A/N: This is my first attempt at writing in six months. If it seems far-fetched, it is based on what I know. Please forgive errors.
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Belle paused in front of the variant shelves and displays of her father's shop. After making adjustments to objects she deemed to be out of place, she moved to another site of disarray. In the same room, Moe, her father, drifted behind a large table cluttered with items used in the creation of floral arrangements. Empty vases framed his workplace.
The overhead lights were low and of a copper tone, casting the room in the warm tint of sepia. The flowers were in places made silhouettes in the altered light, others were changed to soft browns and ambers. Bordering the shelves were frosted gold Christmas lights nestled in dried moss.
Belle had recently assembled along the lights and moss miniature houses made of objects unearthed from forest beds. The structures stood in shadow, save for their doors, rooves and other varying points, which were bathed in the faint glow of strung lights. A crooked windmill stood amid the houses; along with a tower, a well, and other fixtures of civilization. She liked to imagine the village had been abandoned after its people returned to their native land, wherever that happened to be.
The radio was playing beside Moe, and absently he hummed along with songs he didn't know the lyrics to; more focused on the memories they reawoke than his work. His hands gave the impression of independent movement.
Belle looked out the window, past the sections of ivy covering the glass. Pre-twilight was quickly fading, and the stars were becoming visible. Her arms were crossed, and as a ghost she could see the reflection of herself in the window; her green sweater and the haze of white that made up her face and limbs. The October air could as a whisper be felt seeping in through the edges of frame.
"You'd best go out while there still some light."
Belle turned to face her father. He didn't look up from his task, lost in the song playing, Al Stewart's, The Year of the Cat. "I'll close up as soon as I get these done. There's no sense in you staying in here, all cooped up." His voice was warm as it reached Belle, gently nudging her. "That is, if you feel like it."
Belle brushed her fingers against the rough face of a sunflower, considering her father's suggestion. The music in the air brought with it a sense of melancholy she wished to leave behind. Outside, though it would trail her, its spirit would not be the same as in. "Maybe I will go out."
She turned to face her father, the blue glow from the window backing her figure as she approached and embraced him. When she stepped away, Moe could see in her eyes hints of her past self. "I'll see you later, papa."
"See you soon, my girl. You be careful," he said happily, pointing at her with a wash rag.
"I will," she assured him. Her steps were placed backwards until she reached the door, which she opened and tightly pressed herself through. She left him with a timid, "See you."
Stepping outside, Belle's hair and clothes were wildly blown by the wind, her body made to turn inward. Ducking her head and folding her arms against her chest, she made a fruitless attempt to acclimate herself to the change in temperature. She was wearing only a light sweater over her cotton dress and leggings and wondered if it would be enough. Debris flew around her feet and across the street, hitting against the sidewalk lightly.
The air spoke of Autumn harvest, changed and fallen leaves, while, at the same time, Summer remained in the periphery and called out with empty promise.
Wind chimes could be heard in the distance along with the rustling of tree branches. A breeze, through a break in storefronts, softly flew over Belle's face and the hem of her dress, and, for a moment she was of a mind to imagine its touch was the coolness of a hand. A man's hand brushing back her hair. As the sensation came into focus in her mind, slowly morphing into an image, one of a hunched figure whose face was blurred and in shadow, there was sent into her a chill remote to her body. It rose from her core and spread, leaving through the mounds of bone behind her ears. She kept on, trying not to think of the faceless apparition asking for her name. Her hand.
Belle had only recently taken to walking in the evenings and at night. Leaving the house had become increasingly difficult after the sudden death of her mother almost a year before. For want of solitude, she chose late hours in which to make herself known to the forces outside her home.
Speaking with townspeople worsened her already heighten anxiety. Their casual words and her own made in reply weighed on her mind, hours - even days afterward. She wanted to avoid judgement, questions and words of sympathy regarding her recent loss. It made little difference if discussion turned to matters unrelated. She didn't want to make polite conversation of any sort, not while bearing so much pain. Not with so rapid a pulse.
In the weeks after her mother's death, Belle's thoughts and emotions had manifested until grief was all that formed her. Inconsolable, she was no longer a person in whole; her outer layers chipped away until she was made bare; her soul a hovering thing, like smoke. Her days merged into nights and were vacant, clouded over with sleep. Sometimes her evenings were spent with her father in the warmth of their kitchen, silently lingering about the room as he cooked. Listening while across her face shadows passed. After they'd eaten, she would either return to bed or sit with Moe in the living room. Her life played out as though viewed and lived by someone else.
As time passed, a longing awoke deep within in her. The part of her soul that required adventure began to surface. At first she was reluctant to act at its behest, a voice inside her telling her that she didn't deserve to go out. She believed that leaving the house, to behave as she had in the past, would dishonor her mother. As though her passing were of little consequence. Stepping outside didn't seem right. It was under the open sky that Colette's life had been taken.
There were more memories in the house than out. Every room had etched in its grains the voice and movement of her mother. As Belle passed over the areas that used to hold Colette, it was almost as if they had never let her go, and that through them a window could somehow be opened. Belle had trouble telling the difference between the past and present. It was too difficult for her to accept that the routine of her former life was incapable of renewal.
Belle remained the same until her outlook was abruptly changed by the appearance of her mother in a series of dreams. In them, Colette emerged from the forests lining Storybrooke, walked the sidewalks of town streets, and, more often than any other setting, she waited for Belle along the shoreline bordering the docks. Together they would speak as they had in life, as if simply renewing conversations from where they'd left off, both aware of the fact that Colette had died. Though she often forgot their content, the dreams brought to Belle a feeling of ease she hadn't known since her mother's passing.
Despite knowing that most would dismiss the notion, Belle truly believed her mother was visiting her by such means. She started sharing the details of her dreams with her father whenever they would allow themselves to be recalled. When unknowingly she relaid a message to him from Colette, a joke between the two that had occurred while her parents were courting, something Belle could not have known, and that Moe had forgotten, her doubts - and those of her father - were assuaged. Noticing that in her dreams Colette's visits took place outdoors, Moe said to his daughter, "Don't you see? Your mum wants you to join her outside."
Belle knew as soon as he had said the words that they were true. In her dreams her mother had not once appeared indoors, though in life she was often prone to spending the entire day inside with a book.
Another change came in Belle noticing that, though the house held memories of Colette, it seemed to no longer contain the warmth of her presence. The suspended weight that came in knowing she was in the house before given any indication. Belle could, in the past, not long after her mother's death, easily imagine that Colette was still alive, asleep in her room. The door remained closed; and though she couldn't see beyond it, Belle knew now without having to look that her mother was no longer there. Her spirit absent. With her but, at the same time, not.
One evening, due to his wife's persuasion, Moe was able to convince Belle to accompany him on a walk. They didn't go far, only a couple of blocks the first night. Even at that, it was as if a small piece of herself had been returned. A note secretly slipped under a door.
Over time, as Belle rediscovered her love for the inanimate qualities of life, they would go so far as to have Storybrooke's docks within sight before turning back.
Feeling stronger, Belle later went unaccompanied. She didn't feel unsafe on her own. After living with such loss, she'd discovered fear couldn't touch her as it once had.
She met her father at his floral shop almost every evening at closing and walked home with him for dinner. Moe often told his daughter he was proud of her and would encourage her to continue making progress. In the future, he told her, she would find herself by the marina, and once she'd made it that far, it would be only a few additional feet before she'd make it to the shoreline.
The future was perhaps what she'd seen that night in the blurred reflection of her father's window, for the shoreline was Belle's destination as she set out.
She'd made it past the many storefronts, and was nearing their end. The docks were within sight. In the distance, a lone fishing boat could be seen swaying on the waves.
She shook her head then her fingers, sending invisible embers to the ground. For a moment she contemplated going back, but instead decided to fight by running forward. She ran as though she were being chased and as fast as she was capable, halting only once she'd set foot on sand. Catching her breath, elated, she walked in a circle as she searched the silvery expanse of water, the glittering lights and buildings of the town behind her.
In an attempt to reach out to her mother, she stilled herself after she'd calmed down and imagined her consciousness as it drifted from her body. Tethered, it pulled from between and behind her eyes. Smoke from the ends of her fingers where before embers had left in sparks.
When the sound of falling stones reached her, Belle returned from wherever she'd strayed. Her gaze fell instantly on the dark outline of a man in the distance slowly stepping over an uneven shore of rocks. His head raised as his line of sight moved from his path and to her, having sensed her presence at the same moment she'd spotted him.
She panicked and looked away before she could judge his character or face, and with her hands in her pockets, she started to walk quickly in an opposing direction in order to avoid him.
After walking a few steps, she looked over her shoulder to discern if the man was still alongside the water. When she found him as she'd seen him in her mind's eye, standing with his back to her, where she'd been moments before, she lost her sense of unease.
When finally she was well away from the beach, and on her way back home, Belle began to look forward to speaking with her father over dinner.
She hoped he would be as equally pleased that she'd finally reached the area seen most often in dreams.
~•~
