Chasing the Proverbial Dream
A/N:Yeah, okay I've kept you guys waiting long enough for this. I've been really hesitant about putting this chapter up because I have no bumper chapters. This is seriously all I've written so far, I hit a slump. Hopefully my inspiration will be backing me up again soon. But this is the bit of storyline that got me started, seriously I was writing chapter one and two a build-up to this chapter, or at least the end of this chapter.
Chapter Three - Harsh Reality
It was three o'clock, in the afternoon, and Sarah Williams was still in bed.
Sarah stared at her wall, she'd isolated herself in her room. Irene was home to distract Toby anyways, she could neglect life, just for a while. The wall was not exactly comforting. Usually if she was this upset, Merlin would have known and plodded into her room to get her up. A deep sigh escaped Sarah's lips. Merlin wouldn't have wanted to see her like this. She sat up; she had to do something, especially now that she remembered that her dumb dog wouldn't have put up with such downtrodden behaviour. Aimlessly Sarah stood and looked around her room, numbly.
What had she expected herself to do after getting up? There was nothing to be done.
She drifted to her bookshelf, looked over her books. Almost half of them were books on sewing, the other half were fantasy novels, big and small, most of which were highly sentimental. Her eyes stopped on a smaller book with a red leather cover.
Sarah stared at it for a long while. Her fingers reached for it, but she couldn't bring herself to remove it from the shelf. Instead she drifted away to her vanity. Her fingers tented against the glass. A nervous swallow, "Hoggle?" Sarah stared long and hard into the still mirror, "Ludo?" The only that moved in her mirror was herself, "Sir Didymus?"
The pale hand fell from the glass, of course, what else had she expected? Sarah turned back towards the stuffed toys on her bed. Stuffed toys, inspired by an over active imagination, nothing more. She could imagine what it would be like to have her friends with her.
They'd be on the bed, her legs crossed with Didymus across from her. Ludo would sit on the floor to her left and Hoggle to her right. Ambrosias, the spitting image of Merlin would sit next to Ludo, and she could reach down and pat the steed's head. Hoggle would keep accusing Didymus of cheating, and Sarah would have to remind Ludo not to eat the Scrabble pieces.
Sarah sighed again, because of course, although her imagination was good, they weren't here. They never were.
It was mild frustration which drove her. Sarah pulled open her drawers with a huff, and began throwing clothes into the middle of the room. "Why do I have so much useless crap?" she demanded of no one in particular. Then she peeled across the room to her closet. Hangers whipped across the span of her clothes closet until she stopped at her gold grad dress.
It was lovely, it fit her perfectly. However it didn't feel like something she would wear. Two hundred dollars was not worth something she would never wear. Sarah pulled down the dress and prepared to throw it in the pile. Stopping was on account of the dress beneath it. True it was made from bed sheets, but they were still good quality and the dress was very sentimental.
Sarah lifted her grad dress up next to her old playtime dress and her eyes lit up. She placed both dresses onto her bed, excitement in her eyes. A sewing machine was set up over her vanity; she pulled one of her sewing books off of her shelf. That was placed next to the sewing machine as Sarah grabbed a seam-ripper and flopped onto her bed to start work on her creation.
Four o'clock, Sarah looked at her work, mainly the fact that the white body now had elegant golden sleeves. There was still work, the skirt wwas going to get a bit of gold treatment too, however this was where Sarah needed her book if she was going to make the illusion of a bustle skirt.
"Sarah, there's a phone call for you," Irene called.
A moment's hesitation. "Coming!" Sarah called, and with a light sigh she put down her project and headed downstairs.
"Hello? ... Hey, Nicole, how's it going?" Sarah's face moved from its normal state to shock, then to offense. "What!? Nicole, you can't just decide things like that on your own... No! I'm not going on a blind date! ... What?! ... Oh, I'm sooo getting back at you for this..." Sarah hung up the phone, then turned her indignant glance across the room. "Irene?!"
Now, Nicole was one of Sarah's few friends in high school. However, the girl had no concept of 'other people's business.' Especially when it came to dating, Nicole had been conspiring to set Sarah up with any number of eligible bachelors since the day they'd met. That, Sarah, had become acclimated to, what she was more upset about was her step-mother acting as an accomplice.
"That was Nicole, she just informed me that I have some guy named Trevor who's going to pick me up at six o'clock." Sarah practically fumed, "She also said that you confirmed that I would be free for that date."
Irene looked at Sarah with nothing but motherly concern in her eyes. "Don't tell me you were planning something other than sulking in your room. A good date will get your mind off of Merlin's death."
"What if I don't want a good date? All I really want is for you to ask me."
"Sarah, you could calm down, he was just a dog."
Heartless, Sarah stared appalled at just how heartless her step-mother was. Alright the woman wasn't a wicked step-mother or anything. She was just a brutally different kind of person. Sarah held her heart far too precious. Fists clenched she stormed back up the stairs.
"Where are you going?" Irene demanded, barely giving chase.
"To get ready," Sarah yelled back.
Sarah closed her door with a groan. She didn't want to go on any date, and she could probably assert her choice in the matter. However, she also didn't want to insult whoever Trevor was. Nicole had never been able to pick even close to the guy Sarah wanted, however most of them were decent caring guys just as trapped in Nicole's circle of playing cupid.
The trick was to wear something that would give the impression that she was not interested in a serious relationship but at the same time would fit in to a date sort of setting.
Sarah browsed through her clothes, even the ones on the floor. Pants didn't seem like date material. She pulled a skirt from her closet; it was white with a brown swirl design. The matching vest had been a staple of her accent pieces, however she hardly touched the skirt, mostly because wearing the two together made her look like a cowgirl.
Today however she had an outfit in mind that it would work for. She combined it with a creamy white blouse and then over top she had a rosy sweater that moved progressively from light to dark and had a few butterfly designs that would her blouse beneath.
Then there was makeup, Sarah had to move her project dress and sewing machine off her vanity. She chose a simple gloss, and some natural browns for eye shadow. Then she sighed and put her head down on her vanity.
By six Sarah was as ready as she was ever going to be. Physically she had down everything she could to get ready. Mentally she was ready to crawl right back into bed.
"Sarah, Trevor's here," she heard Irene's call. Doom... she got an instantaneous and ominous sinking in her stomach.
"I'll be right there," Sarah called back. She checked her appearance quickly and headed for the stair case. Irene was at the bottom of the stairs with a strangely giddy look on her face.
Sarah determined what the look was once she reached the bottom of the stairs. In their doorway was a devastatingly handsome young man. And so Sarah's stomach lurched with a suddenly onslaught of butterflies as her jaw dropped.
Trevor, Sarah learned over a semi-casual dinner, just finished his first year of University. He was taking business as his major, with a drama minor. He loved Shakespeare and was presently rehearsing for a part in Hamlet. Throughout dinner Sarah was slowly thinking that Nicole might have actually found her a decent match.
"Do you believe in love at first sight?" Trevor asked suddenly.
Sarah waivered, it was a big question. One she had asked herself more than once. She had tried to answer those questions in the park that summer, and her dog had died. Did she believe? It was a beautiful metaphor. However, she couldn't help but wonder if all those princesses in fairytales lived happily ever after, why would the writer stop there?
Trevor couldn't take the silence of Sarah's pondering. "Well, I know it's real," he said with a smile, "today proves it."
Shock crossed her face; Sarah looked down at her food, suddenly having lost her appetite. Trevor was a charming young man, and they were probably quite compatible. However Sarah knew in that moment that he wasn't what her heart was searching for. She picked at her food over the next half an hour, trying to respond to Trevor as a friend but no potential for more.
"How did the date go?" Irene asked with near slyness to her voice.
"Okay, I suppose," Sarah said quietly.
"Alright, what went wrong?" Irene asked. Then to Sarah's shocked face she replied, "I am fluent in 'girl'."
"Well, Trevor seems to like me... a lot... and I just don't think he's the one."
"That's a start isn't it, he doesn't repulse you does he?"
"No, he was quite nice."
"It took me a long time to think of your father romantically."
"I just want to be certain..."
"Waiting to find love at first sight?"
Sarah's stomach turned itself in a knot. She had internally denied the existence of love at first sight with Trevor earlier. "Thanks for the talk," Sarah said, ready to escape to her room once more. Suddenly she had a lot to ponder.
"Alright," Irene replied coolly. "Your father and I will be up later to say goodnight..."
The stairs wouldn't remain steady. Sarah was dizzy from the confusion that pounded in her mind. Was she really insinuating that she was turning away someone for believing something that she herself did? Her train of thought was interrupted as she opened her bedroom door. Her floor was bare.
More importantly however was that the dress she was working on was among the missing clothing.
"Irene?!" she called, she was unbelievably nervous. She dashed back downstairs to where the woman sat. "What happened to the clothes on my floor?"
"I put them in the laundry," Irene answered nonchalantly.
No, the word rippled through Sarah's subconscious. The sewing she had done was preliminary; she hadn't sewn it to stay together strongly yet. She paled, because the washing machine would shred the dress. She rushed down to the basement where the washing machine ran noisily. She pulled open the top, water running and shovelled through the wet until she caught a hauntingly familiar gold sleeve. It pulled out without the rest of the dress.
No, Sarah closed the lid again. She felt like a child, Irene would treat her like a child. Numb, she bolted back up the stairs; she was out the door before she knew what she was doing. She was running, she didn't care where, but she wasn't surprised when she ended up at the park.
It's just a dress. Sarah could hear what her step-mother would say rippling through her skull. The fact that the woman had said the same thing over grad dresses didn't help. Tears cooled quickly in the night air. Those tears had been held in too long though. She cried about so many things that she couldn't identify as she made her way up to the tree.
The last place she sat with her dog. It was the place where Merlin breathed his last breath. It wasn't strange that she would come here to mourn.
However Sarah stopped to stare at the base of the tree. A stray cat? Sarah waited a minute, the critter would dash off any moment. It didn't. Sarah drew a little closer, her motion would have chased off a stray. Whatever it was, it lay still. As Sarah drew closer she noticed the jacket. She sped up then, a lost child? No, Sarah could clearly make out the fluffy tail. Perhaps a pampered dog?
Perhaps it was the waning light. Or perhaps it was the fact that the memory was nearly three years old and their contact had only been one of a few hours. She didn't realize until she was standing right over the battered ball of fluff. He was badly hurt, his breathing heavy, almost whimpering in the exhale.
Sarah was shaking from the shock alone as she bent down to help the struggling fox goblin, "Sir Didymus!?"