A/N: This is prospectively a two-shot story which I just remembered I wrote the first half of. I remembered this while plucking away at the next chapter for EverFixed Mark, so if you happen to be looking forward to that one, good things may soon be underway. Anyhow. I don't have time to edit this one, as the muse is actually letting me get writing done, but I figured you guys wouldn't mind reading this with whatever errors it may contain, while waiting for other updates? Am I right? wrong? LOL. Anyhow...it's a quasi-plausible butterfly of a head canon that started fluttering around my brain in connection with stuff I'd written for House Rules, and how that piece of the storyverse could have impacted, and partially explained a bit of the wonderfulness that is Literati. Hope you enjoy. I'd love to hear what you think. :)

P.S. Experimenting with writing in the first-person. It feels very strange, but *shrug* for some reason it seemed to fit this story.

Chapter 1 - The First Time

I was never supposed to believe in something as corny, ridiculous and unrealistic as love at first sight. I mean, what is it really? You form a lifelong, deep, meaningful relationship based on...looks. It always seemed pretty shallow to me. Sure, maybe something in their eyes, or the way the stood, or the way they dressed, could tell you something about them...but, how much, really?

But, I get it now. That's not quite how it happened to me. Not technically. Technically, it was second sight. And, I'm not talking about some kind of ESP or sixth sense. I mean, literally, it was the second time I saw her - not the first. The first time I saw her... The first time... She did stick in my head. No mistaking that. Anybody you remember eight years later when you only talked to them for about ten minutes when you were nine years old...they made an impression. She definitely made an impression.

The first time I saw her was when I'd come to stay with my uncle when I was nine years old. It was summertime, and anybody that asked was deliberately given the impression by my uncle that I was there for summer break. Neither one of us knew how long I was staying, but neither one of us wanted to say the real reason I was there. My mom was back on the drugs. Luke - my uncle - had come because we'd gotten kicked out of our apartment, 'cause it was totally wrecked. It was mostly my mom's ex-boyfriend who trashed the place, but he was long gone. Or, at least, I thought he was. So did she. He took off anyway, and left us to get thrown out of the place because we couldn't pay the past-due rent, and when the landlord tried to collect, he saw the state the apartment was in, and that was that. Liz called Luke on a pay-phone, 'cause he was the knight-in-shining-armor that always bailed her out when she asked. And when he came... Took him awhile to find us, 'cause that afternoon she managed to hook up with her dealer and score some cheap stuff that had her flying high, and a roof for as long as it would last us. He hated kids and only agreed that I could stay there on the condition that I stay out of his sight. Did my best. Anyway...when Luke finally found us, he had a fit over the state Liz was in, and I thought he was gonna clobber the dealer. Glad he didn't, 'cause even though Luke maybe could've taken the guy...that wouldn't have been the last of it. So, anyway...Luke managed to drag Liz out of there and get her butt into rehab. I went home with him. So, yeah... Neither of us knew how long I was gonna be staying.

That was the summer I read Oliver Twist for the first time. And, being a dumb kid I took all the "right" lessons from it. I didn't want to turn into anything like Bill Sykes or Fagin, but living with Liz, I was in need of a few survival skills, and they had some pointers for me on that front. I wasn't stupid enough to try for six-finger-discounts in stores. There were too many security cameras, etc. etc. for my liking. But, I was pretty good at reading people...the sort of people who were too distracted to notice what was going on around them...who were easily enough distracted to pilfer things off of. I was a little proud of how good I got at it. I was also more than a little surprised that Luke, who was usually pretty oblivious, and usually pretty easy to put things past, caught me red handed... Not right away, mind you. I'd been staying there awhile and had gotten away with it, um...a lot, actually. So, to say that I was in "trouble with a captial 'T'" would be a mastry of understatement. Suffice it to say that my uncle made certain that pickpocketing was not an activity I'd be anxious to repeat. Among the penalties imposed was a stint of yardwork for each of the people whose property I had stolen. Took...a long time.

That was how I came to first see: her.

I was working in the yard of a very short lady with a very tall husband. Something about the two of them reminded me of Muppets. Sounds crazy, I know. The lady was nice enough, though kind of eccentric. Her voice was really gravelly and it sounded like she was perpetually shouting...and she pinched my cheek at some point in the conversation where Luke was telling her about the yardwork he was requiring me to do. He made me tell her (and all the others) about the stealing, which was one of the more painful parts of the process. But, he told them about the yardwork. I have no idea why she pinched my cheek. It didn't make much sense, really. What? She found it adorable that I'd taken her wallet out of her purse while she was 'awwing' over a box full of puppies some teenager was trying to find homes for? That was cute to her? I dunno. She brought me lemonade and cookies while I was working, too. I thought that was really weird. Didn't she get that this was supposed to be punishement? I stole her stuff. Gave her a perfect right to hate me. Didn't make any sense. Though, I gotta say, drinking lemonade after cookies...not exactly the most pleasant thing. Very sour. So, maybe she just had a very bizarre sense of culpae poena par esto...something about not being able to enjoy something stolen, that which seems sweet turning sour... Yes. I know I'm grasping at straws here - for no apparant reason. The woman definitely wasn't that philosophical.

In any case, the cheek-pinching cookie lady had gone back inside; and I was examining the various kooky yard decorations and still puckering from the lemon aftertaste that wouldn't go away, when she came up and started talking.

It startled me a little, but I tried to hide it.

She asked me what I was doing.

I started talking about Oliver Twist and the inconsistencies of fiction vs. reality. In retrospect, the discrepancies I was talking about weren't really there. The grown-ups in Oliver Twist - or, at least the ones that weren't robbers themselves - really didn't tolerate stealing. I guess what I was comparing was the outcome that eventually awaited Oliver. He learned how to steal and ended up finding the family that he had lost, and basically having his whole life fall into place...even though he helped the worst of the villains break into his grandfather's house. I, on the other hand, practiced this same disappearing act, and got royally busted for it. I didn't go into all that, exactly, but the gist was that things don't work out in real life the way they do in books, with Oliver as a case-in-point.

She countered that the same sort of thing applied to Tom Sawyer, with the way they'd gone and hid out on their island, and also about testifying against Injun Joe. In real life, they would have ended up on a milk carton, and then later, in a witness protection program. I was about to agree when she started talking about how much more realistic Huckleberry Finn was, even if Huck always thought the good things he did were really bad, and the bad things were good.

I was thinking how the way Huck thought about things was about the way I did...even if I understood the parts he got wrong, but it wouldn't have come out right if I'd tried to say it, and before I could figure it out, she'd changed subjects anyway.

She was talking about the house next door that her mom was looking at. She liked the yard, and especially the trees, and thought it would be nice to live in a big house. She told me how she and her mom lived in a potting shed on the property of the place her mom worked, but that her mom made it like a house, even if it was really little. They'd been looking at houses all around town, but she thought she liked this one best so far. She talked really fast.

Before I knew it, she was talking about the various lawn decorations that I'd been looking at when she walked up. She started naming them. The deer was Felina (at least a touch more creative than Bambi). And she said that the gnome with the pipe reminded her of Santa Claus, which made her think of 'Jingle Bells,' and she'd just been reading about the man who wrote 'Jingle Bells,' whose name was James Pierpont, so she figured Pierpont was a good name for that one. She talked so fast it made me dizzy. I was still pondering over the leap from gnomes to songwriters when she asked what we should name the girl gnome with the curled, pointed shoes.

The first thing that came to mind was Thumbelina, along with why we were naming this lady's lawn ornaments? and how unoriginal that seemed. It was an Andersen character, but still, there had to be something better.

I just barely heard the voice calling, but the way she leapt up snapped me out of the contemplation of gnome names.

"I've gotta go!" she announced breathlessly, as she turned away. She broke into a run, going back to the place from which she'd come, and before disappearing she tossed over her shoulder, brightly, "It was nice meeting you!"

I stood there watching her go. And I realized, she hadn't. Met me. Not exactly. I didn't know her name. She didn't know mine.