The Unforgettables

Chapter four

She'd been sitting here for hours, dainty little fingers tapping made up patterns into the wood of the table, head resting in her hand as she sighed silently, careful not to let her mother hear. Isaac had been dragged in by the ear and ratted out too, yelled at with an accusatory finger and a gasp when he groaned out of annoyance.
"Mum, I was only allowing her to sneak out!" He defended, his English accent thicker when he called the woman his mom. Lydia's eyes widened as well as the queens, slack jawed as she turned back to her daughter.

This ensued more yelling about how Lydia had lied that last night was only a one time thing and how they should put bars on her window. The strawberry blonde glared at Isaac when he managed to slip away from her continual lecture. And once all of the argument was finally over, she had been restricted to the courtyard: No leaving castle grounds.

Lydia debated storming away in a grumpy fashion just to piss her mother off again but decided she didn't want another hour lecture.
"She is critically insane." The girl stomps outside and plops herself on a bale of hay. Allison doesn't answer straight away, exhaling slowly before releasing the arrow from her bow. Bullseye. Saturday meant archery practice out back by the horse stables while Lydia read Archaic Latin.

The air turned visible when she exhaled, cheeks already a light shade of pink and she watched as a single snowflake flittered to her feet. Allison snatched another arrow from the dry grass at and drew it in her bow.
"ALLISON!"
Lydia shrunk, the brunette before her sharing the same wide-eyed fearful look. They both hurried the girl behind some barrels near the stables, a hidden place to listen in on what was soon to unfold.

"Stiles? What would you be doing here?" Allison exhales and smiles, attempting not to seem worried about Lydia's identity. The boy before her was grinning, snowflakes sticking to his lashes as they now slowly trickled from the sky. He held the bouquet of flowers resting in the crook of his arm to her sight as if there was no further explanation needed than that.

"The Queen ordered them two days ago, sent my father himself to relay the message." His eyes scattered around the courtyard, looked up at the castle, before they returned to Allison. "Keep 'em in a warm pot by the fire so they grow but I'm afraid these are the last of the year."
Lydia takes a chance and peaks overtop of a barrel. How cute he was, she thought, so easily excited that he had been invited to personally deliver a bouquet of flowers to the castle.

"How fortunate you must feel. I will deliver them to the queen." She reaches for the flowers but he pulls back. No way. He was invited to go inside the castle and hand these to royalty, no way in hell was Allison stealing that from him. Well... "Stiles, give them to me and go home." He seemed to flicker, practically shoving the bouquet in her arms. His face fell from its earlier grin, and maybe he should have been angry but all he felt was the hollow of his stomach.

His feet dragged him away from the girl without so much as a goodbye, his shoes leaving little imprints on the thin layer of snow that had fallen.
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It was silent.

Then again the castle was generally always silent but this time it was deafening. Lydia lay in bed, warmth radiating from her fireplace, and she was comfortable but could not find it in herself to fall asleep. The canopy stretched from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet seemed a ghost in the night, hanging from the ceiling to haunt over where she slept. And when the girl did finally doze off, she dreamt of the snow outside and a laughing boy.

Rosy cheeks on pale skin and snowflakes on tongues and in hair and suddenly life wasn't about living, it was about loving. Loving this boy she'd barely known but yelling at Allison after he'd gone because what she had done hurt him deeply. His smile was burned to be replaced by a frown, a subtle little change that meant something to her. Because she understood it wasn't his choice to be the way he was yet people took advantage of it. Shit, she had too.

Her dreams turned to nightmares with tears in her eyes and fluttered lashes as she tossed around in her sleep. And when she jolted awake, he was the one she thought about. So she sighed, crawled out of bed and went to her window sill, bare feet cold against the floor. Rubbing the nightmare from her eyes, she gazed out of the window and convinced herself that if she looked hard enough, she might see his home.

It was something she began to share with him, unknowingly.

Because when he had also woken in the night, the boy rested his head on the cold panes of his window and look up at the castle tower that seemed so far away from him.
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Authors note:

Just now watching Stranger Things.
Comment, read, enjoy!
-Still Germs