(no subject)

[axeslade]

Gah, I can't believe that my family can irritate me this much before 8. *sigh* Anyway, finished reading Stardust last night and wrote something. I should note that there is a gap between this and the last chapter again, and that this is NOT exactly what happened. This is kind of an amalgamation of events that Neil gave me so I could get some notes down and give ya'll a taste of what Gwen is. Read if you don't mind spoilers.

“Mama watch!”

“I’m watching, honey, I’m watching,” Sheryl called back to the little girl who was playing by the shore just a few feet away. She smiled, briefly, when Gwenyth shrieked with laughter as the waves lapped at her tiny feet. God, she was so like Neil. Never afraid of anything. Most children were scared, at least the first time, they went into deep water. Not Gwen. She reveled in it, whined when she wasn’t allowed to go in as deep as she wanted. She didn’t even cry when a hermit crab pinched her curious finger, just glowered at the ‘nasty mean crab’ and kicked it away from her.

When Gwen looked over her shoulder, stringy dark hair flying around her head and storm cloud eyes alight, Sheryl felt a tiny tremor run down her spine. As much as their daughter seemed like her father, there were times when Sheryl felt something else in the little girl. Something…wrong. Like when she was among other children her age. She would put up with them up until Sheryl and the other mothers walked away to talk. Then she would wander off by herself and sit in a corner, glowering at the other children, and then later she would complain about having to be around those ‘babies’.

Sheryl shook her head and picked up her book. She was being paranoid, like she had been every day since the accident. Gwen was just like every other little girl, and any oddities she showed were just little quirks she would outgrow someday.

Gwen sighed, pouting when she looked up and saw that Mommy wasn’t watching her. Sullenly, she picked up her pail and dunked it in the water. When she brought it back up, she heard someone talking to her, though it was so quiet she almost couldn’t hear it over the water and the noisy birds.

‘Touch the water, Gwen.’

Furrowing her tiny brow, Gwen stuck a finger into her pail, swirling her finger around without thinking about it. She watched the circles her finger made in the blue liquid, mesmerized by the way it shimmered. Then, she shrieked and giggled when she saw that she’d somehow managed to turn the water bright green and that there was a kind of funny smoke rising from it. When she laughed, the voice laughed with her, a rumbling laugh, kind of like thunder.

‘Isn’t that a neat trick, Gwen? Go show your Mommy. She’ll be proud of you.’

Even though she couldn’t see who was talking, Gwen nodded and ran up the beach.