Kristen Peloe (little_seer) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-08-28 11:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009-07-24, kristen, linnea |
Strange but special
Who: Linnea and Kristen
Where: Niemi house
When: Evening
Kristen liked going to the Niemi's. She'd just been a little more difficult this time around because Missy had left her and she knew why. Had simply known the minute she was picked up from the gym in Ann Arbor that her sister was going to hang out with the girl who worked at Aeaea. Sure she didn't say anything but she knew. It was like when she knew other things, she just did and no one could argue with her about it because they'd be wrong. So she'd just sulked in the car and that sulking had carried over into her night at the Niemi's. It wasn't helped by the feeling that something was wrong here too. And it dealt with Linnea. And someone else... she knew the face that'd flashed through her mind when she first saw Linnea standing there, face far too smooth. That cook at the Owl's Nest who sometimes comes out when Missy takes me there. Bradley? Yeah, he was in there and Kristen didn't know why.
Tapping her crayon against the coloring book page that she'd been given, Kristen propped her chin on her hand. "You okay, Mrs. Niemi?" she asked. "You're really quiet and I haven't heard anyone else in awhile either." There were like, five kids in the house, someone should have been making some sort of a noise right?
Words were just a thing. A thing that meant more than anyone cared to admit to everyone else. Linnea had words that she had heard before whirling through her head. Oh, every time she heard them there had been a twist to her stomach and a mixture of joy and repulsion at knowing that there was something inside her that likely came from Jokull, but this time it was different. Jokull was dead and she was in her mid-forties, had just celebrated her forty-fifth birthday! Women that age were not supposed to receive phonecalls informing them that they were pregnant. Worst of all, their daughters were not supposed to find out and go through varying degrees of breakdown because of it. Family was supposed to be supportive, she was always there for them no matter what they did or what they went through, but apparently this was too difficult for them. A few weeks down the road she would probably be able to understand where they were coming from but just then she could only see that they were not there for her when she needed them. Her mind was whirling around that topic even when she had agreed to take on Kristen for the night, cooking her a meal and settling at the table with her, hardly noticing that she had begun to idly color a picture of the Little Mermaid.
"I'm sorry sweetheart," Linnea said with a smile, setting the blue crayon down and clearing away her thoughts on what was inside of her. Baby-sitting meant that she had to make sure Kristen was having a good time or at least not feeling neglected. Poor little girl without a family past Missy, last time she needed was to feel any sort of ignored. "What was that? My head was off somewhere else completely."
Yep, something was wrong. Why'd adults always have problems? Was it because they had bills to pay? Oh, wait, Linnea'd just buried her husband so that was probably her problem. Though Kristen hadn't liked Jokull at all and she'd only met him a few times in passing, Linnea never baby-sitting her for long when he was around. He gave her the creepiest feelings, just remembering him made her skin start to crawl and she shivered. "I was just asking if you were okay," Kristen said again, her voice tinged with the accent that was stronger in Missy's voice. And that strange lady from the lake's. "Because you're really quiet. Everyone here is." If they were home. Kristen couldn't ever tell with how many rooms there were and it wasn't polite to go snooping around people's homes, Missy had told her it wasn't.
"Oh it's nothing," Linnea assured with a smile. Nothing that such a little girl needs to worry about. Innocent minds don't need to be dragged into this sort of thing. That was why she hoped that her daughters would keep their senses and never, ever say anything around Satu. She had to do that herself when she worked up the courage and that would not be until after she had talked to Bradley. And who knew when she would actually be able to tell that man, the one who made her heart flutter and made her feel like she was a real, valuable, beautiful person instead of the nothing Jokull had always told her she was, that she was pregnant with what might be his child? I thought that I was not going to think about that and focus on making sure Kristen has a good evening. "I was just wondering if I could get away with making Ariel a blonde. The blonde princesses are never brave enough!" Which was true. The 'tough' ones never had blonde hair for whatever reason. Linnea reached out and tugged lightly at a piece of Kristen's hair which, while not as pale as her own and her children's, was still definitely blonde. "They can be just as brave."
Grinning, not bothering to think that maybe Linnea was lying, Kristen nodded. "Totally! I mean look at Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, they hardly did anything. Ariel was way better." There needed to be an artistic princess. Kristen would've liked her the most but she didn't think Disney would come out with a movie about that. Didn't seem likely. Where was the plot in that? "Which princess is your favorite, Mrs. Niemi?"
Linnea had never really given that particular topic much thought. Tapping the crayon again she flipped through the coloring book to refresh her memory on who they all were. When she had told Bradley that she was not big on movies she had been referring to the sort that most adults watched. She was a mother after all and had seen practically every cartoon that had been created between the time of Leif's birth and well, now. Disney cartoons were such a classic that they had all of them in the den, VHS and DVD. Linnea was not quite so sure she was willing to convert to Blu-ray yet though. Maybe after Bradley introduced her to more movies and she discovered what she really enjoyed. "I think that I like Jasmine the best." A father who wanted her to marry and yet she did not, holding out despite everything for who she really did want. Admirable trait that Linnea had not possessed. Granted she should have probably listened to her father. "What about you, Kristen, do you have a favorite?"
Jasmine? Huh, for some reason Kristen had totally been expecting for Linnea to say that she liked Cinderella or something. After all she was a rich woman who had been married in a different country who had a happy little family (even though Kristen was half-convinced that Satu was the devil) and that seemed a lot more like Cindrella than Jasmine. "I like Ariel and Belle the most," Kristen replied, pushing a piece of her hair back as she skimmed through the colors in the box. Hmmm, that shade of green would look good for the eyes. Didn't matter if her eyes were really supposed to be blue, Kristen was artistic and she'd make things look like she wanted them to. "Probably Belle, she's so smart and doesn't care what anyone thinks about her and what she does." Self-identification, Kristen liked the princess she wanted to be. "Wait, does Belle count as a princess?"
Belle was a good choice but Kristen had a point when questioning whether she was a princess. It had been awhile since Linnea had seen "Beauty and the Beast" so... hmm... "I think she started out as just a regular person." Her father had been that eccentric man with all of the white hair sticking out every which way, right? "But the Beast was a prince and so if she married him then she became a princess and counts." Not that she was sure whether the two had actually gotten married or lot. There were a lot of marriages in the Disney movies and it was hard to keep separate which ones they happened in and which ones they did not. "Tell you what, let's put the coloring books away, I'll make some popcorn and we can watch and see. Sound good?"
Kristen perked right up. "Yeah!" she agreed, already closing the book and putting the crayons back in the box. No such thing as seeing a good cartoon too many times! Finished with that she bounced up and said, "I'll go start the movie and get a blanket." Because movies and blankets went hand-in-hand. Smiling, the little blonde skipped off, everything that had been wrong with the past few days not mattering at all because she was going to watch a happy movie and eat popcorn with someone who reminded her of her mom. All was right in the world. For then at least.