| Here's a story of the way I wasn't meant to be raised | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 24 2017, 04:57 PM (64 Views) | |
| Eabha Doyle | Nov 24 2017, 04:57 PM Post #1 |
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Eabha had always been different. Depending on who you asked, it was always with a different tone. Her mother said it fondly, her father (what she could remember of him) had said it despairingly. Her auntie and cousin Skylar were delighted, her older cousins said it like it was a disease. She was just...different. In the old days, she supposed it would have been because she never let herself be tied down and she didn't let anyone control her. She supposed that the little town she grew up in wasn't all that different from "the old days". In her town, men were expected to go out and earn money and the women stayed home to cook and take care of children, not exactly a bad life if that was what you wanted. It was also a town that kept to itself and things that were different were bad – they lived hip deep in the Good Folk, it felt like, they were always so close and not all of them were always so nice. Why, one of Eabha's own good friends had been down by one of the rivers back when they were just children; she had been minding her own business when a shellycoat had come for her, pulling her into the stream and drowned her, it did. There was always some debate – the local shellycoat family had complained that they had done nothing of the sort and did they really want to make enemies of those that were, by the fey standard, harmless? But the townsfolk had pointed out there was no injury on Eabha's dear friend and how did a child go drowning in a stream when the water hardly covered the ankle? If Eabha remembered right, there had been no one happy and no one had come back with a clear answer of what had happened. She remembered she had wanted to go and talk to the shellycoats because didn't everyone realize that they hadn't properly talked to them? But her mother had kept her away, saying that it was best to let them be. Their pride was pricked and no one was more dangerous than a fey that had had their pride damaged. So she had learned that to be different was to be looked down upon. To be different meant you were held up to stereotypes because what else did people have in their village? Not that it really mattered. Eabha had been fairly young when her mother and father had divorced and her mother had wanted out of a town that knew all the dirtiest of secrets. They were her own to keep, her own to tell, she had told Eabha, nothing was worse than people who thought they deserved to know everything about you without a care. She also remembered as they packed her mother asking quietly if Eabha was sad that she was never going to see her father again and Eabha had said no, she was mostly relieved. She didn't remember her father ever hurting her or anything, but there had always been an awful, awful tension when he was around. She had hated it. With it being just her and her mother, she was happy, she was pleased. There was a clearer air because there was no one telling her mother that 'what did she know about anything' and no one telling Eabha that being weird was bad and unacceptable. They left, they moved, they went to England. They went to London, which everyone always talked about and no one was weird there because they fey had integrated better than they had in smaller towns and they had vampires and werewolves and demons and all the stuff that Eabha's father had warned her about and all the stuff her mother told her was something she could learn about. She wasn't weird in London. But it was also in London where she got sick, very sick. From what she remembered, the doctors weren't sure what she had, some disease that had once been a flu but was more common in some kind of supernatural creature, so it had mutated greatly. To a supernatural creature, it was like a spring cold; to a human...well, she had been admitted into a hospital coughing up blood. She didn't remember a whole lot of time around then. She remembered being in and out of consciousness. She remembered her mother sitting at her bedside, holding her hand. She remembered her mother's boss, the one and only Teagan Sutton, coming to check on them. She remembered a man, but not much about him. There had also been a point she remembered that things got very quiet and things didn't hurt anymore and after weeks of feeling more and more awful, it was a blessing. Things were very quiet and very still and she didn't remember much more than that. When she woke up next, she was back to aching and her mother had been crying and the one and only Teagan Sutton had been trying to calm her down. They said she had died for a few minutes and they hadn't been sure she would come back. After that, though, she had made a recovery, but her memory was still spotty. It was like a hundred things had happened then but she couldn't really remember it. She couldn't remember some of her friends names, she couldn't remember who the strange man she thought about sometimes, she couldn't remember where she use to work. When she complained to her mother years down the road, her mother had always gone very quiet and said maybe it was for the best. The one thing she remembered was meeting Asteria, a beautiful fairy that smiled so much she seemed to have permanent dimples. Asteria had been sweet and kind, even when had seemed to have disregard for most other people. She liked Eabha, she said, and she felt a calling in her – her life had been snuffed out, which had caused a ripple through whatever it was the Gentle Folk lived in because they were never quite in the human plains. She had told Eabha that they only did that if one of their own was dying, one of their own could mean a half fairy, a child of someone who had fairy generations earlier in their blood, someone connected to the earth, or, in her case, a fairy doctor. She had a great gift, Asteria told her, and they were going to make a life for Eabha. The fairy doctors weren't as abundant as they once were. Modern medicine had advanced quite a bit, needing to make way for all the creatures in their little world. There was always going to be a need for surgeons and doctors who would mend broken bones or treat cancers or anything like that. But there were things they couldn't do; they could ease a cold, they couldn't tend a flu until it was much more severe, they couldn't treat the effects of an Evil Eye. There was still a lot the modern doctors couldn't do that the fairy doctors could. Charms and herbs had never lost their...well, charm. And Eabha was happy, she loved it; she was excited to be learning this, even when parts of her couldn't remember the surrounding time. Another thing that she remembered with clarity was the day her mother declared they were moving again. This time far, far away. She didn't explain, she didn't say why she was suddenly abandoning the research and work and career she loved and taking her adult daughter to America. She'd had a look about her that Eabha had known not to argue with. When they moved, though, they had found themselves in a small town – smaller than the one Eabha had grown up in. It had all seemed a bit odd to her that her mother picked such a place when she was disdainful of such small lives. But Eabha couldn't complain; it was rustic where they lived, with lots of trees and ponds and she could feel something in the air that meant it wasn't boring. And, for whatever reason, the fresh air seemed to clear up what linger bouts of her illness that refused to leave. She didn't care (even though she did) but it all seemed to pale when she met the strange man known as Brody Starling. He had been out for a jaunt, it seemed, and it had also seemed he had never seen a woman kicking her feet in the water of a small lake. He had been...strange, but in a way that had made her laugh, in a way that had made her intrigued. She had been intrigued with this Brody Starling...and she hadn't felt bad or shy about telling him that he was going to show her around what the little town had to offer. He had seemed almost indignant and hadn't exactly agreed, but she had wandered off knowing that he would show. The next day, closer to the evening, she waited and a part of her wondered if she was really so sure he would show. |
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| Brody Starling | Dec 4 2017, 02:44 PM Post #2 |
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Life had always been a little hard for the Starlings. As the eldest, Brody remembered all of it. He remembered more than the others the way they were moved around all the time, the dissatisfaction that his father had but would never quite talk about and so you were left wondering what was so wrong with this or that place. Mostly, Brody had been somewhat distant from his family. That was something his siblings had always complained about. Brody didn't want to go out and have fun, he was reading. Brody didn't want to go and explore, he was resting. His younger brothers and sister had often complained that he was like an old man in a young man's body. As they grew older, most of those complaints changed. His siblings grew up, matured, and they went about their own lives - all but his youngest brother. Tuck was wild, their father side. He was a free spirit, was the somewhat kinder version of it from their mother. Brody supposed it was somewhere in between if he was being honest. Tuck wasn't really wild, but he definitely had a will and a mind of his own and he seemed to prefer being outdoors more than he did inside. It was something that drove their father crazy and, to be honest, it drove Brody crazy at times, too. He got tired of listening to Tuck chatter on and on about a lake or a tree or something outside, got tired of how excited and perky he always was, got tired of how much his youngest brother pestered him about everything. There had been more than one occasion where his brother had been excitedly telling him about an old tree in the woods or about some supposed thing he had seen when Brody would ask him in irritation when he was going to grow up. Tuck always looked startled at that and then grew quiet. It was never long before he had slipped off to his room and then out of his window and to the woods. Soon enough, Brody didn't have to worry about times he or his parents had been cruel to his younger siblings because he was leaving home, too. His brothers and his sister, all but Tuck, had all found someone to settle down with and had moved out rather speedily. Brody had taken his time about it but eventually he had found a nice woman. Her name was Mary and they both got along fairly well, although Brody had never really seemed to experience the passion that other people did when they talked about their marriages and the people that they loved. He liked her, was pretty sure he loved her, but there was something lacking that he couldnt' quite put a finger on. Still, they had moved to a bigger city, they had gotten married and started their lives together. They had settled into an apartment and while she had waited tables, he had gone to college to become a teacher. He had worked at a small hardware store to supplement their income. She had gotten a second job to help cover expenses but they were okay. Then she was pregnant and... things began to unravel. It was a subtle thing at first. On the surface, they both seemed pleased at the idea of a child and building a family but then money was tight, she was tired, hours were long for the both of them between work and schooling and any passion that had been there had been chilled significantly. By the time Grayson was born, things had started to turn downhill. He never hit her and she never hit him, but there had been plenty of loud screaming matches that had only been made worse by the fact that they upset Grayson when they got that loud and worked up. Eventually it had turned so nasty that they couldn't bear to be in the same room as each other, they had let lawyers take care of the divorce proceedings... and she had been nasty enough to not only gain full custody of their son but to deny him visitation rights. He had gone back home bitter, alone and broke. Was it any wonder that he had been even more standoffish and surly when it came to his family? Maybe he should have been less so, honestly. His father had always been rough with all of them, always cross about something, and their mother had always been a bit distant but that was just how it had been. Tuck, though, was a whole different story. He was seventeen now and the same as Brody had remembered him; still bright and cheerful and always in Brody's face with questions about the world and everything under the sun, still telling him stories that couldn't possibly be true, but there was something a little different now. Tuck was out of the house even more than before. Brody remembered he had brought someone home, a friend, a girl, for a few moments and Brody had never seen that girl again after their father had lit into Tuck over it. He had little doubt that Tuck still met her but it was a secret now. He noticed things like a sudden black eye or the fact that Tuck was missing a tooth towards the back of his mouth, but it was easy to dismiss as Tuck just falling out of trees and getting into the scrapes he always had. And it was easy to just ignore everything when he just wanted to wallow in his own misery, to be bitter about life and about what he had lost. Maybe he should have paid attention though because, one day, Tuck was gone. He was eighteen by then and one night he had taken their father's truck and just disappeared. They'd gotten a phone call a few days later from someone who said they had the keys and the truck and he had been forced to drive his very angry father to several cities over to fetch it. Never in a million years would he have thought that Tuck would run off and sure, he was an adult now, but it had been still startling. It had left him a bit uncomfortable and he had finally moved out of his slump enough to begin teaching the next city over, trying to get himself back on his feet. Life had another curve ball to throw at him, though. He had been out walking in the woods around their house and come across a young woman. She was danging her feet in the water and he didn't know if he wanted to sputter in surprise, if he wanted to indignantly say that this was their land, or if he wanted to be captivated by her beauty. He was really left still confused and reeling and not knowing what he wanted to do, honestly, because she had been just about right up in his face, teasing him with a thick Irish accent that he was pretty certain he had only heard in the movies. Her name was Eabha and she had recently moved her, she told him, all full of smiles and mirth and teasing. A part of her teasing had been to take his arm and tell him, not ask, that he would be showing her around the small town tomorrow night. She hadn't quite named a time or a place and then she had all but disappeared, making Brody wonder if he had imagined the whole thing. He almost wondered if perhaps it had been a creature of folklore or a ghost, something you saw but disappeared... or maybe a witch? He certainly thought he might be bespelled or something similar if he was coming out here again when he had told himself he would do nothing of the sort. Yet here he was and there she was and he couldn't even begin to imagine why he had come to meet her, why they were meeting in the woods at first or... really why any of this had happened. "You're a strange woman," he commented as he drew near. Not the friendliest of statements to start off with. Edited by Brody Starling, Dec 4 2017, 04:58 PM.
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| Eabha Doyle | Feb 28 2018, 09:23 AM Post #3 |
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She was impulsive, her mother had always told her; that was the curse of Eabha Doyle and Skylar O'dwyer. They were bad on their own, worse together because they would meet and they would tell each other their grand ideas and the other would work with that. It was trouble. It meant they were going to do something foolish. Auntie had always shaken her head and laughed in exasperated manner; Eabha's mother would often put a hand to her head like she had a headache. It was probably not the best thing in the world to go and tell a strange man that he was showing her around without the proper introductions. They had learned each other's names...but they didn't know anything about each other. To Eabha, it made perfect sense – they didn't know each other and they wouldn't know each other if they didn't talk or interact or anything like that. Were they just suppose to stand around in a forest doing that? At the same time she wasn't "so far gone" that she would be insulted if he decided he wasn't going to show. But then he surprised her, in a way, by actually showing up. It could have been the town was just so small that he was coming in to do something else and had seen her, making him realize he couldn't just get out of this, but who knew really? She grinned as he spoke when he got closer. "Oh, that's a fine way to woo a lady," she laughed, "You tell that to everyone you met?" It wasn't the worst thing she had ever heard, not from where she was from. The difference there was that most of that was spoken behind her back, spoken when she thought she couldn't hear...and the thing was, she couldn't. But gossip and talk only remained private for so long before someone was just a touch too loud, a touch too gleeful to say more than they should have to people they shouldn't have. "You must be a strange man for meetin' a strange woman like this, then, Brody Starling." She had grown up in the thickness of being strange, of being different. Maybe she should have been insulted that Brody had only just met her and was calling her that, but she had heard a lot worse over the years. Strange was almost complimentary. Another impulsive move came over her, making move to Brody's side, scooping his arm up in hers so they looped together. "But strangeness aside, you seem like the right proper gentleman sort who's goin' to show me around. Properly." Her mother had always given her so many looks over the years, usually with no words attached. That was fine, because she knew that Eabha knew the words by heart – she needed to be aware of personal space and what people might be feeling comfortable with. It was all well and good to feel bubbly and happy, to be a causal toucher who didn't think anything of a slap on the back or an arm wrapped around a waist or anything like that. People had their reasons, Eabha's mother had always said, and she needed to respect that. She needed to treat other people like she would have her Fey friends – after all, she would never do something that would insult them, would she? She'd never do something to them that they might not like simply because she didn't see the problem with that, right? Eabha had always countered that no, she wouldn't do anything to upset them but the fact of the matter was that the Good Folk had a means to punish those that insulted them, they had magic to make people behave better. She had assumed her mother would sigh and say she had a point, but she had just...gotten this sad look, this haunted look and said that humans were just as capable as as any fairy to punish those that they thought to. She had been melancholy enough that Eabha hadn't been able to joke, she hadn't been able to cajole her mother out of thinking about it. It had been enough to make her tell her mother that she'd be fine, she'd watch herself, it was all okay. And now, here she was, grabbing hold of a man who seemed just a little too standoffish, who seemed to have feathers that were easily ruffled. She couldn't help herself, though. Her had something of a sour, melancholy look to him and a part of Eabha thought he might look better smiling. He might look better and more handsome when he was happier. Maybe this was a town that didn't exactly lend itself to happiness, though. "Don't think I'm goin' to let you off easily either," she warned him, "The town may be small but there's more to every town than what people think." The town had felt different to her than her old one had. Maybe it was the fact that it was smaller than home had been. Her home town had been just big enough that people felt at ease talking about each other because there was always some..removal from that, there was always some feeling that they weren't talking about friends so much as that "other" person. Here, she felt, it might have been a bit different. It didn't feel like it was bubbling with feelings that were waiting to erupt. People seemed to genuinely get on. The few times she had heard people talking down on someone – she'd heard the gossip of some "May" family that had lost two daughters in a matter of months; not to any sort of tragedy but because they had run off with boys, oh my – but it was spoken like people informing others of the news or maybe they were telling someone and it didn't sound like was good they run off, but more because their father had driven them off. It seemed a lot...less than back home, maybe because no one was as easily removed as they were all the way over in Ireland. This place also had the added benefit of there was something in the air, something not quite human. Back home, it had been thick with the land, you could feel it even if you weren't sensitive to it. You knew that the fey lived there and was always going to live there, no matter how much news reports said that the good folk were losing out on land with each passing day. Here it was a lot more subtle. You had to be very sensitive to feel it. She considered herself to be very sensitive and even she only felt it slightly. She felt it the most when she skipped wearing shoes, letting her feet get in contact with the earth and dirt, like little electrical sparks running up her legs. That had just been in town. She had felt it more when she had been out by that lake, amongst all the trees. It had been thicker there, something you could taste on your tongue if you knew the flavor. There was always something unique to every town, she swore. They began walking and she realized just how small the town was because she was starting to recognize some of the people around. They were kinder here, she felt, than back home. They welcomed Eabha with almost open arms. They might have been a touch suspicious – after all, this was a small, nice town where everybody knew how everyone else interacted with each other, who knew about anyone new – but her generally...perky nature, as her mother had called it, had won them over. She had always been a friendly sort, often to combat the confrontational nature that seemed to be all O'dwyer in their family. Honestly, the people seemed more leery of Eabha's mother, which was understandable. Eabha's mother had always come off as very cold and not someone who casually chattered with anyone. It was probably why she got along with the one and only Teagan Sutton so well. "So what kind of a job do you do, Brody?" she questioned. "I haven't quite found work here, because we're still settling in, but there doesn't seem to be much here." It was like all small towns – you had a couple of stores that you could get food from, a book store, a diner, an antique shop...she imagined that most of the bigger shops were quite the jaunt away and odds were good most of the jobs were too. She wasn't even entirely what she would do out here. Her mother had gotten, as she always did, but Eabha felt a little more adrift. Edited by Eabha Doyle, Feb 28 2018, 10:10 PM.
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| Brody Starling | Mar 28 2018, 11:29 AM Post #4 |
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He kept asking himself what he was doing here and he couldn't really find an answer to the question. He was starting to wonder more and more if she wasn't some sort of a witch that had cast a spell on him. After all, it wasn't much like him to be overly social or to agree to meet someone he hadn't met out on the edge of town in the woods. He wasn't acting like himself at all and that was puzzling and worrying. Honestly, he saw the surprise on her face when he made his slow way over to where she was and that made him feel a tiny bit better. He didn't think someone who had cast some kind of spell on someone would be surprised that the person had come, right? Of course, he was pessimistic enough to come up with plenty of scenarios where that might still apply but he let it lie there for now. One of his mother's favorite phrases was "no sense in making trouble where there is none" and he agreed, honestly. He would take it right now at face value because what else did he have. He felt his face scrunch up in a frown as she grinned at him, laughed at him. "Only when I mean it," he countered the words. Honestly, it was a bit strange to even feel like this. When was the last time he had talked to someone and gone toe to toe with them? His wife - ex-wife - and he had never really done that, not unless you counted the latter half of their relationship and that wasn't the same. That was being vicious and mean to one another, not just being sarcastic. Eabha went on to say that he must be a strange man for agreeing to meet a strange woman. "I think that's a very accurate statement at the moment," he commented. Strange. That was the best description for how he felt at the moment. This whole scenario was strange and he almost wondered if it wasn't a dream or an illness that had descended on him rather than what was actually happening. That would make more sense than everything else, honestly. Brody was honestly surprised when Eabha moved forward and suddenly looped their arms together but maybe he shouldn't be. Sure, he didn't know her all that well, they had only met a total of two times now, but in the little bit of time that they had spent together so far he had seen that she seemed rather impulsive. A free spirit, his mother might have sad. Thoughtless and reckless, his father might have said. Brody wasn't quite sure how he felt. A part of him wanted to shake it off because they didn't know each other. It was rude to get into someone's space and personal bubble when you didn't know them and this was a small town. Small towns talked. "I'm not so sure about that," he said, the words more towards the first part of her statement than anything else. Had he ever been what someone might consider a proper gentleman? He was decent, he supposed. He'd held his fair share of doors and pulled out seats before but that didn't fully classify him as any sort of proper. Maybe once, when he was younger, but now? Honestly, now he didn't even know what he was anymore. It sounded melodramatic to put it like that, but it was honestly true. His life had been taken up before with college, with his wife, with his young son, with graduating and his career. Then things had fallen apart around him and he had lost his wife and had lost any ability to see his son. He had quit his job and spent months moping in the backwater woods that was a part of his family's land. It was only now that he had gotten his feet somewhat underneath him and he honestly just didn't know who he was anymore. "Why am I not surprised?" he questioned as she told him that she wasn't going to let him off easily. He gave a tiny snort as she went on to say that there was more to every town than what people thought. He wanted to really give her a look of incredulity at that because there was nothing here. A small, very small, downtown, houses scattered here and there and not much else. The homes of people who had been here for generations who had to drive into other towns for getting anything fancier than local fare, who had to drive for other careers. The only thing that ever went on here were the days when strangers came to town, when gossip happened - like when Tuck had disappeared. That had been a pretty bit of gossip for a few weeks before people moved onto something new. If she was looking for something spectacularly interesting then she had certainly come to the wrong place. "I'm not sure what all there is to show you really." The more he racked his brain, the less he could come up with. You couldn't even see a movie here, you had to go a town over to where they had a theater. A lot of the things he had gotten used to in the bigger city weren't available here. There was only the diner, a few local businesses, the small motel (which he had never understood why it was here or how it stayed in business) and the woods. As they walked, he watched her. She was curious, glancing all around them when, honestly, he was sure that she had seen it all before. She had to have if they'd been here longer than a few days. There were only so many places that you could stroll through town to see. Once you had gone up and down the main street a few times you had really seen it all. Still, despite the fact that he knew that, he kept pace with her and walked down the street. No doubt there would be tongues wagging soon enough about this or that - Brody Starling was courting her, Eabha was deceiving him, they were planning something; bored tongues started wagging the hardest. At least most people honestly wouldn't care unless they did something actually scandalizing and that wasn't very likely. He might let her take his arm and order him to show her around but there was a limit to what he would put up with. He was drawn out of his thoughts as Eabha spoke again and asked what he did for a living. "Teacher," he commented. The explanation was short, but at least it wasn't snapped out or terse. It was just a short fact. He gave a snort as she said she hadn't found work here yet and that there didn't seem to be much here. "Because there's not. If you want something, you'll probably have to go further out. Dependin', I guess." Maybe she wouldn't mind being a waitress and he certainly knew for a fact there was an opening in the diner; people had gossiped about that May girl running off pregnant long enough he had wanted to strangle them anytime they got that glint in their eyes that said they were going to bring it up again. "What are you looking for?" he finally settled on. Maybe there was something here but they were strangers, too. People would be less likely to hire strangers. After all, hadn't one made off with the May girl? Strangers couldn't be trusted, after all. Edited by Brody Starling, Apr 2 2018, 10:56 PM.
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8:19 AM Jul 11