Oaken Harte.
Did time really exist, or was it just clocks? Did it matter? No, probably not.
Evet stared blankly at the monster that sat on her sister's chest. It was a jolly thing; it laughed all the time, but its laughter rang out in the form of the violent coughs that racked Ebony's body. It was getting bigger, too. Fatter. It must eat Ebony's body or something, because it swelled and bloated as she grew frailer and weaker. Ugly and black, it grinned smugly from its perch on her ribs. Evet narrowed her eyes at the way it nibbled at the edges of Ebony, blurring her soft outline and gnawing its way down to her ribs, leaving the unwanted bone to stick out and make a new, sharper outline.
"What are you scowling at, Miss Grumpy?" Anne-Marie trilled, marching into the room. She seized the soft fabric of the curatins and tore them apart, letting golden light tumble into the room and pool onto the wooden floor.
"We were just chatting, mum," Ebony said smoothly. "Talking about how we like Boston so far and stuff."
"Oh isn't that great?" Anne-Marie beamed, her attitude outshining the Sun. "And how are you liking America, dear hearts?"
"Oh we think it's swell, but what about you?" Ebony said, handing their mother the key to a long winded monologue.
'Bless your decomposing heart, Ebony' Evet thought with relief. Anne-Marie was forever asking hard questions that poked Evet in the side, demanding her to speak and answer her, and Ebony always knocked the hand away and turned it back to their mother who delighted in talking incessantly.
Whenever Evet was together with her sister, she felt like she could breathe. She was getting good at breathing.
Boston had been their place of residence for five weeks now, and it was actually alright. Around their homestead there were a few homes and families, but they never bothered one another with annoyances like "warm welcomes". True to his expectations, Daniel had found plenty of work felling giants and selling their dead bodies for bits of paper and metal. Her "family" had integrated well with the community; her mother was an enthusiastic member of multiple groups and clubs; Daniel helped light the street lights at dusk and had collected a few logger friends; Ebony was usually too ill to do much, but the tutor that Anne-Marie had hired to help her along with her basic studies was welcomed by Ebony into her life.
"Evet? Are you still here?" Daniel's voice boomed across the house not sounding unlike the giant door that he also let slam shut at the same moment. "You'd better hurry along to see your… to see Doctor Harte. Don't be late now."
Standing up, Evet walked across the room, feigning deaf to the silence that her mother was now producing. It was a unique silence. The night held its own silence; death had its silence; even the calamity of battle held its own brand of hush. The only word for Anne-Marie's quiet was shameful.
A few long strides across the room, and Evet was at the door. The loaded silence teeming with quiet shame that nothing would ever disguise was hanging off the back of Evet's skirts. It's long, grimy fingers kneaded and plucked at her hem, and she snatched it out of its' grasp and quickly shut the door on it. She breathed in the air of the trees quickly and deeply, but the silence still scratched at the door from the inside, howling and deafening her, determined to not let her forget about its' presence. Slowly putting her small white hands to her ears, Evet stepped off of the porch, and headed for the main streets of Boston, the whining and scratching of the silence slowly dropping off as she went further away from her "family".
There wasn't really a point to her leaving – well, there was, but not the one to do with Doctor Harte – because Evet was skipping her appointments with Doctor Harte. He had come to America four years ago, and even though he was French, his English was impeccable. He was nice to look at. He had a quiet handsomeness about him, but more than that, he was warm. His chestnut stubble reminded Evet of an old oak tree that grew back in England.
It was always cold and miserable in England, except for the rare days where there was any Sun. The oak always had seemed to thrive and glow, even on the cloudiest of days. When someone had cut it down for furniture, Evet had been vaguely disappointed, but a few months later when they furniture maker had released the chairs and tables that had been made from the oak's body, they had still possessed the same glow to them. They gleamed and shone with the fjnishing polish that the carpenter had applied, but from the wood itself shone from within. No-one had noticed the glow when Evet asked them (of course, that was back in the days where the words would come when she asked), and her uncle had bought a mantelpiece from the tree.
The glow from the tree had been warm, and that was the kind of glow that she could see in Doctor Harte. His voice was very soothing, too; like the sound that gravel would make when it's being swished back and forth along the bed of a lazy creek. His entire being was like a forest, except for his eyes. They were thunderstorms, dark and unfathomable. Looming above her always, looking.
He was quite cold to the touch though. When his large hands brushed the tops of her arms, or grasped her hand as he tried to get a point across. Even when Evet watched as he held Anne-Marie through her sobbing, she could almost feel the chill penetrate her own clothes. It was like he moved right through the meagre flesh on her arms and instead touched her very bones.
Shaking those thoughts from her head, Evet wandered until she crossed the border into civilisation.