Author's note: Hey guys, I'm back, but not in the way that you expected. Yes, I'm working on my Inuyasha fics, slowly, but there getting there. I've been so busy with my own work, along with schoolwork, job hunting so I can drive, SATs, ACTs, PSSAs, and a shitload more. Like a sort of boyfriend, who has been friendzoned before I've started dating him. Please, don't ask, my whole life is a complete mess, but I will write the last chapters for Repeating the Past and Never Saw This Coming. I'm getting there! OH! And this was a project for school, and I had to write it with a partner, who I give full credit to the dialogue (I would have never been able to speak in old English) and a lot of the amazing things that happens in the alternate scene. I just wrote the descriptions. No a/no's at the end, I feel like it'll ruin the mood of the short scene.
FYI: I don't own the Scarlet Letter, this is just a project for school.
Just Like Needlework
Hester Prynne, the woman bearing the beautiful scarlet letter for seven years, was worn and torn, but due to this, she was stronger now, much stronger than she had once been, for before this day she would not have even considered approaching the young reverend alone. She would not even consider telling anyone who the man that clung to the reverend was, possibly for the fear he might take her soul for breaking their deal, or quite possibly for the reverend himself, who was unable to detach the leech by fire or salt. Hester, who continuing her passionless needlework, made her settlement in the rotting wooden chair, the chair that which perchance happened to dwell beside the window eaves, caught a glimpse of movement, just barely, of black robes gliding near the edge of the forest on which her home sat. Pearl, being the child she was, had exited their dwelling long before this moment, finding her sprite-like activities more entertaining outside the morbid cabin. The glimpse of black could have been Hester's Pearl, but it could have been, due to the rumors of the forest, something much more sinister. Hester, by alarm or by instinct, went to the door, calling her little Pearl back to the house, only to see the dark clothed figure, frail as he was, with his back to Hester and the cabin.
Pearl, with her elfish movements, skipped to her mother, only to be told that they must journey to the town market. Therefore, mother and daughter set forth on the slightly overgrown path, away from the dark, lonely cabin. Pearl, taking notice that the route her mother lead them down was not the same road they journeyed down millions of times before, brought her concern to Hester's attention.
"Are we not headed for the market, mother?" questioned the child skipping along at her mother's side.
"And so we are, now hush, child," Hester replied.
"Then why goest we this way? Town is tither," persisted the little sprite, pointing in the opposite direction from which they headed, down the other, much more worn path than the one they traveled.
"I said hush, Pearl! Hold thy tongue else I shall hand thee over to the Black Man!"
Sensing her mother's irritation, Pearl asked no further questions, silence enveloping the traveling pair. Then, along the edge of the forest, Hester Prynne spotted it again - the gliding figure, oblivious to the mother-daughter pair walking along the forgotten path. Hester, who had let slip the first expression of pleasure she had in many years, let herself feel but a pinch of satisfaction, for the situation was needlework in her hands.
"Good Reverend Dimmesdale! Pray tell, what is a man of your health doing here without even a companion?" Hester called to the young clergyman, who hearing her voice, seemed to jump out of his forlorn reverie with a start, searching for the speaker who had interrupted his thoughts, finding her to be Hester Prynne and little Pearl.
"I am out for mine own health. My physician hast said that it would be to my benefit to take walks in the fresh air and enjoy the nature surrounding our fair town," the minister said in a weak voice, eyes resting on the red figure beside Hester for a moment before turning back to the woman in front of him.
"And with what good fortune he does! Reverend Dimmesdale, thy presence here is but a work of fate for I must speak with thou, as it is of the utmost importance to thee and thine health."
"And what wouldst thou say, Hester Prynne?" inquired the clergyman, his hand instinctively going to his chest to clutch at his heart.
"Pearl, go play and amuse thyself whilst I speak with the minister," Hester ordered, turning to the elf-child at her side.
"Yes, mother," replied Pearl, dancing - almost as if she were twirling and skipping such as sprites do - away from the odd pair by the forest's edge.
Once the small child had left, Hester turned to look at the clergyman, who was much more worn than she had ever remembered him being, his frail frame seeming hardly to support him, his skin which once glowed with life now looked dull and as sick - or perhaps more so - as he was. Hester knew that what she was about to say would greatly impact his health, though whether it be salutary or a detriment she knew not.
"Hearken unto me, good minister, for I hast information most important to thee. The man that thou hast allowed to intrude upon thy dwelling - the man to whom thou hast trusted thy health - the man that thou hast brought into thy confidence - is not the man thou thinkst he is."
"And pray tell, who is he truly Hester?" Dimmesdale replied, a desperate look coming into his eyes as he clutched his heart closer, as if frightened it would break away from his chest or be snatched by the dark dwellers of the forest not five feet away.
"That man - nay, that fiend! - was once the man whom I called my husband," Hester replied, looking into Dimmesdale's eyes as she watched the realization come over his drawn face.
"He! He the man that thou was wedded to by the law of the Lord? Wherefore would someone as young and full of life as thou wast pledge themself to he?" The young reverend felt a passionate heat rise within himself, but to what, he could not be sure, for it could have risen from Hester's news, possibly out of anger that she had known who Chillingworth was all along and had not spoken a word of it, or possibly for a simple fact that he himself was unwilling to admit.
"You must understand, Arthur, that I wast not always as thou hast known me," Hester replied, grabbing Dimmesdale's cold, frail hand in her own. "I married him, but I never had any love for him."
"He. He wast thine husband," Dimmesdale muttered, more to himself than any other. "But wherefore, Hester, hast thou never before mentioned such a thing?"
"I swore to him that I would not reveal his true identity, especially not to thee, but he now agrees that ye are to know all. The man that thou spends so much time with is not thy friend, but thy foe, and it is he who torments thee so," said Hester, her voice caressing Dimmesdale, soothing him as no other could, even now as he was more agony than man.
"No, not he," said Dimmesdale. "I am tormented merely by mine own sins, not by another."
"Yet he dost vex thee so. And so is his intention, this fiend of a man. He seeks revenge on thee, so good, so pure a man for the wrong ye and I hast done against him. The wrong manifested in this letter upon my bosom. The wrong manifested in yonder elf-child. The wrong that yonder townspeople whisper about to this very day, seven years after its occurrence," spoke Hester softly, bringing their attention to the child in red playing by the dark forest edge, and who, when realizing she had been caught in her mischievous action, smiled at the conversing adults, but dared not to approach them.
"Thou speak the truth when thou sayest about the wrong done against this man, but thou art wrong in thy impressions of me. I am not a good, nor pure man. I have not been such a man for these past seven years." The look in the young minister's eyes was enough to make Hester feel more emotion, and more sadness and pity above all else, than she had in the longest time, eliciting an action she would not have made otherwise, but given their situation, far from the town and away from prying eyes, she allowed herself to react just once.
Still grasping Dimmesdale's hand, Hester pulled it up to her chest, forcing him to look up at her. "I believe thou art a good man, Arthur Dimmesdale," said she, all her sadness and passion built up from her years of seclusion ringing in her voice, letting it be known to the reverend that she meant it with every fiber of her being.
"Thy beliefs are but fallacies, Hester. I am no better than a murderer, nay, I am by far the worse! I am a lie, and I lie in God's name. I do not deserve the reverence given to me, nor thy pity. I deserve only to be hated for the dark, loathsome creature I am."
Silence hung in the air only a few moments, but it felt like eternity stretched between the two standing in the shadows of the looming forest, the only sounds being the slight wind through the dark trees and the sprite's noises of play as Hester stared at the minister.
Finally, Hester's voice sliced through the deafening silence as she said heatedly, "I have never once believed, nay, not in the seven years that have thus passed, that thou art what thou sayest thou art. The only thing thy mightest be hated for - the only loathsome quality of thy character - is the way thy viewest thyself." And then the woman with the scarlet letter turned and walked away, back toward her dismal cabin, as she called Pearl back to her side, the child questioning their route once more.
Never once as she was walking away did Hester allow herself to look back, but when they had reached the door of the cabin by the sea, she could no longer withstand the impulse and stole a short glance over her shoulder. Even from the distance at which she stood, Hester could clearly discern the agonized, regretful look in Dimmesdale's eyes as he watched her and Pearl enter the cabin, his face seeming to darken and his poor frame seeming to weaken more as she closed the heavy door.