ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[sundayfish]

"Ideally Bella'd be awake and telling me what she's planning to do with the wings and - whatever else. Failing that I want to know what she can do if she feels like it. What the situation for her is now."

[castmyown]

"Well I don't know your daughter, but - she can now turn into a sphinx at will, if she has the medallion. Or, pick and choose parts of a sphinx to have, like the wings. If she doesn't have the medallion, she will default to being a sphinx, because of hokey magic that was disguising her as a human all her life. That just got broken, now she is a sphinx that can turn human. Due to it being a sphinx in particular, she's likely to be extremely magical. I think in healing magic, but there's probably some others she'll get naturally. So she will be able to fly, heal, and probably after Darren geeks out about magic with her, lots of other things."

[sundayfish]

"Why's this such a surprise, why wouldn't I know this was a thing that might happen? She in danger if people find out, that why it's secret?"

[castmyown]

"It's likely that she could be, yeah. It's why it's not on neon signs everywhere. Lots of people won't take their neighbors being gryphons very well, and all. Some kids go through their turning and their families completely freak out and disown them, or throw them out, or a variety of other nasty things. That's not going to happen here, is it?" asks Vernon, carefully.

[sundayfish]

Charlie shakes his head. "Still Bella, isn't it?"

[castmyown]

"Yup," says Vernon, pleased with this answer. "Good on you, I freaked when I found out about this."

Darren manages a little smile, from his cloud of misery over there.

[sundayfish]

"Not saying it's not unnerving as all hell, but it's still Bella, or looks to be anyway."

[shesepankh]

Bella stirs. She stretches a wing; it unfurls the blanket. She yawns an almighty cat-jawed yawn. She looks blearily around her surroundings. She inspects her wing.

She notices that Charlie and Darren and a stranger are present.

"Uh."

[castmyown]

"Yeah, it is," agrees Vernon. "Still completely her."

Then Bella wakes up.

"Hi," says Darren, guiltily.

"Ah, she wakes," says Vernon, amused. "Well. Nice to meet you, I'm Darren's father, Vernon."

"I'm glad you're okay," adds Darren, to Bella.

[sundayfish]

"Bells," says Charlie, hugging her.

[shesepankh]

"Hi, Dad." She rids herself of wings and hugs him back. "I think I'm fine but I don't know why I keep losing consciousness. Thanks for getting me home, Darren. Nice to meet you, Darren's dad."

[castmyown]

Darren nods. "I couldn't just leave you there..."

"I would have had to make the parental expression of fatherly disappointment," says Vernon dryly. "Also his conscience would have kicked the crap out of him."

Darren snorts.

[shesepankh]

"You seem to be taking this pretty well," Bella remarks to her dad.

[sundayfish]

He shrugs. "As opposed to what? Vernon says sometimes kids come home with wings and get kicked out. Don't see how that solves anything."

[steppingup]

"It doesn't," says Vernon. "But sometimes they don't want to deal with the problems."

[sundayfish]

"Not how having a kid works," mutters Charlie.

[shesepankh]

"Dad, is it gonna freak you out if I practice changing on purpose so I'm less likely to come over all angelic if I faint in school or whatever?"

[sundayfish]

"Probably. Do it anyhow if it helps."

[steppingup]

Okay, Vernon likes Bella's father. He smiles at him, just a bit. Finally a father who gets it.

[castmyown]

Darren smiles too. "I er - should I ask around to see if blacking out upon turning is normal?" he offers.

[steppingup]

Vernon snorts. "Darren, I love you but you can't be subtle to save your life. I can do it."

[sundayfish]

"Some reason to be subtle with the kinda people who'd know?"

[shesepankh]

"I," says Bella, turning fullform and sprawling all over the couch tail and all, "am an extra special fairy-princess kind of monsterperson, so if it's normal for sphinxes but not normal for anything else, the question would ideally not be connected to me."

[steppingup]

"Yup. I can ask some people, pretend to be the stupid human that needs education."

[castmyown]

Darren snickers, a little, at her completely serious description. "Has this gone firmly into the 'not a dream' category yet?"