HELLO MY PRETTIES!

I managed to convince my uncle to send another chapter to me, and in return I must bake him a cake when I get home.

While I've been at my mums I've managed to hand write up to chapter 42, so I'm an extra... I dunno seven to ten chapters up from where I was. I dunno.

I just watched Australia with Hugh Jackman in it, and I could only hear Aster. So when he said 'give him a fucking drink' I was like *muppet arm flail*. It was terrible, but oh, SO amazing.

This is a SAD CHAPTER guys. I do that in bold to highlight that face. Happy days. Enjoy.


It wasn't a long walk to Connor Street, probably about ten minutes, and though she was excited to see her family and see how they were doing, she felt apprehensive too. She knew they were all okay, as Aster had told her and she knew he wouldn't lie to her face about her family when he knew how much they meant to her, but at the same time is scared her because it had been a whole ten years, and her little sister would now look physically older than her, her niece would be moving into her pre-teens, her parents would have become older and perhaps even started going grey... It scared her to know that they'd all carried on, and she was left eternally seventeen and alone and... forgotten?

She walked along the street, jumping the cracks in the pavements and tapping her stick along them to make little flowers grow through, and she sighed as she looked up at the sky, at the moon, and they shared a moment, just a brief second of sadness. She resented him for changing her, making her into a spirit and leaving her alone in the world, but she realised that he was alone too, and had been for many a year, and she pushed her own feelings down and carried on up the street, looking at houses and wondering which might be her families.

There was one in particular that stood out to her, and she grasped at her chest as she looked over the front garden.

There was a small child, a young girl probably about eleven, with beautiful blond hair and the loveliest hazel eyes. She was tending to a flower bed at the front, ever so quiet and immersed in her own little world, and when she stood up she smiled, looking directly at the head of a sunflower that was as tall as she.

"Alice, come in darling!" a woman shouted from through the open front door, and with a wrench Eleanor recognised it as Irene's, and her feet pulled her forward, her body slumping slightly but staying upright and she made her way over to the house. She felt ill though, her movements lurching and her head spinning and her vision seemed to blur as she trod up the path slowly and made her way through the door, looking into the room and sinking to her knees.

Everyone was here... There were champagne flutes on the table and the liquid bubbled up in it. There was a small cake and a picture on the table too, simple, black and white, very blurry but adorable none-the-less...

It was of her, around fifteen years old with Mary hugging onto her and her big brother George with an arm slung around her shoulders. Everyone in the picture was smiling. Nobody in the room was.

She noticed first her parents, her father holding her mother around her waist and they were looking down at the picture. There didn't seem to be any emotion in their faces, slowly starting to wrinkle with time and age and the two of them looked a little greyer – their hair was far lighter than she remembered, and while her mothers seemed to be going a graceful blonde, streaks through the brown, her fathered had a peppered look through his. The brown was obvious, and Eleanor could just about make out the reds and the blond had turned silver. His eyes were bright as ever, and they were exhibiting such happiness as he looked down into her face in the picture, like he was remembering the happy times and the good memories they had, whereas her mother had dull eyes, shining only with the tears that had gathered and were currently spilling over to run down her cheeks. They looked so tired...

George was now in his early thirties, and handsome as he'd ever been. She smiled bitterly, looking into his face and remembering their Easter egg hunts and their fights and how he'd always stuck up for her. His eyes were smiling too, though his face stayed solemn and his figure tense. His arms were crossed and in the folds Eleanor could make out an old tattered book, the edges burnt and singed and she remembered it as vividly as she could the day she got it. It was her scrap book about the Guardians... the one he'd made for her and presented her when she was fifteen, and she wondered briefly if there had been much else to salvage from the house. Knowing how badly it had burned, knowing she died in it's collapse... did they have much else from her?

Her eyes scanned briefly over Irene, who looked surprisingly the same though her stomach was swollen with child and she was rubbing a hand across it soothingly. Alice stood beside her mother, the younger image of her, besides her eyes which were her fathers'.

The person who took her most by surprise was Mary, who was sat at the table, tears streaming from her face and her hands resting on the small swell of her stomach. She too was pregnant, but Eleanor saw no father beside her, holding her hand, no young man to take care of her little sister and their little child. But Mary... oh, how she'd grown... she was a beautiful young woman now, long brown hair, bright eyes, slight frame. She was the first to reach into the centre of the table and lift her glass of water up, obviously not drinking for the babies sake. Irene and Alice acted likewise, lifting their glasses of water up, whereas George and her parents lifted champagne in the air. There was one glass left, one simple flute, and slowly George reached over and took the bottle, pouring it into the glass until it was full.

He raised his glass up in their air first, sounding the round, and every other member of her small family copied, raising their glasses up in the air, raising them to her...

"To Eleanor," they chimed, and then they drank. The date hit her then, and she shuddered before tears cascaded down her cheeks, and she sobbed in the corner as George was the first to lower her glass and look down at her photo again, his eyes sad this time.

"Happy Birthday."