Synopsis: Ashley and Peter want to give their parents a fallen star as a Christmas / New Year's present, but they are very small and have no plan, so you can imagine the kind of stress they must be under.
First part: >>> here. Previous part: >>>here
A Christmas / New Year's Story, and as part of @inklings-challenge Christmas 2023 event
Last time: the kiddos found a hungry monster, which was definitely not a fallen star.
They found several bright things over the next few hours. Most of those were bioluminescent plants, rocks, and creatures--perhaps they weren't exactly bright, but they were at least glowing and colorful. Ashley shoved a few of the things they found into her backpack, just in case one of them would work as a backup gift.
Peter finally gave into his impulses and chased down one of the creatures (something between a squirrel, a rabbit, and a hedgehog, with glowing quills), at which point they had another debate.
Mommy loves animals, Peter argued.
This animal stuck you with pins and also we never keep the animals, Ashley argued back.
Finally, it wriggled out of Peter's hands, pricking him and scuttling away, and Ashley managed to persuade him not to kidnap it again.
Eventually, they made it to the edge of the forest.
The ground sloped away from the knobbled forest, a plain covered in thick, waving grass that stretched to the edge of a river. Far beyond, they could see hills rising up into mountains.
And in the sky, so, so many brilliant stars, painting the vividly blue and purple sky with blazing speckles of glory. Like ice, cold and clear, like fire, burning and bright. They outlined the mountains in stark contrast of light and dark, though gleams of it caught on the peaks and trickled down into the fireflies that blinked in the sighing field.
It was... "pretty" felt like too weak of a word.
"Maybe one will fall," Peter said. He sat down in between two huge gnarled tree roots, and rubbed at his arms where the mud was peeling off.
Ashley stayed standing.
"Beautiful" felt too normal. Amazing, gorgeous, breathtaking--breathtaking came the closest, but no word she could find in her head matched the feeling of standing there, small, young, beneath these old, hoary trees, in front of this plain, looking up at this expanse of sky. Maybe it needed a whole new word altogether, one that didn't exist yet.
And underneath that, not fully masked by this strange feeling of bigness, of being there, of beauty she hadn't been looking for, there was something much easier to name.
Frustration. It was taunting her. There were so many stars. So many stars, so high up, so out of reach. And she and Peter were very, very small, and very lost. And very tired.
Ashley sat down beside Peter, half-curling up and resting her chin and arms on one of the roots, gazing out at the field. Something was building in her throat, uncomfortably like tears.
As soon as she sat down, the walking and running and excitement and fear from earlier all caught up with her and seeped into her with the murmuring of the trees.
Mommy and Daddy were going to have to find them in the morning, and they would be so far away, and so worried about them being lost and gone. Peter was muddy and had lost his finder, the one he and Daddy had built and that he loved so much--and it was all her fault.
"I'm sorry," Ashley whispered. "I... thought this would work out better, and be like... a second Christmas. I'm sorry we failed and it was my fault because I should have known better."
When she looked back, however, Peter was already asleep.
"I'm sorry," she whispered again, deliberately saying it out loud. If she thought it at him, it would wake him up. Or mess up his dream.
She curled up tighter against the root, clutching at her arms and letting ice build up under her finger-tips. Her tears didn't freeze, though. They started pooling out of her eyes, and dripping down her face with uncomfortable heat.
Ashley intended to sit up and figure out a solution, stop the tears, or else properly think about the crimes she had committed. But instead, almost as soon as the tears had started, she was asleep.
When Ashley woke up, the air was very still, an odd sort of quiet that felt normal for the world, like it was gathering itself for a deep breath.
The stars were fading slowly out, less stark than they had been a couple hours ago. Their brilliance stood against a paler background, now, and far off over the mountains a thin ribbon of paler blue was turning into gold and pink.
Somehow it soothed her, the quietness as birds started their song and the earth prepared to be awake. It felt big and endless, ever-moving, unshakeable. In the grand scheme of things, she was small, and so were her troubles--and for a reason she couldn't name, that was comforting. The worlds all continued to move. Her world would, too, and it would be set right.
Still, she didn't know why she was awake now. She'd gone to sleep in enough odd places that she wasn't disoriented--but she hugged her knees and wished either Mommy or Daddy were here. That was normally why it was fine to go to sleep anywhere. Mommy and Daddy would take care of anything that needed taking care of. But now, she and Peter needed taking care of, and they were far away from Home. Such thoughts didn't prick at her as painfully as last night, though. It was a simple matter of fact.
Something shining, something brilliantly bright, caught her eye, and in a flash of wonder the distant, lovely thing wiped every other thought and worry away.
Embedded in the ground, not ten meters away, something radiated with silver and white and gold.
Ashley gasped and rubbed at her eyes.
It was still there. And it was so obvious, so truly right, that she wondered why she had ever imagined anything else had been, could possibly have been it.
A fallen star.
It glowed and pulsed, sending out little spikes of light in concentric circles, whirling like gears around a heart of pure, burning white--wrapped, in turn, around a tiny, tiny seed of brilliant, blackish blue.
Ashley elbowed Peter awake.
At some point in the night, he must have gotten the blanket out of his bag, since now it enveloped his flailing limbs as he jolted awake. He also must have been half-awake by whatever had disturbed Ashley, because he was up and on his feet before she was.
Before she could say anything, he disappeared in a flurry of speed.
"It is it!" He yelled, waving at her. "We found it! And"-- he cut off, stooping to pick something up--"it's magic!" In his upraised fist he swung his finder.
Picking up the star proved troublesome. It was quite hot to touch--the ground around it was scorched and the mud baked hard--and the outside of the star wasn't quite solid.
They tried to dig under ground with ice and lift a whole bit of the clay into the air with ice that Ashley could hold onto. But then they couldn't quite put it all in a backpack--it was having trouble fitting through the opening--and the ice kept melting.
Ashley wanted to laugh. Such a magical, beautiful thing, a piece of the night kindling the day, and they were trying to shove it in a backpack. Some small part of her that she didn't know about yet almost wanted them to fail, now, as much as she wanted them to succeed.
Finally, Peter pulled gloves out of his backpack, thick ones for "making things," and he reached out and picked it up, cupping it awkwardly into his hand. He shivered from head to toe, like an attack of goosebumps.
"Not much different from lightning," he said, "at least not with protective gloves. I can put it in a glove and wrap it up in my sweater and hold it."
He pulled out his sweater, which he had gotten for Christmas. It was part of the outfit that went with the gloves, and Mommy had made for when he and Daddy did fire things together. Ashley helped him pull a glove off while he balanced the star in the other hand--shivering occasionally goosebumpily--and held it very carefully while he slowly tipped the star into the glove. It slid in, the outer spikings catching at Ashley's hands and almost making her drop the glove in an explosion of an intensity that was something like electricity, something like warmth, something like being stabbed, something like a cat licking you. Wonderful and terrible. She wanted to throw it as far as she could, or else hug it tightly to her chest.
Peter took it from her and swaddled it in his sweater. The whole thing wriggled and pulsed fascinatingly as he made a cradle for it around his chest.
"It might fit in a backpack," he said, "but I don't know what that will do to the rest of the contents. And I don't know if it would squish it at all to get it through the opening, and I don't know what squishing a star would do."
Ashley nodded her agreement.
He looked back towards the tree. "Oh, also, don't forget your blanket."
Ashley blinked. "That's your blanket. It was on you."
He blinked back at her. "I didn't get my blanket out. I thought you got yours out."
Ashley shook her head.
Peter sped back up to the tree and came back with it in his hand. "Huh. It is mine."
"Maybe you were too sleepy to remember."
"I guess."
They stood there for a moment, before Peter started stuffing the blanket back into his backpack.
Ashley should have felt triumphant.
They found a star.
They did what they meant to.
But... she couldn't be happy right now. Not yet. There was something icky latched under her ribs.
"Peter," she said softly, "I'm sorry. For last night. And I'm really glad you got the finder back." That wasn't all she wanted to say, but, even through her mind, it was all she knew how to say right now.
He looked down at where he'd slung the finder around his neck, as shiny as if someone had cleaned it off, then back up to her. "I'm glad too," he said. "And... I'm sorry, too. I had a chance to see more of it first, and I should have realized it was weird. But... I was kind of mad at you for being bossy, so even though I knew it was some kind of creature, I let us follow it. I didn't know it was a *mean* creature," he added hastily.
"Oh." Somehow, that didn't make her feel better. She kicked at the grass around them. "I'm... I'm sorry for being bossy."
"It's okay. You were being a good mission leader." He cradled the odd bundle on his chest and grinned up at her. "Besides, we found it. I couldn't have done it by myself, because I would have slept all night. So I needed you to be bossy. And you needed me to carry it. And we needed each other to be brave. And now we can get back and make Mommy and Daddy happy."
She found herself grinning back. "Yeah, you're right. You're pretty cool sometimes." She stepped forward and hugged him overtop of the star. It tingled oddly against her chest, but not unpleasantly--it felt like brightness should.
He hugged her back.
The icky feeling melted.
In the end, they weren't far away from the tree where the Door was. They must have gotten lost after the creature had attacked them, and wandered around almost in a circle.
Peter's finder pointed the way back to it, and between Ashley creating a slippery icepath for herself and Peter running her along it (at about a quarter of his normal speed), they were back before the sun had finished fully lifting itself over the horizon.
Ashley hoped that they might be able to slip in unnoticed, maybe even get Peter in the shower before Mommy and Daddy were moving around. But a problem presented itself immediately, in the form of Mommy standing at the door.
Crossing her arms, she tapped her fingers along the sleeve of her jacket.
"You guys woke up early," she said.
In her voice lurked that tone adults use when they already know something that you're supposed to also know--but more confusingly, and more prominently, her tone was a smile. Even though Ashley couldn't read Mommy's mind, she could tell Mommy was most definitely amused.
In some ways that was reassuring. In others, it was an unknown, and therefore unsettling. Ashley let go of Peter and ice was already in her palm. "We... um... we wanted to get something for you," Ashley said. "For Christmas. And New Year. So we were looking for it."
Peter had already hid the bundle behind his back. "But. It's a secret. Daddy has to be here too."
Thankfully, Mommy didn't seem to see the bundle. Otherwise she would have looked at it or said something. Right?
"Oh, alright," she said. "I'll be curious to see what you found so close to Home that could be also be so secret."
"Good, she doesn't know," Peter thought at Ashley in relief.
"You'll have to tell me about where you got the mud, though," Mommy said, holding Home's door open for them. "After a shower. Or two," she added as Peter shuffled past, trying to keep the bundle away from her view.
Daddy was up now, too. His eyes were still full of sleep, and he hadn't put his jacket on yet. "Home has been telling me some... interesting things," he said, looking over his two children and his wife with narrowed eyes.
"Oh. Oh no." Ashley frantically tried to figure out how they were going to explain this. Daddy could always tell when you were making something up.
"I can't believe Home ratted us out," Peter agreed.
"Um... it's... a surprise," Ashley stammered.
"I don't suppose..." Daddy looked up at Mommy.
They did that thing where they talked to each other. Somehow. It frustrated Ashley to no end. She was convinced it wasn't telepathy, she knew it wasn't, but it was something like it, something that she didn't know. They just looked at each other and understood, and no one else had any idea what there was to be understood.
They stood like that for a long moment, Daddy tilting his head, looking, and then Mommy gave a very, very slight nod.
"Our kids got up early to get us a present of some kind," Mommy said, patting Ashley's head soothingly. "And I don't believe it was just the mud."
Peter blushed. "Um, no. We, um...." he looked frantically to Ashley.
"We wanted to get you guys something special," Ashley said, looking earnestly at Daddy. Suddenly, she didn't know how to act. She clasped her hands in front of her and let her fingertips get icy. "We... um... because you got us such nice Christmas presents, even though all the stuff is happening with work, and um..."
"We know the job on this world isn't going so well," Peter prompted, glancing from Mommy to Daddy. "And Mommy wanted to go to a place with stars. And we wanted to get something bright and white to start the New Year off with. So. Um..."
He trailed off and shoved the bundle in front of him.
Daddy raised an eyebrow, and accepted it, smiling. Carefully, he unwrapped it, leaving just the glove left. Raising an eyebrow even further, he slid the star out of the glove and into open air and held it with his magnetization, catching the star in a shifting prism of red. The star caught the vibrant richness of the patterns in the magnetization and amplified them, drawing the lines into itself and lining them with shimmering gold, casting the whole room into a blaze of light and shadow.
Daddy blinked.
"It's gorgeous," Mommy whispered.
"Is... is this a star?" Daddy asked, looking up at them sharply.
For a second, Ashley thought they had made a mistake. Peter, with no such inklings, grinned and nodded.
"That's... that's an incredible gift," he said, softly. "I'm not sure how you managed, but, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you guys teaming up made something impossible happen."
Ashley exchanged a glance with Peter and they both straightened up a little, pleased.
"This is also very thoughtful." He smiled, and that felt better than even seeing the star--by a tiny bit. "Thank you, guys."
"That was very brave of you guys to go after such a thing," Mommy said, hugging Ashley. "It was a big task, but you guys faced it and stuck through it even if it got hard. I'm proud of you both."
For once, warmth felt better to Ashley than the cold. She turned and clasped onto Mommy tightly, burying her head in Mommy's stomach. Not long later, Daddy pulled them and Peter towards him, and that warmth felt good, too.
Three days later, as Home's clock struck midnight, Mommy hung the star over the Doorway. It glowed, pulsing and sparking, and then settled into the fixture Daddy had built for it. Home practically purred in response, and the star slid into its place as if it has always belonged there, lighting up the whole living room in soft silvers and golds.
Somehow, it looked just as amazing and magical here as it had in the sky.
Mommy hugged them again. "Thank you, sweetheart."
Ashley smiled into Mommy's shirt, basking in how the air of the house felt clearer, lighter than it had in weeks.
"We did it," she thought, satisfied, towards Peter. She could feel him smiling back. And she could feel Mommy still hugging her, and hear Daddy clapping Peter on the back.
It was a good end to Christmas, and a hopeful start to the new year.
Part 1 >>>here. Part 3 (the last part) coming soon.
For Christmas / New Years, and as part of the Christmas @inklings-challenge for 2023
The kiddos made it out into the woods. But what now?
Over an hour later, surrounded by an endless stretch of thick, long-fingered trees and a smell of loam, Ashley had to admit to herself that planning to find a fallen star was easier than, well, finding one.
"Do you even know where you're going?" Peter asked. He was looking at the compass-thing Daddy had made with him, and was apparently beginning to have similar realizations.
"Silly," she said, "a fallen star doesn't have a set location."
"So, how are you planning to find one?" He asked. He sniffled some, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Ashley rolled her eyes. "Manners."
Peter blinked at her. "I mean, I feel like I should know, too, if we're together on this. Missions are about teamwork."
"That's not what I--oh never mind. Mommy said when we first got here that something called the Fallfi-- the fallef-- um.... Mommy talked about a place where fallen stars were more common. Remember? Pointed it out on the infoscope as we passed it."
Peter nodded. "She said she wanted to visit after her and Daddy's job was done."
"Yeah, but since things have gone bad with their job, I was thinking we could find it for her."
"You said we were finding a fallen star."
"We are. It's the same thing."
"You said it was a late Christmas present and an early New Year's present, getting something bright to start the year with or... something. Something about Mommy's old country."
"It is about that."
He blinked at her again. "You're being confusing. Getting a fallen star is not the same thing as getting Mommy the field thing."
Ashley bit back the urge to stamp her foot. That wouldn't be grown up of her. "Look, a thing can be more than one thing at a time. We're getting them a special gift, for Christmas, since they got us such nice things; and it will also be bright and white to start the New Year with, like Mommy said is important in where she grew up. But since they can't go visit the fields because work is going badly, we can bring a piece of the field to them and it will also help cheer them up. It's... it's part of why it's a special gift. So, we're looking for the fallen star place, which is in a field somewhere."
No reply.
"Besides, it's a star. First of all, it's cool, and secondly, it works very well for Christmas. Maybe next year we can put it on the tree."
Peter scrunched his nose at her under the guise of readjusting his glasses. She forgot how grumpy he could be after being woken up early.
"So why are we in the forest?"
"Because we're trying to get to the field, and it's a long way away. Besides, stars can fall in places that aren't fields, so we'll probably find one on the way." Probably felt like a stretch, but as mission leader she had to act confident.
"Last question," he said, adding after a moment of thought, "for now. Do we know what a fallen star looks like?"
"They're different everywhere you go," Ashley said after a moment, wheeling away from him. "But they're bright."
To tell the truth, she hadn't been able to remember what Mommy called the field place, at least not well enough to do any research. And looking at maps just showed that beyond the forest were a lot of plains and hills and mountains in a lot of different directions. Hypothetically they were walking in a right direction, and she had chosen the open bit closest by to go towards. But regardless of specifics and directions, she had to be right about one thing, at least. Stars were bright, all the way up in the sky, so a fallen one would be even more so. That's what was important. Bright things are easy to see in the dark.
"So is that thing over there a star, or is it just bright?" Peter asked, likely catching the tail end of her thought.
"What? Where?" Ashley spun around again, so fast she almost fell over a root.
He pointed at something in the distance, a vibrant thread of blue and green that shifted among the trees.
Whatever it was, it was pretty.
"It's not white, though," Peter said tiredly.
"But it's bright. Maybe... maybe they change colors? I know some kinds of stars are different colors, I think."
"I can go check it out," Peter said, kicking at the dirt.
Ashley shook her head. "No. It's important that we do this together. For Mommy and Daddy."
He didn't say anything. She caught a vague snatch of his thought--something about "I'd just be checking"--but decided to not push it as he shoved his hands in his pockets and went off with exaggerated slowness after the light.
She'd have to find a way to cheer him up, too, she decided.
"I'm glad you're here," she said, trotting up beside him. "You have a really good sense of direction, so I'm glad to know we won't get lost."
"And the finder," he said, clutching the compass-thing.
"Yeah. It's almost like Daddy's here, too," Ashley said.
"Why?" Peter asked, after having walked in confused silence for about a minute.
"Because, you know, he made it, so it's like he's helping us."
"But I helped make it, too. And Mommy made our clothes and backpacks. Does that mean she's with us, too?"
"Um, sure. I mean, that's not quite-- never mind." Ashley sighed dramatically and picked her way over one of the gigantic, knobbly roots. He was being literal again, and right now she wasn't sure if he was being genuine or stubborn about it. Most likely both.
But she soon forgot about that. The light was growing stronger. It danced through the trees, with a golden metallic core buried in the wisping tendrils.
Ashley quickened her pace.
Whatever it was, it didn't seem quite like a star. To begin with, it was neither sitting on the ground nor hanging in the sky, but a weird, in-between, floaty thing. It was becoming easier to see, however, as the far-ranging halls of trees began to thin, becoming sparser and easier to walk between. The footing was becoming more unpleasant, however, as the ground in between the knotted roots grew increasingly mushy underfoot, with fewer and fewer bits of brush and grass to step on.
"If it's not a star," Ashley said, "maybe we can still bring it back, and then Mommy and Daddy can get two presents."
"I suppose," Peter said. He sounded marginally less grumpy than before. "What's it made of, I wonder? There's some kind of metal inside, I think."
Ashley shrugged, catching a whiff of his thoughts. "I don't think so. It's too... wavy to be mechanical."
The thing seemed close. But... it seemed like it might be moving? Ashley found it difficult to track its actual movement as they wove through the trees--and the thing itself was so windy and in motion already--but she was sure they should have reached it by now.
"Maybe it's magically mechanical," Peter replied. "Also, the ground is starting to get hard to walk on. Could you help a bit?"
"Do you have good shoes?" Ashley replied.
He squinted again.
"Last time you said it was too cold to walk on."
"These are my new shoes that Mommy made me for Christmas. She fixed that." To further emphasize how good the new ones were, he stomped his feet and they lit up in a blaze of yellow and blue and purple.
"Okay, good." Thankfully, there was plenty of mud, and so, plenty of moisture. It wasn't hard to freeze it beneath her feet, creating a wide path for herself and Peter as they picked up speed. She did her best to make it as solid and as grippy as possible so that Peter wouldn't slip, but it was a hard thing to get right. She didn't understand how he could slip, anyway. It was ice. Ice was easy to walk on. Though perhaps he would say it was easy to run faster than the speed of sound. Different talents, as Mommy would say.
Ashley quickened her ice a bit, freezing further in front and to the side, too. A nice, big road of pretty patterns that curled around the trees, a floor easy to stand on. Much nicer than mud.
Now the trees were opening up even more, and becoming noticeably thinner and sickly in comparison to their rotund cousins that Home was in.
The light thing twirled, bobbing up and down above the ground, further still from where they were.
"It's moving," Peter said, as if it had done so to personally spite him. "Again. I don't think it's a star. I thought stars stood still or fell."
"But it's pretty. So maybe it will still be something nice."
Peter shrugged. Ashley could tell he wanted to bring up just running to it.
In her head, she was turning over the possibility of creating an icepath while he ran and pulled her. They had done it before, but it seemed out of place when they were hunting something. Then again, if this thing refused to be caught, or even be seen properly, maybe that would be the best course of action.
The two of them moved into the middle of a circular clearing, standing at the end of the trail of ice frozen over the surface of the mud. In front of them, the light curled around itself softly, rising up out of their reach. It looked like it trembled.
It was closer now, within full view, but that wasn't helping much with identification. The blues and greens flickered like flames, almost seeming to breathe, but in such a dance with themselves and with such a molten core that it was hard to look at properly. The core was also too obscured by the dance to make out beyond being shiny and metallic. The core shifted like its skin of colored light, silver to copper to gold.
Ashley got the distinct impression that it was looking at them.
"Hey, does that look like it could be a face to you?" Peter said.
Ashley tilted her head, the impression growing into a certainty that what they were looking at was some kind of being. Its mind was so different from her own that she hadn't registered it as such before. But now, with it morphing into something that watched, it touched her senses with a sudden familiarity. Emotion. It was confused. "It does, kind of. The gold looks a bit like a mouth, now."
"And eyes. And teeth."
Its face confirmed her thoughts--the expression it wore looked as deeply confused as Peter's did when she was telling him her theories about the people they met. The face was twisting and turning and watching them from all angles, before starting to change again.
The metallic bits were slowly becoming more distinct, even as they melded with the lights around them, twisting into something not at all like any expression she had seen on Peter. The teeth bared, growing sharper and longer, and the eyes wreathed themselves in an orangey flame that clashed (badly) with the green around it, the whole mask-like visage narrowing into a cruel grin.
It did not look pretty anymore.
"I think we should maybe look somewhere else for the star," Peter thought to her.
Ashley didn't have time to reply. A new emotion battered against her mind: excitement, and deep, gnawing hunger that hollowed her of thought.
That instant, the thing sprouted entirely too many arms and legs, each tipped with entirely too many claws; it plunged at them, lighting the mud around them with a ghastly blaze.
Ashley squealed and hunkered down, freezing her feet to the ice floor beneath her and phasing the rest of her body. Stranded in the middle of a ring of silent trees, the forest towering around them, she felt small, fragile, a mouse tossed into a coliseum. Peter was gone from behind her, presumably having run to a safe distance. He'd come back once he'd finished spooking, but what was she going to do until then?
The thing passed through her, enveloping her from the inside out with a horrible burning feeling. It tingled and slashed at the edges of all her senses. Redoubling the ice around her feet, Ashley was sharply aware that beneath her was nothing but mud. And she didn't know how hot this thing burned.
What a fool she had been. She'd heard many such stories before--some creature luring innocent passerbys to their deaths in inhospitable terrains. This was probably a swamp, or a bog, or quicksand, or maybe it just meant to attack them from the first.
Not a fallen star.
Her muddled thoughts were broken by something much stronger and far worse, different but more important--more emotions smashing into her brain like they wielded hammers.
Peter was panicking.
His thoughts were incoherent--too torrential a rush of wordlessness for her to understand--but she could feel the tangible edge of his terror, stronger than the burning or slashing or tingling.
If he had been able to run, he'd found something worse. If he hadn't, he was stuck with the mud and the ice and the creature that burned and gnawed and hungered.
She couldn't see well like this, or hear, or smell. She didn't know what was happening with Peter, she couldn't ask him over his own thoughts, she couldn't look for him without becoming solid. She couldn't turn real again for fear of getting hurt or killed by the creature attacking them. If she blindly spread her ice out too far, she could hurt Peter.
She didn't know how to move when she was like this. Not yet. She was still learning how to move a body that stopped existing, and even if she could, she couldn't help Peter without form.
Trapped in her own abilities.
Ashley tried to gulp down the fear that rose in her throat, more tangible than she herself was.
How long would she be stuck like this? Listening to Peter thrash about and being unable to help?
She was the mission leader, his sister. She was supposed to be doing something.
Why hadn't she told Mommy and Daddy about their trip? They would have known what to do. How to find a star. How to not follow a creature into the woods.
All these half-thoughts and fears flitted through her mind at speed, gone and over almost before she'd finished processing where Peter even was.
She held her hands over her ears (or maybe through them, who knew) and squeezed her eyes shut, as if trying to pressure some workable plan into her brain. It just made the blurriness around her dark.
If she could have any one wish granted, it would be for Mommy to be there. Mommy made things safe.
But--
Mommy wasn't here, and it was Ashley's fault.
It's mind, a voiceless cacophony screaming to be fed, banished any thoughts.
Only one remained. "LEAVE. LEAVE US ALONE."
Howling, writhing, snarling.
The burning that had been roaring through her since a few instants ago, dragging through her with claws of flame--it cut out.
One moment to the next. It shut off like a lightlever.
Peter stopped panicking.
Like an ice-cube thrown into a furnace, the writhing terror bled away with a gradual sort of instantaneousness.
This was somehow more disconcerting than the panic. This was a situation which warranted that, but now he was just... vaguely confused.
But the burning was gone.
So the was the cruel hunger.
Ashley didn't move.
Peter was still there, at least, and he was acting like he was safe now, but she didn't know if she was safe now.
Still, no sounds, no sights. Only vague muffles through the edge of nothingness.
"Ashie," Peter's thoughts said, still bewildered but solid, sure. "It's okay now. It's gone."
Slowly, Ashley let her body come back, starting from her feet and legs, and making sure the rest of herself wasn't so curled into itself that it would form wrongly. The feeling that ebbed in with her reality was that of beloved cold, a familiar and stable sensation. No stabbing heat.
Finally, she opened her eyes.
Peter sat on the--very thick--ice walkway behind her, covered from head to toe in mud. He was struggling to clean off his glasses with a spare cloth from inside his pack, and it was not going well.
"Did you fight it?" She asked, looking around cautiously. There was nothing there--except now she could see that her ice had covered over the entire clearing. She caught sight of frost dusting trees beyond.
"I thought you did," he said, squinting more than ever without his glasses. "Like, your ice put it out or something."
"What happened to you?" Ashley asked, moving on to the more important question.
"I slid off the ice," Peter said, almost apologetically, "into the swampy stuff. The burning thing came after me. I couldn't see much, but somehow I was back on the ice again. So I thought you did it."
"Not that I know of," Ashley said, tilting her head. She looked around. "But... I couldn't see. I was thinking about you, though, because I could hear you being afraid. Maybe my ice reached out to you?"
"I don't think it's done that before," Peter said. He gave up on his glasses, wrapping them in a different cloth and sticking them in his backpack. It was well sealed, and though there was mud all over the outside of it, the contents were fine. "But maybe it's because we're getting older. Mommy says our powers aren't fully developed yet."
"I did also yell at it to leave," Ashley said. "In my head, anyway. It... I don't know if it actually connected, though, I didn't feel like it did. But maybe it did what I told it to?"
Peter considered this gravely. "Mommy says she still has things to teach you about your mind powers. But I don't know much about them. So maybe you can tell things to leave."
Ashley thought about this for a while.
"Let's... let's go somewhere else," Ashley said, finally. She hugged herself, layering a thin bit of ice over her freckles, just to feel the safety of the cold crystals against her skin. "Do... do you think... should we go back?"
That wasn't what she wanted to say. She wanted to say sorry, because she had almost dragged him into a swamp, and he had agreed that she could be leader this time.
Peter kicked his heels against the ice, the sneakers responding and faintly lighting up through their coating of swamp mud. "Well. We're not dead. I think that it would be a disappointment to go back now. We haven't done anything except get covered in mud. Mommy will know we did something. So I'd rather go back with something."
That was true. Ashley winced. Peter might never let her live this down, but Mommy and Daddy might never let her leave Home unsupervised again.
Not that they had let her this time, but they hadn't locked her in, either.
"We need that star," she said.
Peter nodded sagely. "Besides, in stories, it always seems like you have to get attacked at least once before anything good happens. So maybe we're okay now."
That was wise.
Ashley pulled Peter to his feet and helped him back to solid land, winding much farther through the trees than they had expected.
"Also," Peter said, quietly, in a tone that said his words too heavy to lift above a whisper, "my finder fell off in the mud."
Ashley didn't know how to respond. She felt like she did when he punched her in the stomach.
Still, her voice caught before she could get an apology into the open.
She held his hand as they walked, and hoped he understood something of what she meant.
For Christmas/New Years, and the @inklings-challenge Christmas 2023.
The night outside Home was dark and warm, and, from what Ashley could see through the second floor's infoscope, clear. The perfect night to catch a falling star.
She shook Peter awake--he had fallen asleep almost immediately after Daddy had put them to bed--and hovered over him, his glasses in hand, as he groaned himself awake.
"Home was right," she thought to him. "It's a good night."
"It's only midnight," he thought back, the groaning carrying over to his thoughts. "Shouldn't we go a little later?"
She shook her head. Some kids just didn't have a sense of the important. "We don't know how long this will take, so we gotta take all the time we can. Besides, Mommy and Daddy both went to bed hours ago." Well, one hour ago, but it all amounted to the same fact: Mommy and Daddy were asleep.
Peter was still mumbling incoherent and disgruntled sounds to himself as he sat up and accepted the glasses, sniffling a bit from sleepiness as he put them on.
"Your hair is a mess."
He stuck his tongue out at her.
Luckily, Ashley was too mature to respond to such behavior. Instead, she shoved his (new) backpack towards him. Hers was already on, and her hair was in good order. She had a sense of the important. She had used her new hair ties, too, and the beads on them made such satisfying clicking sounds when she shook her head at him.
"Remember, this is for Mommy and Daddy," she thought.
He looked at her a tad resentfully as he pushed his way to his feet and slung the backpack on. "I know."
"We can sleep when we get back."
"I know."
Satisfied that he was properly on track again, she set her mind to the next phase: sneaking out of the house.
As far as Ashley could guess, it wouldn't be difficult. The front door wouldn't be locked--no one who wasn't supposed to be there could be there--and Home was slow and sleepy at this time of night. She could tell. Home sounded sleepy. The lights were all off. There were only the sounds of Home's little settlings to punctuate the darkness. And while Home worked as well as ever, Home didn't respond very quickly to Ashley when she said good morning to it.
Home's stairs creaked ever so slightly as the two children stole their way down the stairs, a vague stirring of curiosity. But not enough to arouse it much.
Ashley and Peter had already had an extensive argument about whether or not he could just run downstairs and wait for her outside. True, he'd be out in an instant, but Ashley insisted that it would be more suspicious if Mommy was still awake, and Mommy had really good senses. She would hear all the sounds even if they were over right away. And it might wake Home up.
Peter had finally relented, but, as they crept carefully down each bronze-and-wood step, she could hear him thinking about how long this sneaking was taking.
Despite his mental complaints, they were soon at the bottom of the stairs. From there, they just had the living room, then the Doorway, then the hall, and then the Door itself.
Ashley stopped Peter at the foot of the stairs, poking her head around the stairwell wall to look into the living room and kitchen.
For a brief second, she saw what looked like a shadow in the kitchen, and in her mind she could feel the distinct, almost painfully bright, warmth of Mommy.
Ashley tensed and clutched Peter's arm--he made a slight strangled noise--and pulled back behind the wall.
The moment passed.
Poking her head back out, she found the place empty. Even though she couldn't hear much over her own blood rushing in her head, she couldn't detect anyone's presence in either room.
Ashley swallowed. Of course she could feel Mommy. Her and Daddy's room wasn't far from the kitchen. Maybe... maybe Mommy had just had a dream or something. More importantly, it was gone now.
"Everything okay?" Peter asked, rubbing his arm where she'd pinched him.
Ashley nodded. "All clear."
Peter squinted at her, which was odd, since he saw better than her in the dark. Unless he was being sassy, but that was less important right now than their mission.
Carefully, carefully, she edged out, toe-tip by toe-tip, into the open, empty, open space of the living room--it felt like the shadows were staring at her from over the backs of the couches and chairs.
It didn't feel comfortable.
Peter rolled his eyes at her, but he followed suit when she dropped to her hands and knees and started shuffling across the tile.
They got to the Doorway without further incident.
Ashley scooped up her new, beautifully orange shoes from their spot on the shelf and continued scooting along awkwardly, trying to carry the shoes in one hand and manage transportation on three limbs. She was half-tempted to put the strings in her mouth and carry them that way, but that was gross, so she wasn't going to.
Home rumbled slightly as they made it to the Door, and the hinges had an inquiring squeak about them as Peter, standing again, pulled the door open--narrowly avoiding bonking her on the head with the doorknob now that she was standing behind him. But, other than the small noises, Home didn't do anything else. That was good. Ashley had been worried about that, that they'd wake it up too much and that it would either ask too many questions or else not let them out.
Peter disappeared, reappearing a short distance away outside.
They had made it.
Ashley carefully closed the Door, making sure it clicked shut properly. She took a moment, pushing her hand against the Door, at the moment a façade of wood and bark.
With the whistlings of crickets and frogs seranding her from the surround forest, it occurred to her. She had never been outside Home without Mommy or Daddy. She looked at the door again, a sudden worry springing up in her. What if they couldn't get the door open again, and were wrong about how it worked? They had forgot to test it beforehand. They'd be trapped outside. What if Mommy and Daddy went to a different world without them, by accident? Would they even realize that her and Peter were gone until it was too late to turn back? They hadn't told, so--
"I know the knock," Peter said, speaking normally now that they were outside and didn't need silence. "I thought you did, too."
"I do," Ashley replied imperiously, turning away and marching after him. "I was just. Saying goodbye." She was leading this mission. She couldn't admit to Peter that she was nervous. He'd make fun of her.
He looked at her but didn't say anything.
They started off through the trees. Peter let Ashley take the lead, trudging behind and readjusting his pack. He looked more awake now.
"Also," he added after a minute. "You could just phase through the door."
"I... knew that," Ashley said, her cheeks frosting. It didn't sound convincing, even to herself.
She dug her hands into her trouser pockets and kept walking.
A slight breath of a chuckle-like sound echoed from beside the Door, but, if either of them noticed, they thought nothing of it.
