I've always thought that Dickon and Mary are just the cutest couple ever. So many fanfics about them seem to be set when they're older, so I wanted to write one where they're still kids. This is mostly inspired by the 1993 film and takes place shortly after it.
Caesar's Palace Shipping Week 2016 - Day 1: Whisper
When the day is gray and ordinary
Mary makes the sun shine bright
The April rain fell steadily, and the gray, overcast skies above the moor showed no signs of clearing. Lord Craven looked sympathetic but shook his head when Dickon knocked on the main door to Misselthwaite Manor and asked for "Miss Mary."
"I'm afraid it's raining too hard for you children to—" But he was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps, as Mary came flying down the staircase, her pigtails streaming out behind her. Her brown eyes were eager and shining, as if she'd been waiting and listening for Dickon's knock.
"We're just going out for a walk, Uncle, Dickon and I," she said breathlessly, grabbing the biggest umbrella from the umbrella stand beside the door. "We'll be fine. We don't mind a little rain."
"Well, all right, but don't go far," Lord Craven called after them, but Dickon and Mary were already out the door and on their way down the main gravel path across the grounds. His voice was already just an echo from some dry, indoor world that they'd left behind.
The soft pitter-patter of the rain on the umbrella was like a chorus of whispering voices, and as if to imitate it, Mary and Dickon spoke in whispers, too.
"Thy uncle answered the door hisself," Dickon said to Mary, astonished. "He didn't have one of the servants do it."
"I know, isn't it funny?" Mary whispered back. "He's started doing things like that lately."
They huddled close together under the umbrella, their arms brushing. Mary and Dickon loved to walk in the rain. It was like walking through their own private world. The grounds of the manor looked so different in a rainstorm, and they always had it all to themselves. Sometimes, it was hard for just the two of them to do anything without Colin, but Colin didn't like the rain.
"Let's go down to the duck pond," Mary said, "then to the yew tree."
"Aye, let's," Dickon agreed.
The rain ran off their umbrella in streams as they walked to the duck pond on the lower grounds. Mary had forgotten her rainboots, and her shoes and stockings were soon wet and muddy, but she didn't mind. How could she mind anything when she was walking under an umbrella with Dickon, with his warm arm brushing hers?
"Do your duck-call, Dickon?" Mary asked when they reached the pond, and he did. Dickon's duck-call was so good that the ducks all waddled ashore at the sound of it. They liked the rain, too. They frolicked and hunted for worms in the puddles, and Mary and Dickon watched and laughed.
From the duck pond, they walked to the yew tree — one of the few trees that grew on their bare, lonely moor. Its branches were so thick and wide that they were almost completely sheltered from the rain as they folded up their umbrella and sat beneath it. Mary had forgotten her rainboots, but she had remembered to slip two boiled eggs from the kitchen into her apron pocket, and Dickon had two apples tucked inside his jacket. They divided the food and ate in happy silence, watching the rain fall over the moor. It was the simplest sort of food, but something about eating it together under the yew tree made it taste delicious and exotic.
They never spoke to anyone about watching the ducks or eating under the yew tree. "Oh, we just went walking about," Mary always answered, if Colin or Uncle Craven asked where they'd gone. It made their rainy days all the more exciting to keep them secret.
Mary looked a bedraggled fright when she returned to the manor house — her hair damp, her shoes and stockings muddy, her skirt covered in wet grass from sitting beneath the yew tree. "Fie, Miss Mary," Martha scolded, "thou looks worse than a wet cat." But Mary's arm was still warm from where it had touched Dickon's, and she just smiled dreamily and wandered upstairs, feeling like a queen.