Cain Wears a Hat
Reader discretion Errm some suggestion but nothing descriptive
DISCLAIMER
Me: Sci fi can I have Tin man,Please?
Sci fi : No Its ours
Me: Okay can I borrow the characters and give them a new adventure?
Sci fi : .....
Me: I'll take good care of them! Please?
Sci fi : Well, OK then.
It was just a normal gray hat.
An old, worn fedora.
Cain wore it everywhere.
He hated it.
At first anyway.
Wyatt was young and newly married to his high school sweat heart, Adora. They lived in a small cramped apartment in the big bustling Central City. Wyatt was training to be a Tin man by day and sorted mail by night. Adora was a waitress in a small, noisy cafe.
Adora wasn't like most girls. She would hide in the house when the sun shone bright,but came out, and came alive when the bad weather rolled in. Bad news never stuck to her. She was always optimistic and joyful. She had a rich bubbling laugh. A laugh Wyatt Cain treasured more than air and life. A laugh he would do anything to hear, and was often rewarded with sucess. She was was never afraid,his Adora. Strong and brave and red hot for what she belived was right.
She smelled like flowers in water.
Flowers dancing and swirling in small eddies,drifting lazily into paradise.
She wasn't perfect (And she reminded him often, as Wyatt seemed to forget.) She couldn't fold laundry. She whistled through he left nostril when she was asleep.
And when made angry (Though that was rare) Adora Cain had the shortest temper and foulest mouth of any other tin mans wife (Or indeed half the Tin men.)
And for all this, Wyatt Cain loved her more. He was at his lunch break, and she was waiting his table. Before he left, he composed a love sonnet on the check. Every day after that he came back. Not for the awful coffee, but to see her eyes light up when they rested on him.
One day,a month into Wyatts tin man training, Adora came home in an unusually good mood. She held something behind her back and giggled whenever he asked what it was.
He chased her all around the apartment three times before he caught her (She said she let him and he let her think that) and she place the something on his head. It fell over his eyes and she giggled in delight.
"Dora? Whats on my head?"
"A hat Darling. What else goes on your head?"
Wyatt pulled it off and examined the hat. "Its a fedora."
"Don't you like it?"
"No" He grinned evilly.
Adora laughed again and placed the offending hat on her own head.
"How about now?" She bubbled, giving him bedroom eyes.
Cain had to admit, the hat looked good on Adora.(Especially when it was all she had on.)
After a few nights, The wretched Fedora smelled like Adora, flowers and laughter and joy. Wyatt almost never took it off.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Wyatt sat at the edge of the crystal blue lake of Finaqua with a small smile ghosting over his features.
Glitch wandered over and sat beside him. He looked over the lake to where his friends gaze was focused.
"Jeb isn't back yet?"
Cains smile widened "Nope."
Glitch looked sideways at the stoic tin man.
"Has DG stopped giggling yet?"
"Nope."
Cain opened his mouth to reply, but it was that moment Jebs head reemerged from the center of the lake.
"Did you get it?" Cain shouted across the still air.
From the middle of the lake, a completely soaked and thoroughly miserable Jeb held up an old, worn fedora.
Jeb began trudging back to shore where the two elder men were laughing hysterically.
It was then and there he vowed to never throw his fathers hat in the lake again.