Prettyinpinkgal: So, in commemoration of the beginning of a Summer of Fanfiction (for me, anyway), I am starting with this quick little story. I've just finished Fire and Hemlock for the first time today and cannot even begin to say how much it has captured my imagination. I've already read every single F&H story on this site. It has replaced HMC in terms of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones novel. And I just KNOW I'll need to reread that ending. But for now, I'll write this quick little story to help release the delighted reader in me and get myself prepared for writing more of Destiny and Spirited Around (can't I just say Spirited Around is done yet? Cannot even begin to say how much I regret that dreadful mess of a story.)
The inspiration for this story comes from the fact that I am quite vengeful when it comes to fictional characters that hurt beloved fictional characters and receive no comeuppance for it. Or, in terms of Ivy and Reg, do they?
Apologies for any mistakes that contradict with the cannon. As I've said, I've only read the novel once thus far. I shall do my best to make it as realistic as possible. I may make this into a collection of oneshots, after I finish the majority of SA/Destiny.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fire and Hemlock. It belongs to the incredibly imaginative Diana Wynne Jones.
OF CLIMBING
Ivy sees reality as one sees an early draft of a drawing: It is basic, fairly clear, and solid. Bold lines make it, giving her complete confidence in the shape and what she has to work with. It is what she sees as she works on making the lodger's room. She has four walls. A floor. A ceiling. She has paint. She can work with this.
What Ivy does not see is that reality is the finished draft of that drawing, full of colors and depth and shadows and meaning even where there might not be any. There are nuances in life that Ivy does not understand, not to mention aspects of monsters and horse-cars and tunnel eyes which would never even enter the art in her mind. In fact, it cannot be called art. It is only what it is. It is her life. And she will make of it as she will.
Ivy is a plant that climbs, and so will she. She will climb out of this pile of trash that Reg dumped her into and make him truly regret and she will smile upon him pityingly as he tries to win her back time and time again but will always fail. She will make him regret it.
She threw the dollhouse away with pleasure. It had been her suggestion, but its presence would not let her achieve her-their happiness. Polly's happiness, too. Polly ought to be grateful she is doing something, taking her out of his clutches. Perhaps when she is older, she will understand.
Polly must work too, though. She must climb as well.
"Mum?" Polly calls now, and Ivy puts down the paintbrush. The room is white, pure white, free of color and depth. But it also pushes Ivy, for a brief moment, to imagine the possibilities that lie beyond. It is a blank slate.
This is the closest Ivy comes to imagining, and she backs away then. She snaps to her daughter, because the imagining brought her dangerously close to remembering, and the tears came close to spilling. Thinking and imagining and remembering will not make things happen. Doing will bring both happiness and forgetting.
She must forget.
And Ivy is still at the point of her life when she believes she can climb even so.
And she is still to find out that four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and bold lines keep her from getting very far.
