Hellooooo everyone!
Well, I promised you a sequel, and here it is, woefully late. But I hope you enjoy it, even so. It's a continuation of my other fic, the High School of Notre Dame, in the form of a series of connected oneshots. There aren't per-chapter illustrations, but keep searching THSOND on deviantart every so often, because I shall be posting a few-odd pictures there relating to the story. My username is Linnellisgod.
Summary: Sequel to THSOND. After the events of the fall, Notre Dame High is a changed place. Life seems pretty good. But the life of a high school student is never simple, least of all the lives of these particular high school students.
Disclaimer: I owneth not. Also, I don't own the title. It belongs to Anthony Trollope; it's a wonderful book of his, which was also adapted into a wonderful miniseries. I highly reccomend it.
The Way We Live Now
-Tales of NDCSH-
1
The windows were curtainless and open, and red sunset light spilled through them. It lit up the dust motes in the air and the five stained-glass wind chimes that hung from the upper windowsills; it bathed the room in fire-colours and brown-tinted greens.
Quasimodo knelt on the mattress, his eyes fixed on the carving above his bed. It depicted a woman holding a young child, and had anyone asked, he would have told them it was the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. But it had never been entirely that.
I suppose she died to save me, he thought.
Had she known he was deformed? He wasn't sure if it ought to matter. In the carving, he wasn't, because it had been nice to imagine himself as an ordinary child, even if just for a little bit.
Frollo had never willingly spoken about Quasimodo's mother. Laverne, who was now his legal guardian, had told him everything she could garner, but that had not been much. It had come as a total shock to learn that his mother was Romany.
He touched the smooth, sanded wood of the carving, and a slight, wry smile crossed his face.
He wished he could have had some sense of her; some vague memory, or even just a feeling, of what she had been like. But there was nothing; not even a hazy intimation of her presence. When he touched the wood of the carving he felt no spark of sudden recollection. She had died the night he was born, and that was all there was. He didn't even know what she looked like. She could have been anyone.
He hoped to God she would have been proud of him.
Okay, so there's chapter one. More coming soon. Thank you all for reading, waiting, et cetera!
-Mostly Harmless