THE END OF THE F*CKING WORLD || in which 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲𝐧 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 wishes that humanities assumptions about the way in which the world would end were correct.
with the dead rising to feast on the living, vie had wholeheartedly believed that her l...
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THERE'S A PURITY IN CHILDREN'S LAUGHTER. A warmth that swells beneath a parent's ribs to listen, and Evie's cheeks ache with the curve of her radiant smile. Candy coated tongues tint their small mouths in shades of violet and chartreuse, and they squeal in a sugar fueled giddiness. Evie watches from afar; the stampede of Carl's unlaced sneakers against beaten grass as his sticky fingers seize the edge of the climbing frame in a kick of his feet onto the raised surface.
The smile on Carl's stained mouth has Evie reciprocating, shaking her head humorously at her nephew's imagination as he plays his character fluidly with his friends. For a beat, Evie tugs her gaze away and to the innocence of her own daughter with a crouch at her side. Flaxen tresses unlike her mother's own are woven into neat braids toppling across bare shoulders, and Maisie's skin is slick with sunscreen beneath the small straps of her playsuit.
It's a sage color, with small bows tied against the shoulders and canary thread stitches a sunflower on its chest, above the oddly deep pockets it gives her. The little girl has pulled her pleated sandals from her feet, and they dangle from Evie's fingertips as sand dusts her little backside with Maisie's content place in the sandpit, curling her small toes into the sand; painted the same lilac shade as Evie's fingernails since she'd pleaded the night before.
Maisie smiles a sort of cute, stretched gleam that she would gift with a cheeky 'cheese!' in front of any camera, and her heirloom eyes are the same sapphire shade as her mother's as Maisie peers over at Evie happily, scrunching her button nose. Evie cradles the back of her head, delicate as she hums with a jut of her chin to the mounds of sand that Maisie's little hands gather, "Whatcha making, baby girl?" Evie asks, in a soft chime, lowering to kneel beside her.
It isn't that Carl wouldn't include his younger cousin, since he was filled by a sense of pride whenever his bigger hand closed around Maisie's tiny one to guide her around the park, but rather that Evie insists he go play with his friends instead—provided their almost nine year age gap. Carl would rush over every handful of minutes however, to ensure that Maisie is having fun in her own company before returning to the chaos of his peers' make-believe. It brought an ache of affection to Evie's chest each time he did.
"Sandcastle." Maisie offers quietly, her voice small and a tad clumsy but Evie is understanding, her own personal translator. Maisie could speak, but her words were few and far between; selective mutism, a development screening concluded. Though Evie isn't certain of the diagnosis. Evie nods her head with a low gasp of her exaggerated awe with the confession and Maisie drops her eyes down once more with the utmost concentration as she builds the peak of the towers.
There's the whoop of a siren, short and telling as Evie cranes her neck to glance over her shoulder. Carl hollers, dropping from the climbing frame with a scramble from dirt grazed knees to rush toward his father as Evie taps at Maisie's arm, "Should we go say 'hi' to Uncle Rick and Shane?" Maisie seems to debate for a moment, before her arms stretch expectantly and Evie swoops her hands beneath her 3-year-old daughter's armpits in a deft hoist of her to rest on her propped hip. "Fancy seeing you here."
