the summer i was ten again

[deepest_magic]

Isabella falls from her horse first, caught by a low branch she didn't see. She's a better rider than that, she ought to have - ow - she reaches for Jamie, grabs her hand, but while they clasp hands Isabella's got too much momentum and Jamie falls too -

Something snags Isabella's cloak, something snags her bag, she's got a heap of pine needles prickling her face and can't see. She flails a leg but only loses her shoe for her trouble, and the other slips off when she twists, trying to find 'up' before her horse steps on her - when did it get this dim, the sun was only just setting a moment ago - she can't see anything - "Jamie -"

The next time she inhales it's not the smell of pine needles, it's old fur. Not the hay-sweet shallow pile of having somehow planted her nose in her horse's flank; like a coat. Smell jogs memory. Coats - and wood, not the pines but old treated planks -

She's lost Jamie's hand somewhere along the line. She was wearing gloves against the cold and her hand's bare on fur, on wood.

She feels dizzy and small and something's gone wrong with her clothes and she can't hear the horse breathing or feel the wind anymore.

She fumbles around in the dark, looking for Jamie, the horse, a tree, anything.

She finds a shoulder, too small and skinny to be Jamie's, and then with her other hand she finds a door and blinding light and tumbles out of the wardrobe onto the floor.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

Lots of it.

"I don't even remember who dropped us off."

[neverbeatme]

"It was Chris. I'm pretty sure. She's more tractable than most grownups, it would've been easiest to get her to be the one to drive us out to the abandoned house."

[deepest_magic]

"How long would she have expected us to find it interesting? On the assumption that it doesn't contain an unreliable portal to a magical kingdom."

[neverbeatme]

Sigh. "Who knows..."

[deepest_magic]

"We could go actually look around the house. Be able to account for our time to Charlie."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah... maybe find a hole to have accidentally dropped all our stuff down."

[deepest_magic]

"Only if it's really inaccessible and they won't try to retrieve the can opener or anything."

[neverbeatme]

"Maybe find several holes. To not be sure which one we accidentally dropped all our stuff down."

[deepest_magic]

"I was carrying everything, I tripped," snorts Isabella.

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah."

[deepest_magic]

Back into the house. Explore explore.

Isabella touches walls for balance, tries to remember old careful stepping habits.

[neverbeatme]

James tries to remember how to move like she is eleven. She hasn't needed to do it in a while.

[deepest_magic]

The house doesn't have any backpack-sized pits.

[neverbeatme]

How inconsiderate of it.

[deepest_magic]

Yup.

After they have seen the parts of the house and could report on them to Charlie, back to sitting on the front step.

[neverbeatme]

"It just seems so completely obvious to me that there's no way we could possibly have lost that stuff in this house. But I guess most people won't be inclined to look that hard."

[deepest_magic]

"Maybe we wandered around in the woods? There wasn't all that much house."

[neverbeatme]

"Okay. We wandered around in the woods and... dropped all our stuff, for some reason. And couldn't find it again. I am really not impressed with these hypothetical versions of us."

[deepest_magic]

"Thought we saw a bear."

[neverbeatme]

"Sure."

[deepest_magic]

"And I can barely run anyway and I dropped everything to have a better chance."

[neverbeatme]

"Reasonable. Hypothetical Isabella gets a pass."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm probably going to call you James and Jamie sometimes by accident even if I try to go back to Elizabeth."

[neverbeatme]

"That's fine. I can have a weird nickname."

[deepest_magic]

"Okay."