shesepankh | ghost

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Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn.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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

shesepankh

"I don't actually know if we're all quadrupedal, but there's the one and only known sphinx, yours truly, and apparently Darren and Savannah are perytons - bird-deer things."

From:

steppingup

"They're not actually all quadrupeds. Nixies, for example, are kinda like mermaids. Except not quite."

From:

castmyown

"Thank you for the glowing description, Bella," deadpans Darren. "I'm a magic deer with wings, essentially."

From:

shesepankh

"Exactly. Bird-deer thing. Being a 'deer with wings' doesn't specify kind of wings, you could have bat wings if I just said that."

From:

castmyown

"Your father has seen my wings. I demonstrated while I was freaking out."

From:

shesepankh

"...At what point in the process of freaking out did you attempt to explain the wings part?"

From:

castmyown

"Um. I told him on the phone because I didn't want him to freak out and proclaim witchery or something when he got here and I explained on the way here a bit."

From:

sundayfish

"Cost me about a minute, I called your phone before coming to get you 'cause I figured it was a prank, but he answered your phone too."

From:

castmyown

"... Sorry," says Darren.

From:

shesepankh

"...At least you didn't wind up with him convinced that you had harmed me? I guess? Because that would have been hazardous to your health?"

From:

castmyown

"Yeah, that's something. I probably could have handled it better, though."

From:

steppingup

Vernon claps him on the back. "Hey, kiddo. It happens. You did what you thought was right in a freaky situation where you didn't know what to do and it worked out okay. Calling that a good day."

From:

shesepankh

"But really you probably should've just told him that I was in trouble and waited to mention the wings until they were provably there."

From:

sundayfish

"Nobody teaches crisis management in schools," shrugs Charlie.

From:

castmyown

"Yeah," he agrees. He does look kind of guilty about it, though.

From:

shesepankh

Bella stretches out a velvet paw and pats Darren on the knee with it.

From:

castmyown

He smiles, a bit. "Having fun with magic?"

From:

shesepankh

"Yeah. Haven't managed to get the fur to come in stripewise, let alone anything more complicated, but I'm getting more of a sense of what I'm being and how to stay put or not on purpose."

From:

castmyown

"Good. You should also probably run around as a sphinx to get used to it, along with flying."

From:

steppingup

"... Don't jump off a cliff. Some gryphons I know like to get newbies to fly through that method, and other options are safer."

From:

shesepankh

"I do not plan to jump off a cliff. I might run down a hill, if it turns out I can run better on four feet than two."

From:

steppingup

"Good. Making sure."

From:

shesepankh

"When should I start magic lessons, Darren?"

From:

castmyown

"Probably after you get shifting down, I think. Because while magic's fantastic, that one's more important - school and not getting wings randomly, and all."