A Labor of Love
Author's Note: the following is a work of furry fiction. As such, it may contain material some of you might find objectionable. Thankfully, this isn't the usual type of fiction I do, so there isn't much objectionable unless you find ghosts not to your liking. In any case, if you don't want to read it, you shouldn't be here in the first place. Otherwise, please read on and enjoy.
Many thanks go out to The Madbadger, whose concept comprises this entire work, start to finish. He came up with the idea; I just ran with it and tried to mold it to what he thinks it should be like. All credit for characters et al. goes to him, writing to me. I'm just a vessel for the genius.
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/whyteyote
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/themadbadger
FEEDBACK always welcome to: [email protected]
A Labor of Love ©MMVII
Story by Whyte Yoté
Concept by The Madbadger
"I wish it were snow." Oh, how Charlotte would have loved for it to be the truth! If it were snow falling outside her bedroom window, she could pretend it was Christmas morning, and a quick trip downstairs would find her family gathered around a giant Douglas fir, bedazzled with tinsel and ornaments and Father's shining gold-leaf star atop it.
"Good morning, dear," Mother would say as she smiled the sleep away from her eyes, her long brown hair already done up neatly atop her head, framed by her ears. She would be next to the hearth, having the poor circulation which her daughter had inherited, feeding the flames with wrapping paper and discarded ribbon.
Lily would chime in matter-of-factly, "Charlotte, you're lucky we didn't start without you. I had to make the coffee and orange rolls by myself." But Lily would be smiling as well, and Charlotte would know her sister didn't mind one bit. "The dishes are yours, however." And Charlotte would nod at her sister, knowing it was only fair.
"Why don't you sit over by Mother, keep warm, and I'll bring the gifts over to you, huh?" Father would ask, tightening his robe with a succinct pull. His gut would stick out above the silk belt, but he wouldn't notice and would go back to sifting through the colorful pile for a gift with Charlotte's name on it. It was the same way every year; Father was the gift-picker because he knew in which order to hand them out, with the most special left to the end of the morning.
And then brunch would come, with a succulent ham, sweet potatoes and chocolate pie, and all the apricots they could eat, picked from their very trees...
Then the vision faded, as all of Charlotte's visions tended to do recently. Yes, it would have been nice to see snow on the other side of the window, but it was a romantic fantasy at best. It didn't snow in Encinal. It never had. It would kill the trees. So, even if her wish came true, it would be no more real than her ability to move things around. And, as the vixen had come to realize, that ability was hardly real at all anymore. Bloody aggravating, was what it was.
If it were snow, at least it would have a chance of melting when the weather turned, so Charlotte could see her yard and the street again. But what was on the glass had accumulated over time immemorial, had caked on and progressively darkened the room until the noonday sun had about as much efficacy as a full moon. Everything was tinted a dirty vanilla, a dark shade of yellowy white that jaundiced even the prettiest of furniture and keepsakes. Even those were dingy and half-hidden by a sickly layer of dust.
Forget the snow; if Charlotte could see the apricot trees again she would be so happy. Before (she didn't remember when, it was just all a big "before"), she could look out on the front drive, which cut a swath through the grove to the state road, the only evidence of which was the line of telephone poles along its shoulder.
The young fox smoothed the front of her dress, feeling along the material as it changed down her body. Smooth and stitched here, ruffled and gathered there, loose and flowing below the waist...she fingered the brooch between her bosoms, knowing without looking that it had tarnished long ago. It used to be silver.
Bang! The sound echoed somehow through the room, though it sounded far away. A gunshot, or some such explosion. Charlotte was at the window in a flash, much faster than she could have moved, but she was used to moving in such a way. She tried rubbing the back of her hand over the pane closest to her face, but the glass on this side was clean and it did no good. Her heart was still in her chest...no, it wasn't exactly that. Panic had rooted deeply in her mind, but her pulse was so weak as to seem to not be there at all.
BANG! There it was again, even louder, and Charlotte strained her tall ears toward the outside. A light rumble accompanied the second noise, and was growing in volume, rising and falling in pitch. The vixen's panic was assuaged not a bit when she recognized the sound as that of a motorcar, just as it turned into the drive and approached the house. Stricken with fear, she ran from the room, closing her eyes as the solid wall passed by, because it made her ill to think about watching.
The staircase seemed to float under her as she descended it, her hand resting barely above the dirty mahogany banister. Father had spent a whole week carving and bending that wood with his bare hands; it could use a good coat of wax, but Charlotte wasn't desperate enough to labor for something that would undoubtedly weather to the same state in short order.
The downstairs was much darker and dingier than the upper floors, mostly due to planks of plywood that had been nailed in front of the windows. Cupping her hands over her face, she peered out through a small crack to see what appeared to be an alien craft rolling to a stop just ten feet from the porch. It cut an insect-like profile, much like that of a beetle, but was such a gaudy color of orange Charlotte didn't think it was possible in paint.
After a third bang!, the motor finally lurched to a stop and its occupant exited the side opposite her. It was the badger from another before, the one who had taken such an interest in her wall. She could tell that much, but he was still dressed so oddly that Charlotte had no idea to which class he belonged. The clothes were foreign to her; a shirt whose sleeves had been cut short, much like an attendant at a phosphate shop, pants made of a piebald blue material which had obviously been vandalized at the knees, white shoes that looked anything but comfortable.
The badger bent over the hood of the vehicle and opened it up to reveal a storage space inside! What a novel idea, thought Charlotte, putting the motor in the rear...I wonder why? The glass fogged with her breath, and she was vaguely aware of her tail fanning the air behind her in slow arcs. Fear had given way to curiosity, curiosity to excitement, but her heart was pounding still. Pulling a pickaxe from the compartment, the badger closed it up and made for the house, swinging the instrument with him as he walked.
Charlotte barely had time to hide around the corner in the sitting room before she heard the tumblers in the lock open, and suddenly daylight flooded the foyer for the first time since she could remember. The door put up a noisy struggle, and shuddered to a close behind the man. He twirled a key around his finger, and at once the vixen recognized it...that's Father's key! It even had the same purple ribbon around it, the one with the gold banding at the edges!
She watched the man look around the foyer, and into the rooms on each side of the front door.
"What did I get myself into with this thing?" he asked. Charlotte did not deign to answer; everything she'd been through up until this moment had been confusing enough. She wanted only to watch, and wait...there wasn't much more she could do, in any case. "Well, I'd better see how tough this house is." The badger twirled the pickaxe and mounted the staircase.
Where in the world did that man get Father's key, and why was he in the house for a second time? It was apparent he wasn't a vagrant or hedonist like others she had seen, nor a vandal of any kind. Last time he had been accompanied by a zaftig, talkative wolfess in a suit, and now Charlotte wished she had paid more attention to their conversation, which had been held in hushed whispers.
A loud crash brought her back to attention. This was no backfire; something of substance had fallen and crumbled. Only two times had Charlotte heard that kind of a sound. The first was when she was eleven, and a and she had dropped a brand-new serving dish to shatter on the kitchen floor, roast duck and all. The dish had cost twenty dollars, and Father didn't have money for a replacement at such a late time in the harvest season. She had been melancholy until Mother had served a turkey on the same plate, all repaired and with only two chips out of the side to show for wear. Father had fixed it right up.
The second time was when Mother died. Father was not himself. He threw a lot of things around the house in those days...but by then, Charlotte could do precious little to comfort her broken family. That was so, so long ago...
A cloud of dust had plumed out from the landing and was falling like fine snow over the foyer and its Prussian runner, ruined by moths and elemental wear. Charlotte was up the staircase in a flash, and she nearly screamed when she saw the badger leaning back, muscles flexing in preparation to swing that pickaxe into her room! The blade came down just next to the gaping hole the first strike had made; wallpaper, clapboard, plaster and another cloud of dust coated the badger's feet and spilled out behind him, to the floor below.
"Holy hell, this stuff is good construction!" the man admonished, preparing for another swing. Charlotte had to do something, had to stop this...this ne'er do well from destroying the only thing that mattered to her anymore. This was her family, and her existence, and even if that existence couldn't be called such it was still worth preserving. No time for thinking, no time to toss the idea around...the vixen shrieked and rushed to the wall to do something, anything to prevent that blade from carving another hole. It came down just as she reached the badger, but instead of stopping she found herself on the other side, standing by the foot of her bed. Another one of those crumbling sounds followed her, and the ensuing cloud of dust told her she had done something she hadn't intended.
The badger stood hunched over, the pickaxe resting on a pile of what used to be the wall. Agape, he peered in through the body-sized hole that had suddenly appeared in front of him. Debris littered the floor ten feet into the room; even the brick wall Father had laid, one stone at a time, had not withstood the impact. A feeling of uneasiness swept over the vixen, and she recognized for the first time that something had changed this day that would alter her life from this moment on. The panic was back, and even stronger.
Oh no, what did I do?
But the real question was, what had she wanted to happen? What could she possibly have done to keep this intruder out? It wasn't like she could hold the wall up with one of those ethereal forces. Making breezes a she was trying to master. Floating pennies, yes, but exploding a wall as if it were made of paper?
"Charlotte?" And she turned, neck stiffly extended, at the sound of her name. It had been so, so long since she'd heard the word that it sounded almost foreign to her. The badger had dropped his tool and was stepping over the pile into the room, into her space, into her childhood, and speaking to the air. "Charlotte, is that you? It's awfully cold in here. I can't help but feel you're watching me." He paced over to the foot of the bed, drawing away his hand when he felt the cloying dust on the duvet.
She was watching him. From the opposite wall, by the window, as far away as she could get. As scared and incensed as she was at his entrance, and subsequent invasion of her room, Charlotte was the one who had essentially granted him entrance, involuntary though it had been. Narrowing her eyes warily, she was at least willing to let him state his business before making a judgment. He was the first one to recognize her, call her by name. That she had announced her presence in such a raucous manner mattered less than finding out this man's intentions with her home and memories.
The badger dusted himself off, picking specks of wall and powder from the black fur of his forearms. "So, this is the room I've been clamoring to see ever since I signed the deed?"
This man owned the property? Charlotte clutched her chest through her dress; what had gone on since she had first lain on her bed that one night, so long ago she'd quit trying to gauge time? Her head felt faint, and she allowed herself to collapse onto the soft surface of the reading nook at the window. For all the time that had seemed to pass so slowly before, suddenly things were changing too fast for comfort. Charlotte found herself regretting not having taken action, but at the same time she knew there was no action she could take in her state.
"Look at this," the badger was speaking in hushed, excited tones. He was hunched over her dresser, muzzle practically touching one of the drawer's pulls. "The brass casting is magnificent! This minute detail," he clawed at the design, bringing away dust and tarnish, "you just can't find anymore. Who would take the time to do all this wood inlay?" His finger pads were all over the dresser, making tracks of clean wood through the grime. It looked worse than it had before, when it had been uniformly coated...but Charlotte had forgotten how marvelous the wood was until she saw it shining after the badger's touch. Father had imported the redwood from the coast near Oregon, carved it himself, and used their own trees for the inlay. Weeks, it had taken him. Weeks, one injured finger, and lots of cursing. She had made sure to thank Father every day until he grew sick of it.
"What's this?" the badger asked. Arms around the dresser, he was scooting it away from the wall. Her clothes must have not held much interest, not as much as whatever was behind the heavy piece of furniture...until she saw the familiar flap of loose wallpaper, its print almost untouched compared to the faded and dirty paper exposed to the light.
The cameo!
"Oh wow, there's something behind here!" There was absolutely no way Charlotte was going to let this brute get his paws on her most secret, most prized possession, even if she couldn't hold it herself. Fury clouded her vision, and suddenly she was across the room, looming over the badger's back, and she held him, pulling him up and away. Instead, though, the badger moaned low, and she felt the sickly feeling welling up in him, the shivering, and then she let go as he collapsed against the corner of the dresser.
Immediately Charlotte recoiled, surprised that she had done something so physical for the second time in such a short period. But the cameo was hers more than anything else in the house; it was practically her only secret. It was inconceivable to think about it being stolen from its resting place.
"Mmmm..." The badger lay, curled up and shaking bodily on the floor, groaning. "God, you didn't have to go that far."
I'm sorry, really I am, it's just that I'm scared...
She had to get away...couldn't stand the thought anymore of having to watch events that were out of her control. If he didn't take the cameo today, he might come back tomorrow, or the next day, or any time he wanted and take it when she wasn't looking, or not able to stop him. She couldn't keep this up forever, and that helplessness was almost too much to bear. And look what she had done to that poor man, out of a blind rage she had never engendered before...before...
Feeling the cold, cruel touch of tears on her cheeks, she fled the room, welcoming the haze and wherever it took her.
It wasn't sleep, but it wasn't waking either. But it was silent, and the silence was welcoming for once. After all the commotion, the intrusion, the attack...her sensibilities could only take so much. So when she finally opened her eyes and peered out of the pantry at the faded light, she was ready to come out. Brushing her hair behind her shoulders and standing, Charlotte again became a poised and prudent woman.
There was silence throughout the house, and when she looked out the crack by the front door the absence of that queer-looking motorcar was evidence of the badger's leave. She was relieved and a bit sad, too, because she did feel some residual guilt from attacking him like she had. But she had a sneaking suspicion that he would be back, and when he returned she would watch him again.
It was late afternoon, the vixen judged, because the light was at its strongest in her bedroom, where the windows faced west. Even the layer of filth on the panes couldn't keep the warm glow from effusing everything with a lively hue; it reminded her of summer evenings when they were harvesting. Mother would tuck her and Lily in early, so they could spend the following day with Father in the groves, picking fruit until their fingers were stiff and sore and eating themselves sick.
Charlotte gazed longingly at the dresser, with its dustless fingerprints. It had been shoved back against the wall, so there was no way to tell if the cameo was still nestled in its safe hiding place. There was another wave of helplessness; even for the littlest things she depended on others.
The last of the light was disappearing when a glint caught her eye. She looked up, her eyes resting on the hearth and its assortment of knickknacks. Above it, an oil painting of her and Lily, done when Charlotte was fourteen. She remembered that day well; it had rained and everything smelled of moss and wet dirt. Yet they had posed.
But that wasn't what caught her attention. It was the candelabra, devoid of candles but perfectly clean. And how it shined! It hadn't ever dominated the fireplace, let alone the entire room, but its brass arms and base shone even golder than the sunlight upon it. Hardly a trace of disturbance was around it, meaning it had been handled carefully, almost reverently. The badger had taken it down and polished it. Every surface, every curve, every edge.
In it Charlotte could feel the remnants of his aura, could even feel residual warmth from his body even though she wasn't able to hold it. He wasn't a vagrant, or a vandal. He came into her house and brought beauty back from where it had expired.
The vixen turned from the hearth and looked at the mess on the floor, and just beyond it, where the badger's footsteps had wiped the dust away to reveal the highly-glossed finish of the redwood floor. His fingerprints, where the dresser's long-lost soul shone through. To the candelabra, the brightest object in the room, just as pretty as the day Father had taken her to town and they had picked it out together, just for her, and they had read bedtime stories by its light.
And she remembered it all.
Charlotte reached out to it, stroked her fingers along it as if she could just pick it up and hold it. In its base there was no reflection, of course, hard though she looked for her own face in the brass. But she remembered, and she was infinitely glad for it. Body tensed and quivering, her sobs fogged up the reflectionless metal, the first warm breath out of her mouth in forty-two years.
FIN
1/5-1/6/08