Hello, people! I is back with another multi chap fic, written directly in English and with what I call Snow-didn't-think-it-through quality (a.k.a.: I spent 2 weeks in this instead of 4 months)
This is a more laid back project to relax from the stress that is baby beast WLU, so no tragedies! Only sad pasts, that's the Snow Spice(TM) after all :^)
Fun fact: this came up from a dream I had back in 2019, which included a floating 2 headed demon baby, and this nice slice of life part of coming back to a coastal city lmao.
Anna always liked adventure. Exploring. The thrill of not knowing where routes and choices will take you. Planning on the spot. Knowing what you'll do now, and maybe next month. Knowing if you don't like a place, you can always leave.
So, Anna arrived at many places in the past two to three years. She left them, too, when her mind (or sometimes her gut) called for it. The very same way she one day packed her things and purchased the cheapest train ticket she could find to the farthest place available.
And now she was coming back. In some kind of very ironic full circle, as her chest couldn't help but feel the kind of nostalgia that pulls the strings inside of it and makes it hurt. Combined with a little bit of excitement for seeing people she hadn't seen in a while , and the whole mix of feelings ended up making Anna feel a tiny little bit scared, if she were to be honest.
Because now that the reality of what she was doing started to sink down on her, bit by bit, doubt began to gnaw at her stomach. Was she making the right choice by coming back? Something, this little hum that had been present ever since Anna took her seat for the next six hours, liked to whisper she was escaping. Escaping all those things she always dreamed about, right at the moment they were so close Anna could almost touch them with her fingertips.
Maybe she could have those things here, too.
Anna shook the idea off her head, both mentally and physically. Distracted with the action of taking a sip of the juice box she brought with an alfajor as her evening snack. Evening being almost nine o'clock. Snack being a code word for dinner, at this point. Anna wasn't supposed to spend money on the train's buffet but, eh, multifruit juice had been too tempting to pass up. It reminded Anna of her childhood, except that these brands had a bit better quality than the ones her mother put in her school backpack. Besides, the water of her thermos didn't hold the warm for more than forty minutes. She was justified in her little spending.
The train attendant, dressed in a white t-shirt with a blue handkerchief, came up to the middle of the wagon to give the instructions on what to do when they arrived at the station, in about twenty five minutes. Exit by this door, please. Don't grab your luggage and conglomerate the exit, wait until the train fully stops before doing so. If you brought extra luggage, then you shall go to the baggage car and wait in line to get it. Basic safety and organization instructions.
The end was near.
Or was it the beginning? At this point, it could be anything.
Anna finished sipping on her juice like she was still seven, with more instability on her steps than she cared to admit as she walked to the trash can by the door. She chose to ignore it, however, and focus instead on checking she hadn't lost any of the things she needed. Money, phone with a decent amount of battery, tickets, documents, her stupid thermos empty and where it should be.
The train moved further into the city. Little lights in the distance turning into windows from houses and buildings, and streets bathed in subtle yellow lights. And, eventually, into the white and grey structure of the train terminal of the biggest coastal city this country had.
At the pace of a snail. And of course, everyone started to get up and fix their things too. Voices and chatter got louder, plastic things closing, zippers being pulled, bags getting down from the upper racks as the sound of the breaks got louder and the train came to a full stop. Anna checked again that everything was in place, just in case, before doing the inevitable and getting up towards the exit.
Three little steps down, the soles of her shoes hit the concrete of the station.
Home.
Supposedly.
Birth town? That was more like it. Just because she was born here, it didn't mean it was her home.
It was cold, in her birth town. Nights were always cold here even in summer, she knew. She was born here, duh. Anna was told to keep a jacket at hand's reach just in case. Yet, silly her somehow didn't take the forecasted 15°C too seriously. So now she had to stop for a moment, luggage resting against one of the station columns, to look for and put on her beloved denim jacket on top of her oversized black hoodie. At least she didn't need to wait in line for anything else. Not like there were many people around, though, as they were on a weekday in the middle of November. Or not as many as there will be in about a month, with the holidays and summer vacation starting.
The rest of the terminal was more or less the same. Some people came from the hall leading to the bus terminal, to her left, and all stores were closed except for the food-related ones and customer service. Which reminded her, she had to get moving or she'll miss her check-in at the hotel. So Anna secured her transport card in the back pocket of her jeans, and followed the blurry shadows on grey tiles of a pair of friends laughing over some joke.
Most people had someone pick them up, like a friend, or had enough money to wait in line over the taxi stop. Anna decided to be a good local and walk to the bus stop across the street instead. She would be lying, though, if she said it didn't sting her heart, her very own decision of not telling anyone she was here. It would have been a different story with a different ending (or, again, beginning?). One where she ended up saving money and maybe feeling more content with her decision.
Alas, she'll have to stick to her original plan.
With her feet over, grey, boring concrete again, Anna's fingers ached for the comfortable motion of looking for and lighting up a cigarette between her lips, even with the curling hands around it because of the wind and all. It was her little comfort of familiar, anxiety appeasing motions. Be as it may, Anna would rather not call on Murphy's Law and waste her expensive cancer sticks to calm her nerves, being half a block away from the bus stop.
The worst thing was she didn't know why she was so nervous.
Ok. No. That was a lie. She did. Of course Anna did know.
But still.
Anna forced herself to take a deep breath and just, just wait for the green light to cross the avenue to the bus stop. Focus on something else, like the air. This… this thing of marine salt in it. It was hard to explain, one of those things you just know. Or smell, in this case. Not as strong as it'd be by the beach, as they were about three kilometers away from it, but it was permanent and characteristic. Anna hadn't visited all that many coastal cities ever since she left.
She missed this. The air and the night and the sea. For God's sake, how Anna missed late night walks by the seafront.
She had to remind herself of that. The things she missed, the reasons she came back. Since she did it for a reason, not because Anna was trying to escape any form of desire whatsoever. Why come back here, of all places, if that were the case? Why not escape even further then and travel to another province, cross the border to another country? Three hundred kilometers wouldn't have been enough.
The traffic light turned green, Anna crossed the street with a slight frown on her face.
Would this classify as coming home, though, if she didn't even have a house here? House as in "roof over your head where it isn't necessary to pay to be safe", as one would in a hotel. Her aunt offered her house here as usual, even if she was still in Buenos Aires, yet Anna knew her cousins would just make Hell out of that experience. And, yes, Kristoff's house was the safest, or even Elsa's, wherever it was she lived now. They would welcome her with open arms, but it wouldn't be Anna's house , nor home or whatever. She would still have to ask her way around the place, learn everyone's quirks on organization and their schedules, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Plus Anna despised feeling like a charity case. She had enough of that already.
She reached the bus stop just in time for the bus line that left her half a block away from the hotel. Luckily, there weren't many people, despite going to the center of the city. Anna found an empty spot at the last row of seats, behind the exit door where she wouldn't bother with her luggage.
The view from the window brought a lot of memories. This is where the good things and the bad things happened. The harrowing ones, the ones that sometimes took away her sleep at night, and the nostalgic ones filled with laughter, silly banter, and being dumb for the sake of it. This was where most of her life developed, where she got the scars she had to learn to live with and to stop looking at with dread.
Anna huffed, the strings in her chest pulling and making her slump in her seat, burying her hands in her denim jacket pockets.
This was home, whenever she liked it or not.
Anna still didn't know how to feel about that.
No, there won't be any possessed babies in this fic, I promise.