Set in the S4 to 5 gap, just something which worked its way into my head and blew round for a while.
Playing with other peoples toys was always more fun...
Enchantment of the Dandelion Seed
Peter arrives home, his cheeks on fire having been first subjected to the bite of the frigid winter wind, then from meeting the heat of their home on stepping through the door. The contrast between the two environments feels extreme. He hurriedly shuts the front door behind him then sets to work stripping off his layers which are fast coming to feel stifling. He tugs off and pockets his gloves, then unwinds his scarf hanging it and next his coat on the hook beside Olivia's.
He knows she is in the living room, he can hear music playing low but as he has assembled a quality system even softly played sound will be swirling around the room. She has been in his comprehensive rebuilt record collection again. Often she rifles through the shelves of vinyl, picking something at random and in doing so he has noticed she has a few favourites which she returns to regularly. Today must be a random choice, but a good one. Rising strings, deceptively simple bass line and beat under haunting almost desperate vocals, she has stumbled upon Portishead's 'Dummy', the album now nearing its end as Glory Box sweeps in stirring cinematic fashion; he wonders what she thinks of it.
He is drawn forward towards her, but first he liberates his feet from his boots. The Boston winter is bearing its teeth. The first heavy snowfall has arrived and is being driven by a bitter biting wind, it looks to be settled in for at least a week they say. He thinks of all the places he chose to live before this, most with far warmer climates than the one he has now chosen to reside in, to make permanent. There is only one reason for it and she is waiting just beyond the hallway door.
The living room is his favourite in the house. When they moved into the house it had been recently renovated but left as a blank canvas. However Olivia has a surprising eye for room design and she took the lead in selecting most of the elements, from colour scheme and storage to lighting and soft furnishings. Not only that, but she insisted that they do the majority of the work themselves. While she endeavoured to do the majority of the painting, he built the custom storage - as Olivia had designed it, in the alcoves to either side of the contemporary fireplace set into the wall. The resulting space feels cosy yet functional, with space for personal items such as their books and music collection, without feeling cluttered.
The room is now lit softly, but she is illuminated by the spotlight from the lamp. Designed for reading it has a flexible stem to and is angled over her shoulder giving her extra light just where she needs it most. Olivia is propped on the couch, sitting lengthways, her back against the comfortably high armrest, perfect for sitting and supporting in such a position as she is now reclined in - especially once cushions have been added for lumbar support, something she cannot now do without. Her knees are drawn up slightly, supported by another pillow while her feet, cosy in thick grey socks, are elevated on a third.
She's dressed in her most beaten and comfortable checked pyjama pants, so threadbare a gaping hole has been worn into the left knee and the right looks like it - not to mention the seat - will soon follow, yet she will not give up on them, even though it's now necessary for her to wear them low on her hips to accommodate her new, growing and incredibly sexy curve appeal. The faded Northwestern t-shirt tops the ensemble, though it too is now stretching to its very limits of wearability.
She is deep in concentration and seems oblivious of his presence at the moment, but he knows that appearances are deceptive when it comes to Olivia, she is very rarely surprised by him or others – Walter being the exception to that rule, but then he is random enough to confuse even himself never mind anyone else.
She is working on a large sprawling pad, open to the first sheet of A2 paper and over which her hand is making confident sweeping movements across the page. The vision of her like this, with the pad across her lap, spanning the valley between her knees and the pinnacle of her belly, almost makes him laugh, but he knows better than that and besides he really does not want her to stop. Instead his face near splits with the magnitude of his grin, his eyes instantly alight as he silently takes her in; a pencil tucked behind her right ear and a dark smudge on her cheek. She is both stunning and adorable and he is as captivated by her working as she is within the process.
As concentrated as she is at the moment and from her settled pose - he senses that she has been working at like this for some time - Peter worries that she will have neglected to eat. But there is the tell-tale sent of recently made toast lingering in the air and as he rounds the armchair opposite her, he sees she has a plate set on the table, along with a plethora of graded pencils strewn across it surrounding her mostly finished snack. He steps closer still taking in the details and as he does so he sees that the toast is topped not only with the spicy mackerel fillets she has been eating by the caseload over the past few weeks, but also slices of what looks like fried caramelised banana. He winces slightly at the sight and the thought that accompanies it.
She notices. "It's ok, you know," she said her right eyebrow quirking briefly then her brow pinching together into a micro frown. "I won't be making you eat any of it, in fact you won't even get a chance." And with that she reaches over and snags the final piece popping it into her mouth in one. She moans her delight around the morsel as she chews. He merely snorts with a smile and shakes his head.
Peter closes the remaining distance, bending down to claim a fishy kiss. "I would never stand between a pregnant lady and her food, especially not one who also routinely packs heat," he murmurs remaining close before sneaking in for another kiss, this one met first by her smile before it transforms into something more heated entirely. He breaks away, conscious that he has interrupted her and while he always wants her, this is something new and he doesn't want to miss out on the chance to further observe her at work.
He eases back now, giving her space, hoping that she will resume her drawing. The distance and altered perspective also gives him his fist proper look at what it is she's creating and he finds himself momentarily stunned into breathlessness.
He has seen her sketches before, but now he realises that he had absolutely no idea of the depth of her talent, or her ability to create beauty from raw materials which are worth so much less than that which she has the ability to craft them into. This is something else entirely, this is remarkable artistry.
Her usual work is quick and while not rough, he can see that her ideas and images she crafts them into have been swiftly committed to the page without much planning. Peter always wondered what her work would look like if she really took some time. And here before him is the answer.
He finds himself gazing into the face of a child, a girl whom he estimates to be no younger than two, but not even close to three. The clues are evident in her face, with baby weight still round rounding her cheeks and the small, still gap spaced teeth revealed by the purity of happiness in her smile.
What holds his attention with the tightest reigns though are her eyes. They loom large on her small face, but they just fit. Olivia has drawn them in devastating clarity, with depth of light reflecting in her irises bringing life into them which feels almost hyper real. Even though they are depicted only in monochrome achieved in pencil, he knows that the child's eyes are blue. They shimmer and glint like the surface of deep water in the sun.
He forces himself to draw back from those blue depths for a while so he is able to take in the whole once more. The shape of her face, how smooth her flawless skin looks, the lustre of her hair, the bounce and curl of it - and as with her eyes, he knows that her hair is the lightest shade of shining blonde. His fingertips tingle with the want to touch that brow, to gently sweep through those silky locks and feel the fine strands slip between them as he sweeps her hair back from her face. Indeed there is an errant curl which looks like it is within a few seconds of slipping further, about to fall into her eyes. He knows he would reach out to tuck it back into place if she were here. The thought makes the smile, which never really left his face, widen once more.
Olivia has framed the portrait to show the girl's head and shoulders and to his eye, the composition is perfect, yet it still seems free; the child unaware as if she has been captured candidly, her gaze directed up towards the top left of the page.
In his fascination he momentarily failed to notice that Olivia had returned to work. And now she adds a fluffy headed, helicopter-like seed. The effect is to give the child's eyes focus; she it enchanted by the single dandelion seed floating in the wind. Olivia switches pencils and quickly adds shading around the seed, blending the soft graphite with the tip of her already blackened finger until the graded finish is smooth.
He looks around to see if there is any reference material from which Olivia has been working, but he sees none. Whoever this is, the picture coming exclusively from Olivia's mind. Given the nature of her photographic memory, he begins to wonder if this is a childhood friend, but she has said she remembers little from her early childhood, so he doubts that she would be able to recall such details as to replicate them like this, in near photo realistic quality.
She finishes blending, then abruptly stops. She looks mildly confused for a moment, slowly setting her final pencil aside, as if she is suddenly and unexpectedly struck with the fact that she's finished. She tilts her head appraisingly studying her own work, she nods minutely a smile growing as she settles the pad into a more upright position against her knees now, the bottom edge nestled against her belly, rather than across what remains of her lap.
"It's incredible," Peter says, his throat suddenly inexplicably tight with emotion. He wants to say so much more, but for now he lacks the words to describe what he's feeling.
"Thank you," she says modestly, but she keeps her eyes on the drawing and her smile shows pride and something much more telling, he thinks it's wonderment, not dissimilar to that which he is experiencing. She has shocked herself with her creative outpouring.
As she continues her scrutiny, her hands leave the pad and traverse to the prominence of her belly, soothingly caressing, working their way to the skin her shirt simply doesn't have sufficient coverage to cope with any more.
"Olivia?" Peter asks, "Who is that?"
She takes just a moment, the frown of confusion returns, then she turns to him and her green eyes tick restlessly as they meet his, first searching for her answer then for the right words to explain. He recognises another of her tells, she swallows just before she speaks, her mouth stretching into something approximating a grimace, exposing the glitter of her perfect teeth. Whatever she has to say is difficult for her and she is not sure how he will react once she lays it out.
Low and slow she says, "I think this is our daughter Peter." Her eyes drop to consider the bulge while her palms still roam comfortingly.
Early on in her pregnancy they had discussed if they wanted to find out the sex of the baby once they reached the stage where it would become possible to tell from their scans. Peter himself was leaning towards finding out, but Olivia was resolutely taken with the idea that it should be a surprise. She had not wavered, or at least he thought not. Had she seen on their most recent scan but not said anything? He didn't think so; it wasn't her style. By the rules of full disclosure, she would have said if that were the case, also she knew that he had initially wanted to find out, but her idea of a surprise had grown on him as they had talked though their options. He had been happy to go with her on this. So now he finds himself taken aback with confusion.
She gives him time to process, which he is grateful for, as always Olivia is so perceptive when it comes to reading and empathising with others. With that thought comes a tenuous string of understanding, something to pinch until it grows into an entity he can grasp securely.
If she has a connection to others, a responsiveness to them and in particular their emotions, a product of all the things she had been exposed to throughout her childhood, not only the Cortexiphan regime, experiments and tests which paralleled it, but also through dealing with a volatile man in her stepfather, she learnt to predict his moods and discern the pattern of them. Then, wouldn't that perceptive ability become ever more apparent while forging the bond with her child as she carried them …carried her.
"You have a connection to the baby?"
She sets the portrait aside, laying it carefully on the coffee table, then moves to sit up. Though slightly hampered by her new bulk, she is still lithe and agile, she makes it to her feet easily. She then nods just once, a deep bow of her head to confirm his assertion. Her eyes still large and shimmering with worry and tears threatening to fall. "Peter?" she whispers.
The lines creasing his brow and between his eyes gradually smooth out and at last he smiles. "Then she is beautiful and I can't wait to meet her," he says as he rounds the table to get to her, she is moving to meet him and soon she is enveloped in his arms, leaning in to rest her head on his chest. "Nor to find out if she looks as extraordinary as she does in your portrait once she reaches her second birthday." He leans down to press a kiss to her head. "Love you Liv."
Peter knows exactly what to do with the artwork, he wants to make a frame for it; one worthy of the incredible piece she has created. He wants to display it on the wall of the nursery they are still in the process of planning. He thinks they have found their focal point, their inspiration for the theme and décor of the room.
Peter can't wait to start, he can't wait for all the surprises and magic their life together will hold and he hopes he will be privileged enough to witness this moment as Olivia has captured it, with his own eyes.