What About Yesterday? - anne with an e

Chapter 13, Part 1 - Running Home

//"Tell me I'm not going home; and I'll stop waiting by the phone"\\

don't play the song yet <3

Fred Wright tapped his pen repeatedly on the desk, bopping his chin in pattern with the rhythm. With a pause, he let the pen fall to the wood with a small clunk in order to adjust the corner of the book so it lay parallel to the edge of desk. He nodded his head once to him self with almost a shrug, satisfied with arrangement and went to pick up his pen again. He blew air through his lips, teeth and tongue agitated to make a tutting sound- forcefully, he dug the tip of the pen into the top, grey line of the paper. The action did not provoke words, and so he watched the wasted ink pool and spread, repulsed by the new surface.

How is the character of Lady Shallot presented in Tennyson's 'The Lady Of Shallot' ?

Fred's brow creased as he thought over the exam question, pulling it apart, mulling over each word. Well, that's what he liked to think he was doing. That would be what he would tell Gilbert, if he came into his room to ask why it had taken half an hour to write his name and one sentence. But really, he was trying and failing to wrap his mind around the supposedly simple task of finding an answer. 

Lady.. The Lady is- Sad? The Lady Of Shallot is presented as... miserable. Could that work?

Anything he could begin the phrase sounded silly, or just not good enough. He liked the poem, he enjoyed listening to the Professor read it, he did. But why couldn't that be good enough? He didn't think there was much more he could say about the character. Perhaps except from, he liked to imagine she was pretty.

See, even that sounds stupid. Think, the complexities. She has inner conflict, right?

But none of the words he came up with were good enough, none of them seemed to fit. So he just.. didn't write anything at all. But he did think of a good story, one to tell Professor Doon when he asked after the practise exam question. It included a perilous carriage ride, several misunderstandings and even a plot twist of which he was quite proud of. He was so engrossed in ironing out the details of the fabrication that he didn't notice when his little sister crept into the room.

"What are you writing?"

Fred yelped, hands immediately flying to cover up the extent- minimal as it was- of the essay on the paper. She didn't speak loudly, absence of smile suggested her effect was unintentional but the sharp green of her eyes glinted knowingly. Alice could move with out noise, exist without presence.  Fred sighed, relaxed in his chair and turned slightly so he could see her retreat from him, and sit on the very edge of his bed. The blouse much too large for her trailed loose threads, resting below her hips. His sister also wore his own overalls- he didn't comment on it though. She could never go outside in all this, but that didn't matter. After all she didn't speak of the city, and hadn't ever expressed any desire to experience it, in full. She would wander and dance in an almost sleepy way, through the corridors and up the staircases of the Wright House. The garden too, rain or shine. Content in the comfortable, exploring the quiet.

"An essay. What have you been up to?" Fred happily discarded his pen and fully rotated his body towards her.

"Cooking. Gilbert picked up some ingredients on his way back from school. I've been teaching him a thing or two." She hugged her knees to her chest, eyes skirting the floorboards, and then drifting up to reflect a bright grey, the winter sky boarded out by the windows.