Disclaimer: Don't own. Period. No - not that period sicko!
AN: Because I'm in an Into The Woods/Bernadette Peters/Musical/Fairy Tale mood - I grant to you another oneshot for this section. This is the 16th addition to this section, I am proud to announce!
"Mother isn't here now, who knows what she'd say? Nothing's quite so clear now. . ." - No One Is Alone, Into The Woods
It had been a few days since Leanette lost her mother. A few days since the bombshell had been dropped. Leanette didn't know what to do. She still had so many questions. While her mother was on her deathbed she told Leanette that she was a witch and that when she died she was to take care of the garden because it was sacred - if she were to lose anything from that garden, especially the beans, she would be turned into an ugly, old hag as a punishment. That was all she'd said on the matter before she died. Leanette didn't even know when the appropriate time to mourn was, she was too shocked. She couldn't even remember how to anymore. It was as if she was only truly alive when her mother had died. Her mother had always been there. She was the one Leanette would count on for support; she was her back bone. The wall she'd lean against so she wouldn't fall. Now she felt as if the floor had been pulled out from underneath her feet and she couldn't tell if she was falling or flying, the world was so still.
The only thing Leanette could do was watch over the garden. That was the only thing of guidance her mother had left her with. The only piece of her mother that her mother had left her with. So she tended to the garden.
Pretty soon though, when she remembered how to be her own person, with no one around to guide her, she began to feel lonely. She just wanted. . .someone around. She just wanted to be in the presence of someone. Didn't need to even talk to them, just needed someone around. She needed to be reminded that she wasn't the last person alive in the world. Plants, no matter how sacred, could only offer so much company.
One day a couple with a small child moved in next door. A small child was hardly the correct anology for Leanette to use, seeing as how she wasn't that much older than him. Maybe by seven years, which really wasn't a lot considering she was thirteen. So, that worked. People were around. Sometimes they would make it too apparant though. For example, the time that man of the house climbed over the garden wall. Leanette caught him.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?" she'd asked.
"Oh, hi, little girl," the man obviously didn't expect someone to be home. "You don't think your parents would mind if I took some of these greens to my wife next door, do you?"
"They're dead, I can't exactly ask them," Leanette stated. "But my mother left this garden under my protection. She doesn't - didn't want anyone taking anything,"
"Oh, but my wife is with child," the man had told her. "And she craves some of these delicious looking greens so. Can't you please spare at least some rampion?"
Leanette, feeling somewhat generous, and not thinking too deeply about it agreed. "Fine, I guess," she told him. "But that's it," she warned. The man agreed and left. Things were normal until about three weeks afterwards when she caught him hopping over the wall again, only this time he was hopping back to his side. He'd already taken something from the garden. Leanette didn't know what until there was a crash of lightning, and all of a sudden she hunched over, in pain. She screamed and blacked out. When she came to she had no idea what happened. She got up and as she saw her hands fresh tears welled up in her eyes. Her fingers were long and wrinkly. She ran, well, it was hardly a run, inside and looked in the mirror. Her hair had been frizzed out and greyed, and she looked as if she were sixty rather than fourteen. As she stared at her ugly reflection she vowed, "You will pay. I shall have your wife's child when it is born, and you now shall be cursed so all the men in your family will never be able to conceive," She looked up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry mother," she apologized. "But this damage will be reversed, I promise."