Single White Farmer - Chapter 2
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Wednesday dawned bright and beautiful, and as she lay snuggled beneath the soft chenille blankets and Egyptian cotton sheets of her bed, young Miss Dia's heart was filled likewise with the sunshine and serenity of the blithe Spring morning.
Nearly purring in contentment, she took an extra-long moment to bask in the warm sunlight spilling through the gap in the curtains to pool at the head of the bed.
Dia was entirely aware that she had become a much happier girl in general since Gina had whisked her away from her family's splendid, lonely estate last month, and had found herself smiling and laughing a good deal more in the friendly little mountain town than she had in the bustling coastal city of her birth, but even amid the sunlit days of peace and contentment, there was something special about a Wednesday.
Wednesdays were Gina's day off at the Clinic, so Wednesdays were the days that most often found them exploring the mountains and the forests on Flowerbud Village's outskirts, picking berries and flowers and collecting herbs for the doctor.
Even on those days that Gina had accepted Ann's invitation for an afternoon gabfest amid the explosions that tended to occur whenever the cheerful redhead and a mechanical device came together, there was just something comforting about knowing that her housemate was finding a little time to relax.
The doctor, of course, had often told Gina that if she wanted to take a break for a nice, long walk in the middle of a workday, she should go right ahead, but had quickly learned that Dia really hadn't been exaggerating when she referred to the friendly little nurse as her favourite hopeless workaholic.
All in all, on a Wednesday, especially such a lovely one, there was absolutely nothing that could spoil Dia's mood.
Until, that is, a piercing shriek split the air.
In a fraction of an instant, Dia was up and out of bed, voluminous nightgown streaming out behind her as she ran.
"Gina?" she called sharply, sprinting down the stairs two at a time.
"I'm okay, Dia. I'm sorry for scaring you," drifted a faint reply from the little room at the end of the first floor hallway.
Pausing at the bottom of the stairs to catch her notably quick and erratic breath from the sudden burst of exercise - sadly, it seemed that her lifelong dream of the world track and field championships would remain beyond her reach - Dia shook her head, and continued on toward Gina's room in more of a stomp than a sprint.
"What on earth was that about?" she demanded, throwing the door open.
"Jill startled me; that's all," a pillow-creased, mussy-haired, flushed Gina replied sheepishly from the comfy little feather bed that had belonged for a brief time to Dia, before her feather allergies had reasserted themselves.
"Jill?" Dia repeated, taken aback. Then, as the glowering pigtailed shape in the rocking chair next to Gina's closet caught her eye, she sighed. "I see."
"Honestly, Dia, I didn't mean to scream like that," Gina said, clutching the blankets tighter about her as the effects of cool morning air began to show clearly through her thin nightie. "I just don't often wake up with someone hovering directly above me and glaring."
"No, I don't imagine so," Dia murmured, closing her eyes briefly and sending up a quick prayer for patience. "Now do you understand why I think we should lock the door at nights?"
"Oh, Dia, I don't think that would be a good idea," the usually-bespectacled nurse objected doubtfully. "What if there was an emergency, and someone needed to get in?"
"They could knock?" Dia suggested impatiently. She turned to fix Jill with a disapproving look. "And you! What were you thinking, sneaking into Gina's room, when she sleeps with a gun under her pillow?"
"Um, no I don't," Gina piped up hesitantly.
Dia continued to glare at the farmer currently glaring at Gina.
"Maybe you should start."
"You know, Jill, I don't think you ever told me why you were here so early," Gina pointed out with an exceedingly strained sort of politeness.
"Why do you think?" the hitherto rather miraculously silent brunette snorted.
"But I don't even work today!" Gina wailed. "I won't even see Alex today!"
Jill gave an incredulous laugh.
"Oh-ho, it's Alex now, is it?"
"Unless he's had it changed recently, yes," Dia murmured. "Now, Miss Jill, it isn't that we don't enjoy strangers traipsing about our bedrooms at idiotic hours of the morning, but technically, the Sanitarium is closed right now, so unless there is a medical emergency that the doctor alone cannot help you with, I am going to have to ask you to leave."
Jill hesitated, her vicious glare at Gina beginning to wilt under the force of Dia's.
"Alright, I'm going," she announced dramatically, before wheeling on Gina again. "But you watch yourself, missy."
Dia watched, utterly lost as to anything that had just happened, as Jill swept from the room.
"Why do all the crazy people seem to gravitate to you?"
Then, as the reason for the soft snickers Gina was hiding behind her hand occurred to her, in time with the recollection that she herself has been very quick to gravitate to the blue-haired girl's warm, gentle friendliness, Dia pouted.
"Oh, never mind," she huffed, pulling back the covers of the bed and climbing in. "Just hush up and scoot over; your room is freezing in the morning."
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The life of young Miss Ann Copeland was hardly one that could be described as boring, or for that matter, even normal.
This was, of course, much to the consternation of her father, who was not nearly as fond of the constant explosions and gentle showers of flaming debris as his beloved offspring.
The strangeness of this particular drowsy spring afternoon, though, was the sort that would come to the consternation of both father and daughter, and lead both to agree sadly that there must be "something in the pesticides she's using".
It started ordinarily enough, with Ann racing over to the Sanitarium to kidnap the girls for the afternoon, recalling with a sheepish laugh that all the smoking metal in the vicinity wasn't good for Dia's asthma, and proceeding to kidnap Gina only - with Dia's express permission, of course.
The two had spent a joyous hour, Ann tinkering and Gina watching in fascination, nevertheless ready to bolt for the first aid kit at a second's notice, and the latter had almost managed to forget the utter failure of her life to be peaceful as of late.
Problems just had a way of fading into unimportance in the Junk Shop, with Ann's beaming smiles and impassioned rambles and Michael's gentle common sense and quiet laughter, and by two o' clock in the afternoon, Gina's desire to pour out her current troubles to Ann and Michael had disappeared entirely.
Unfortunately, although this made for a far pleasanter start to the afternoon, it did mean that Ann and Michael were entirely unprepared for the whirlwind that would hit at exactly thirteen and a half minutes past two.
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"KHAAAAAAAAAN!!!" Jill did not howl in a blind fury as she burst through the door of the Junk Shop, although she did howl something similar enough in its place that to the end of her days, Ann would insist that someone needed to lay off the Star Trek movies.
"O-oh; hello, Jill," Gina greeted with all the enthusiasm with which she had hailed her last bout of intestinal flu.
"I might have known I'd find you here," the pigtailed brunette snarled at the little blue-haired maiden. "Plotting with your diabolical redheaded conspirator to steal Alex from me!"
"Yup, you got us," Ann said cheerfully. "We're going to use my new soon-to-be patented onion chopper and containment unit to lure him to his death, like a couple of part-time mechanical geniuses and sirens."
"And then you reveal your entire diabolical plot without batting an eyelash!" Jill finished, throwing up her hands in disbelief. "Have you no shame?!"
"Nope," Ann grinned.
Michael waited for the inevitable explosion, but did not cringe. He was well used to explosions around here, albeit of a decidedly different nature. But if his Shop had survived his daughter's inquisitive streak, surely it wouldn't be shaken by the inexplicable snit of the local rancher.
"For heaven's sakes, Jill, what are you doing here?" Gina was meanwhile demanding with a level of impatience that made father and daughter stare, but only made Jill's eyes narrow in hate.
"Like you don't know! I told you I'd be watching you, didn't I?"
Gina resisted the urge to slam her head repeatedly into the closest flat surface.
"The doctor isn't even here!"
"Giving you a perfect opportunity to plot against his true love!" Jill finished, following up in a nastily smug little chuckle at having deciphered her rival's evil plot so quickly.
"I'm not plotting against you," Gina said, a breath away from a sob. "I just want you to go away!"
Jill stormed around behind the counter, glare ever deepening.
"Not until this threat to my relationship is neutralized!"
"You know, that seems kind of counterproductive to me," Ann pointed out, scratching her head.
Jill blinked.
"What?"
"Well, think about it," Ann shrugged. "When's the last time you had some nice, romantic time alone with Alex? You've obviously got a lot of time on your hands, and you could be spending it with your boyfriend, but you're neglecting him, just to stalk his nurse!"
"I wouldn't have to, if she'd just stop plotting to steal him!" Jill spat back.
Ann nodded, mulling this over.
"Okay. But I've gotta say, I never knew you could steal a guy, unless he was pretty willing to be stolen in the first place. Maybe it's because you neglect him so much."
Michael and Gina gave simultaneous groans of horrified expectation. That observation, Gina thought despairingly, would go over, as the quaint old expression went, like a lead balloon.
"I KNEW YOU WERE WORKING WITH HER!!!" Jill capslocked, enraged.
Ann, however, regarded Jill quite calmly, arms folded.
"So, tell me, Jill; have you ever had an ex-boyfriend turn gay before?"
"Don't try to change the subject!" Jill snarled, advancing menacingly on both girls.
"Oh, no," Michael sighed, eyes flitting rapidly between the young ladies backing up in tiny increments, and the modified lampost about half a dozen of said increments away.
"You vicious, lying, manipulating little puppy-bitches!" Jill was meanwhile ranting, swinging her sickle in wide, whistling arcs.
"Oh, dear," Gina lamented. "I think Dia was right again - I really need to start carrying a gun."
Swoosh!
Ann and Gina leapt back in a slightly larger increment, as the wickedly sharp point of Jill's sickle tore a tiny hole in Ann's overshirt.
"Hey! That's my dad's favourite shirt!" Ann said, annoyed.
"Oh, my; that is my shirt," Michael noted curiously, just as Ann's heel landed at the sloped base of the lamp post.
"Ack!" she rejoined casually, promptly losing her balance and grabbing for the front of Gina's apron without thinking, thus promptly losing Gina's balance as well.
In a tangle of arms, legs, and profanities, both girls tumbled into the lamp post, which proceeded to top, directly into the fuse box, which stood open and proudly displaying its innards in a stunning display of coincidence.
"Oh, shit on a stick!" Gina might have lamented, but as the sound was entirely swallowed up by a crazily sparking fuse box, and seconds later by a loud boom, it was never known for certain.
"What the hell was that for?!" Ann did demand, quite audibly, once the smoke began to clear sufficiently to demand anything without promptly choking. "If you have to wave sharp tools around indoors, make sure there's nothing in your path! Geez! It's like you haven't learned anything from working that farm of yours!"
Michael, meanwhile, withdrew a little notebook with a resigned air, and added a tick to the ever-growing tally.
That brought the total explosions since Ann's eighteenth birthday to three hundred twenty-seven.
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The next morning saw Dia, wrapped in a deep green silk housecoat decorated with tiny gold rosebuds, watching in utter bafflement as her friend crept slowly toward the front door, her customary bow replaced by a crash helmet, ordinary striped dress and apron supplemented today by thick canvas gloves and foam padding.
"Gina," she called tentatively, and sighed wearily when her best friend gave a terrified yelp and quickly drew a baseball bat from - Dia supposed - somewhere within that ridiculous getup. "Gina, you can't wear all that to the Clinic."
"I'm not leaving the building without it," Gina retorted stubbornly. "Just in case there's another explosion - those burn-marks hurt!"
Dia rubbed her eyes wearily.
"Jill is not going to do anything else to hurt you, Gina. You know that Theodore has put her on probation - if anything else happens, he might reposess her ranch."
"Only until the town realizes that they can't get along without her," Gina moaned into her hands, dropping heavily to a nearby chair. "When they start to miss the reduced prices on her milk and eggs and vegetables, and complain about paying Jamie's ridiculous rates again, the mayor will invite her back without a second thought. And it doesn't matter whether or not he kicks her out of the village for blowing me to little pieces - I'll still be little pieces whether she stays or goes."
Dia rubbed wide, soothing circles over Gina's foam armor. This whole thing was starting to spiral dangerously out of controlIf only Gina had carried a gun with her from their first day in Flowerbud, she could have nicked off the end of that little psychotic's pigtail, and that would have solved that.
Not to mention, the idea of Gina with a gun was inexplicably charming.
"Listen to me, Gina. No, don't be a turtle!" she added, annoyed, as Gina began to shrink inside her padding. "You're not going to be little pieces, because this girl's harrassment is ending right now. Come on," she concluded, siezing her friend's arm and hauling her towards the door. "We're going to see the doctor, and tell him what's been going on."
Amid a series of frantic little yelps, Gina dug the heels of her heavy-duty steel-toed workboots into the floor, and Dia, who had once become winded from carrying a bowl of fruit from the kitchen to the dining room table, found herself quite outclassed.
She shook her head resignedly. Trickery it would be, then.
"Gina, look!" she gasped, pointing at a spot on the wall over her friend's shoulder. "It's Jill!"
With a terrified shriek, and not even a glance in the indicated direction, Gina bolted from the Sanitarium. Dia permitted herself a quick, smug little grin, and then trotted out after her.
"Thank-you. Now that we're outside, and Jill isn't currently attacking you, do you think you'd like to try for the Clinic?"
"No," Gina whimpered sadly, nevertheless wandering in that direction. "In fact, I've been thinking about giving up my work at the Clinic."
"Absolutely not!" Dia barked. "I know how much you love your job, and there is no way I'm just going to sit by and watch you give up something you love, just because of some insecure pigtailed psychotic!"
A sigh echoed from inside Gina's helmet.
"You're right, Dia. I've been a horrible coward about all of this. From now on, no matter what Jill does, I'll just go about my business, and keep doing my work, until she sees that I don't mean her any harm. There is nothing she can do to weaken my resolve!"
"You again!" a chillingly familiar voice exclaimed from behind them. "What are your plans for today, you little hussy?"
Gina, still in her dramatic pose from her heartfelt proclamation of seconds ago, felt herself begin to crumble.
"I'm suddenly not feeling very well," she squeaked sadly, and both Dia and Jill watched, Dia startled and alarmed, Jill startled and disgusted, as she stumbled over to a nearby bush, struggled frantically to remove her helmet, and promptly experienced a revisitation from her breakfast.
"That's gross," Jill pointed out helpfully.
"Alright, Gina, go home," Dia sighed in defeat. "I'll go tell the doctor that you won't be in today."
"Thank-you, Dia," Gina croaked, staggering weakly back toward the Sanitarium.
The petite dark-haired girl rolled her eyes as Jill, entirely satisfied with a job well done, started back towards her farm.
"Why do I get the feeling that this is only going to get worse?"
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Perhaps there was a history of psychic ability in Dia's family line, a heightened level of insight and precognition that had made them objects of admiration and wonder for generations on end.But if there was, Dia reflected complacently Thursday evening, it certainly wasn't very good.
Once she had returned from the Sanitarium, the rest of the day had passed in perfect peace and harmony. Free from her terror of being turned into little bits by an angry farmer, Gina had been a delightful companion.
Particularly once she'd almost magically gotten over her nausea and bustled off to make some of Dia's favourite chocolate chip and walnut cookies.
As long as she was at home, after all, she might as well do something useful.
Things had gotten a little scary when Jill had decided to camp outside the Sanitarium door, just to make sure that Gina wasn't sneaking out to see Alex, but the girl had proven that she was more or less content to stay outside, and thus out of their way.
At least, until her plaintive request for food at approximately three-thirty that afternoon.
Dia, for her own part, would have been quite happy to let the girl either go home or starve, but Gina had, shaking her head at her own stupidity even as she did it, assembled a little plate loaded with cheese sandwiches, some delicious marinated vegetables, and a few of the cookies.
"Thanks," Jill spat dramatically, holding out the emptied plate, when Gina hurried over to the door in response to the brisk little tap. "You make a damn good chocolate chippie, you manipulative, homewrecking whore."
"You should try her peanut butter cookies," Dia put in mildly, inwardly cackling wickedly, from across the Sanitarium's main room. "The doctor really likes them."
"Dia!" Gina exclaimed reproachfully as Jill sputtered on the doorstep. "That's not the way to help!"
"No," Dia grinned, "but it's fun."
Then, as a swirl of silky brown pigtail caught her attention, Gina turned back to Jill.
"Um...you're going, then?"
"You bet your ass I'm going!" Jill snarled. "I'm going home to perfect the art of the peanut butter cookie! Fight fire with fire, and cookie with cookie! You and your evil plot will not prevail!"
"Jill, wait! Dia was only...kidding," Gina finished with a sigh as the door slammed shut in her face. "Oh, well. Maybe doing a little baking will calm her down."
"And even if it doesn't," Dia continued indifferently, starting upstairs, a fresh pot of tea and two pretty vine-patterend teacups in her hands, "at least she's gone."
In spite of herself, Gina smiled, much comforted, and hurried up the stairs after Dia and the tempting aroma of jasmine tea.
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And so had the evening gone, sipping tea and sharing the relaxed, easy chatter that put roses of contentment in their cheeks and a lively sparkle in their eyes, and thus had Gina gone to bed in a good mood for the first time that week.
And thus had Dia's sense of foreboding, every second expecting the worst, begun to fade.
And then, as a storm that looms on the horizon, unnoticed by the rollicking crew of a tiny but spirited vessel; as an armed sniper in a clock tower watches the carefree lives of those below and bides his time; as a deadly virus swims happily away in its Petri dish, just waiting for the clod that would tip it over and unlease a calamit; as a meteor hurtles swiftly and relentlessly towards an unsuspecting Earth; as insanity descends upon the mind of an author and sends her spiralling downward into far-fetched and ridiculous similies; had come Friday.
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End Notes: Hee! Okay, I apologize sincerely for that rambling, sprawling last line. It was just irresistible. In the way that--okay, I'll stop. XD