Now You See Me | Thomas Shelby

eight; polly gray, gypsy extraordinaire

The party in the horses field slowly came to an end at around four in the evening, and Polly-Anna was ready for a nap. She hadn't felt such exhaustion like this before, not from working gruelling hours at the tailors nor after a week of non-stop babysitting Amber-Jack

Who knew running around, having so much fun in a field with people who meant the world to her would be so tiring?

If it wasn't for the surprise birthday kiss from the one person she had wanted it to be from, she would've probably ran out of energy far before that. Tommy had always had a strange way of showing his feelings, even in the short amount of time the Wallace duo had known the Shelby's. He was sometimes open and honest, smiling or frowning and other times he was a stoic as they came.

He was-- a whirlwind, an enigmatic puzzle she hadn't yet been able to figure out.

"Amber, shoes off!" Polly-Anna shouted before her sister had chance to run through the living room of their incredibly tiny home.

Of course Amber hadn't listened, but thankfully most of the wet mud had come loose on their long walk back to Artillery Square, leaving dry clumps behind instead. That would take far less time to sweep up- tomorrow of course.

Amber still had far too much energy left for what they had all just done, and had she been caged like a little bird, she'd surely be going wild.

Luckily for everyone involved, not a single soul could've ever come close to caging Amber-Jack. Not even the best bird-catcher in the world, she was too much of a free-spirit to be locked down, Polly Gray had often joked that she was more of a gypsy than most of her kin could ever have been.

Polly Gray had been in the Wallace girls life for such a short time, yet it felt like she had been their Aunt Pol from the very beginning.

She was loyal, and funny— and extraordinarily kind to those under her wing. With a son under the age of one and a husband who wandered the canals in search of... something, she remained true to herself. She remained true to the values she had been given from an early age- unlike her brother, if she even considered him that.

Pol, the Shelbys confidant, had become a guardian angel to the girls and her love for them only ever grew.

"Amber, please- just take your damn shoes off!" Polly-Anna raised her voice for the first time that day, and the sound of two distant thuds was Ambers grumpy response to being hollered at.

"Thank you!" Polly-Anna shouted back before taking a seat on the settee.

Something she hadn't done in a long time, was think about how well she had done. For someone who should've been in a workhouse, she survived and fought for what she had- but all of that surviving and fighting was a tiresome job.

Her mind slowly began to drift to the second eldest Shelby and how his silly smile always brightened her day... or how his eyes told a different story to those who knew how to read him.

"Amber, Pol said we've to be down in the square by six, so rest for an hour and get changed into something less grassy." The eldest Wallace called out, her tone calmer than before.

She heard a quiet 'okay' from this distance as a reply and exhaled in an exhausted relief.

Who knew that a first kiss would be so tiring?

As the time passed, and Polly-Anna drifted in and out of a somewhat comfortable nap, she hadn't noticed that Amber had joined her.

With Amber now resting her head in the curve of her side, Polly-Anna stayed in the same position, it wasn't exactly comfortable but it wasn't u comfortable either. Plus - it wasn't that she hadn't felt her sisters arm snake around her side, she had- she just hadn't consciously noticed. Her mind hadn't recognised what had happened but she didn't recoil from the action. Instead she accommodated for the extra body heat and the added weight to her side by slightly sinking into the settee more on one side than the other.