Made and Meant for Each Other (an Anne of Green Gables fanfiction)

Stella

The deed was done. The train was in motion; there was no getting off or backing out now. Not that Stella wanted to. She had been glad to sign the contract with the school far out in the west—they were paying her well, and it promised to be a challenge. At least, the letters from the headmistress made it sound like a challenge. Probably, Stella thought, when she got there she would find that a private girls' school for the daughters of wealthy lumber magnates would not be nearly as different from being the schoolma'am of a country school filled with farmers' and storekeepers' children. Still, it would be a change. Native tribes, Chinese immigrants, Americans looking for work in the lumber yards ... none of that was to be found on sleepy old P.E.I., much as she loved it.

On the other hand, she was leaving everything she knew behind. Family, friends, the safety and comfort of understanding the people around her inside and out. Not that she had ever felt like one of them—much like Anne, she had always been a bit of a fish out of water, living too much in books to truly connect with the people around her whose lives were focused more on the here and now. Possibly she could have focused more on the here and now, she thought wryly, and then she might have been able to outfit herself more thoroughly before she left. But then, that would just have been more to carry.

She smiled at the thought, sinking back into her seat and looking out the window. She couldn't wait to see all of Canada, the forests and the prairies and the mountains and the lakes, and to write long descriptive letters back to her former roommates. Thinking of Patty's Place, Stella wondered what they were all doing now. Priscilla had been vacillating over a school posting even farther away than Stella's—she hadn't decided, last Stella had heard, but that had been some time ago. Phil was married to her Jo, of course, and Aunt Jimsie back in her old home with the cats. And Anne ... Stella had been pleased to get the letter with her friend's good news, but had wondered if it would be enough. Marriage, children, the joys of the hearth—would they give Anne enough "scope for imagination," as she used to say in their old Queen's days? Anne's writing was just starting to take off, magazines beginning to respond to the sketches she sent them. Stella had been one of the few unsurprised, and pleased, by Anne's rejection of Roy Gardiner, because she thought her friend had a great deal to offer the world that marriage would stifle. Gilbert was a better match for her than Roy, no question about that, and foredestined for Anne for the start, but a busy doctor wouldn't be able to give his wife the freedom to be more than wife and mother and helpmeet, much as he might want to. And after how whole-souledly Gilbert had thrown himself into his work at Redmond, Stella was certain he would be the same way as a doctor, body and mind and heart constantly engaged. Anne would be left with the mundane details of everyday life on her hands, and what would she do with her imagination, her soaring intelligence and dreams, then?

Stella shook her head. It was, of course, not her business, and Anne would be very happy, that went without saying. And they weren't marrying in haste—there would be years yet to come for Anne to work on her writing and teach her students and stretch her wings as far as they could go, and Stella hoped those years would be enough.

For herself, she would travel to the west, to the farthest shore of her native land, and she would build herself a life there, something of her own, before she considered sharing it with someone else.