door to give her the bad news. She didn't sleep for hours and hours after those dreams, and she'd paced thin spots in the living room carpet on those nights. And it was worse now, so much worse, without Jack, without Thomas, without Bruce, and during those long and quiet hours, twilight and gloaming, the fear became nearly too much to bear. She thought she'd crawl out of her skin, and she thought she'd never be able to get back in.
And so it went, and it got worse, and it got worse, though she was good about hiding it when Luke was around. Gus was invested in school, in a new fearlessness that included friends and playdates. Lia, Lia was easy, and Wren babbled insecurities at the tiny girl and received giggles in return. But it got worse, and it got worse, and she was left to her own too often, too quiet, too many thoughts.
The kids were at school, and dance class went long, and she was dressed in a pink dress and cream undershirt, leggings and her keys jingling in the pocket of her dress. Bronx, and the botanica she wandered into was different, occult, dark and filled with scents she hadn't smelled in a really long time. They made Wren think of her maman, of ofrendas, of altars and saints. Key West's brand of hoodoo, and more Santeria than cauldrons bubbling.
The shelves were lined with dusty saints, and the couple behind the counter was older and stared. Quiet, quiet, like this was a ritual they couldn't interrupt, and Wren walked in footprints and tried to avoid dust on wood.
Careful, careful, she walked, and she wasn't anywhere near the statue that toppled. Apologetic, she turned to the owners, but they weren't angry.
Oya went home with her, and she was set upon the shelf, candles and offerings, because it was better to be very safe. Her maman had taught her that, and even though it had been a very long time since Wren used herbs for safety pouches, it was an easy thing to slip back into. An herb garden in the kitchen, she decided, and she started work on shelves and pots, green things she had to caution the dogs and cat from eating.
And little, by little, by little, more things joined saints and herbs. Crosses, hoodoo bags, spellbooks open on coffee table and nightstand, and glasses of water filled beneath the bed. The freezer held ice cubes with names obscured, words blurry and written in girlish hand, tucked there and frozen, unable to do harm. More things, and more things, and more things.
Then, by chance, a television show, and a Crossroads Demon, and tucked up on that couch, the baby asleep on her lap, she thought she might finally have something that would work.