Hey everyone! Okay, so this is my first attempt at a fan fiction – or, at least, at publishing a fan fiction – so please be supportive and review and criticize and compliment and whatever if you're interested. Thank you! R&R!
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[ Chapter 1: Ungraceful Awakenings ]
The sun was beginning to peep over the tops of the hills; it's golden rays fanning out across the paling sky, tingeing the fluffy white clouds different hues of pink, orange, and purple. Birds were singing in the trees, and a little further down the road, chickens could be heard clucking and squawking, and a Cockerel crowed loudly – extremely loudly.
"COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!" it called.
"Ohmigoddess, what-"
THUD.
The girl blinked rapidly, trying to clear her sleepy, sparkling sky blue eyes, and looked around. The cockerel crowing had awoken and scared her so much that she had screamed and ungracefully tumbled out of bed. She sat up, and looked at the clock on her wall. It read quarter to six in the morning.
…Wait, what?
'This is way too early!' she thought, raising an eyebrow. It was rare is she was even home to go to bed at this time when she lived in the city. The girl shook her head and looked at the clock again, just to check that she wasn't seeing things. And… no, she wasn't.
She glared at the half open window. How dare that… that… thing, wake her up this early! She'd only had, what, three hours sleep? Grumbling something about the whatever-it-was and a meat cleaver under her breath, she clambered back into bed, and had just drifted off to sleep again when there was a sharp, and certainly quite loud, knock at the door.
"Holy-!"
THUD.
The girl got up, grumbling angrily. She'd fallen out of bed again. The knock came once more, this time a little more urgently. Who on earth had the nerve to come knocking at this time? Making a mental note to kill whoever it was when she wasn't half asleep, she rolled her eyes as the knock came a third time.
"Alright, alright, I'm coming, I'm coming!" She called, exasperated and stifling a yawn, and the knocking ceased. She pulled open the door, glaring out at… no one. Looking around, bewildered, she grumbled some more and closed the door.
"Stupid kids… Stupid knock-and-run… If I ever get my hands on-" she was cut off as there was yet another knock.
"What?!" she growled viciously, flinging the door open with such force that it crashed against the wall it was hinged to, so loudly that only the end of a small cry could be heard. She followed where the voice had come from, and looked down to see a small, plump little man with a large nose that irritatingly reminded the girl of a potato, dressed in a red suit with a matching top-hat. He seemed to be cowering; it was probably because of the way the girl had acted when throwing open the door… Or it could have been because her dirty-blonde hair was extremely messy, it pointed in all directions – literally, it was everywhere – or perhaps it was because she was wearing what might have been the shortest nightdress ever seen. He cleared his throat, regaining his composure, or, at least, attempting to.
"Ah, you must be Miss Jillian Collins." He said, forcing a smile.
"Jill. Please. Just Jill."
"Y-yes, yes, of course. Um, I'm the Mayor of this town. My name is Thomas." Jill gave the small man a sleepy smile and rubbed her eyes.
"Nice to meet you." She said, warming slightly – he was kind of cute, she thought. In a puppy-dog kind of way – but not like that. He smiled, giving a funny sort of half-bow, half nod.
"Yes, you too. Anyhow, I have come to give you a few pointers on your farm." Jill looked around at the awful mess surrounding her little shack of a house, and figured that if it were able to, it would most probably blush bright red in embarrassment whilst barely scraping itself a qualification as a disgrace to anything that could ever be called a farm ever, and grimaced.
"So, it would probably best to…" he started off, and ranted on and on about many different things (which Jill strained to listen to whilst trying not to fall asleep on the doorframe, yawn, or examine her nails with boredom), of which she caught consisted of clearing her field to start with, planting and growing crops and collecting herbs to start off her income and buying her first chicken as soon as possible, to use the hot springs instead of a shower as her house wouldn't have a bathroom for a while, and something about a man named Zack picking up her shipments, which went in the funny brown box next to her house, and leaving her money every day at five o'clock – although she couldn't tell whether he had meant AM or PM.
"Okay, well, that's about it." He finished with a bright smile. "Drop by my house in the north of town if you ever need any help, okay?" Jill nodded.
"Well, goodbye, Miss Jill." He did his funny bow thing again and scuttled off.
"Bye." Jill called after him, closing the door and walking into the middle of the room. Realising she was still slightly tired, she contemplated going back to bed, and also the big mess of a field she had to clear that day so she could start bringing in an income. Deciding that sleep could wait until later, the blonde opened one of her two suitcases – large suitcases, mind you – of clothes and got dressed. She had wanted to bring a lot more: nine of them infact, but her father had only allowed her to bring two, one of them which he had packed.
Hairbrush in hand, she approached her mirror and bit her lip when she saw her hair. Then again, she went through this every morning, so it was nothing new.
"God, no wonder that poor little guy was scared of me." Jill muttered to herself, starting to gingerly pull the brush through her ratty locks. When she was confident her hair was knot-free, she pulled a small, silver hair-tie off her wrist and gave it a quick inspection. She always wore a hair-tie on her wrist wherever she went, just in case. She swept her hair back into a neat ponytail and then looked around, wondering what exactly to do next. She suddenly remembered the Mayor saying something about a toolbox in her room, and her eyes lit up as she found it. She heaved open the lid, and her eyes scanned the tools.
"Hello, what do we have here…?" She said, half to herself, half to the tools, as she pulled out several sharp-looking objects she didn't recognise. Amongst them she spotted a rake, a hammer, an axe and a watering can. She also pulled out a large rucksack.
'Must be to put the tools in,' she thought. Slinging the bag over her back and picking up the hammer, she headed outside.
***
As Jill lay in bed that night, absent-mindedly sliding the top screen of her still signal-less diamante-encrusted BlackBerry up and down over and over again, she heavy heartedly went over the events of that day and wondered whether coming here was a good idea after all…
When Jill had arrived outside, she looked around.
What had used to be a field was now a patch of muddy ground, wet from the day before's spring downpour, with clumps of weeds, stones, rocks, random twigs and branches littering it. Right in the middle sat a large boulder, which didn't look like Jill would be able to break it on her own.
It also wasn't probably a very good idea to be wearing an expensive designer summer dress and an even more expensive pair of stiletto heels for farm work…
First of all, she had (unsuccessfully) attempted at weeding her field.
Unsure of herself, she grasped hold of the leafy stem of one particularly long plant, and gave it a sharp tug. It didn't budge. Jill rolled her eyes, grasping it with both hands and gave it a long, hard pull. It still wouldn't move. Sighing, Jill took hold of the evil thing again, and, digging her heels into the ground to secure herself, pulled as hard as she could.
The next thing she knew she was on her backside on the ground, the plant wrenched free of the soil, and in her hands. She was covered in mud.
After repeating this process several times – tugging, pulling, yanking, falling – she gave up.
Noticing the twigs and sticks still randomly placed all over the field, she decided to work on those next. After two hours or so of endlessly gathering sticks, she turned to see that the more she picked up, the more she dropped behind her as she walked. She immediately gave up.
Not long afterwards, it had started to rain, and soon it was heaving down in bucketfuls of water, and Jill was filthy. Seeing as it had started raining, the mud grew thicker… And thicker. And thicker. And wetter and sloppier and gooier until there were puddles everywhere. Jill's stilettos, one by one and on different ends of the field, had become wedged so deeply into the brown messy mush the ground had turned into that she had to abandon them if she didn't want to end up waist-deep in the mud too.
Her dress was ruined. It was slicked with mud, and ripped beyond repair. There went that season's Gucci. And, as she stood on the doorstep, fumbling around in her rucksack for her door key (she had locked the door – city habit), she realised with great horror that it had vanished, into thin air. The rain never ceased, and, exhausted, disgustingly dirty, her hair full of twigs and debris and resembling more of a golden birds' nest rather than anything else at that time, Jill collapsed into a heap of mess on her doorstep and curled up into a ball that sobbed in despair for an hour or so.
When Jill finally looked up, her eyes red and sore from crying, the rain had stopped and the clouds had just parted to show one single ray of sunshine peeking through. Something shiny glinted in the corner of Jill's eye, and she turned to face her door, and – there it was, in all it's taunting glory. Her key, in the keyhole.
That was it for Jill. She snapped.
Never ever in her life had she been this dirty before.
She threw a tantrum – she stormed into the house, throwing her sopping wet toolbag across the floor, leaving muddy footprints wherever she walked, yelling and ranting about the unfairness of the situation, but again something caught her eye and she stopped, approaching the mirror once more only to see her muddy, messy, scruffy, dishevelled reflection staring back at her.
And then, she let out the loudest, most piercing scream possible that would have brought people running to her from anywhere within a mile radius back where she came from, but the people of Mineral Town would most likely have barely reacted.
So, after that, she had taken several different shampoos and conditioners and various other skin and hair care products up to the hot spring, which the Mayor had also mentioned. She had washed her hair nine times over with both shampoo, conditioner and several other detoxifying products, and then cleansed, moisturised and re-moisturised herself with anything she could find until the spring was almost a bubble-bath and she was completely squeaky clean.
After that, she had dried and re-moisturised herself once more before dressing in her more suitable pyjamas her father has packed her, a t-shirt and a pair of long trousers. Also, she had dug out her most sensible walking shoes she had packed (she didn't dare to look at what else her father had given her) which were a pair of flat black ballet pumps. She wrapped her hair in a towel and then marched home, a glare fixed on her face the whole way, fuming and raving about how much trouble a spot of rain had caused her here. Even when she passed a squirrel, inconspicuously going about it's business, she threw a harsh scowl at it and yelled "What are YOU looking at?!" so loudly it had dropped the nut it was nibbling and scampered back up the tree it was sat on.
Yes. It had definitely been a bad day for Jill. She lay in bed, her hair almost dry, and tears of frustration beginning to well up in her eyes once more. She bit her lip, forcing them back, and decided that the farm work could wait a day or two. What she wanted more was to get out, to see the place, meet the people, to see the wide-open spaces her father had talked about as he tried so hard to convince her that they even existed, whilst he hurriedly shoved her down the porch steps of his beautiful mansion and into the taxi that waited in the drive. He had also yelled something about taking responsibility for herself for once and giving life some elbow grease, but Jill had so defiantly not listened properly that she couldn't remember anything more. She didn't want to remember it anyway.
In all fairness, though, Jill couldn't remember the last time she had ever done any hard work – or work, for that matter.
She sighed. The town centre and the other residents of Mineral town would be easier to tackle.
That's what I'll do.' Jill decided, 'I'll go into the town, and meet the people.' A small grin flashed across her face as she slithered down underneath her duvet and curled up, ready to sleep. Surely, what with her charm and etiquette, she would be able to win them over in five minutes.
Or so she thought.
In conclusion, not only had Jill been ungracefully awoken to that day, she had been very ungracefully awoken to the real world…