A/N: There is a reference in this chapter to my story, "Amazed." See if you can find it.
::~*~::
Sarah happily flew through the door of her room, throwing the collapsed boxes onto her unmade bed. She had just signed the lease on her first ever apartment near the university campus two hours away and to say she was delighted with exerting her own independence was a significant understatement. By the time her father stumbled through the door, buried under a couple of half-filled boxes, she had already propped up a couple of new ones and was tossing stuff into them from off of her vanity, barely looking at what she was doing.
Robert dropped the boxes onto the floor by her bed and fell across the bed in mock exhaustion. "Hey, now," his voice was muffled by the fact that his mouth was buried in the covers, "this is your childhood you're nonchalantly throwing into a box here. Why don't you slow down and savor it? It's not every day you move out of your childhood home."
She paused for a second and glared at him before she went back to throwing the rest of her vanity clutter into the box and started emptying out the small drawers of the little table. "Dad, I have to be on the road in four hours in order to get back before dark. I don't have time to savor the remnants of my childhood."
Robert reluctantly sat up on the edge of the bed and watched his daughter for several moments as she continued hurrying through drawers and cleaning off the tops of pieces of furniture. He wondered why she didn't just position a box at the end of her nightstand, or chest of drawers, and sweep everything off with one swipe of her arm. "Karen's making your favorite meal for dinner." He knew that Sarah, in growing up over the past couple of years, had made a concentrated effort to be civil to Karen, but there continued to be tension between them when they were together, but, at least it was a silent tension. He hoped the bribery of her favorite food would be enough to convince her to stay for at least one more night.
Sarah sighed in exasperation. Long lists of things she still needed to do floated through her head, growing larger by the second, threatening to overwhelm her. On the verge of declining his invitation to stay, she was interrupted by another voice, one that had become very dear to her in recent years. "Please, Sawah."
Toby was standing in her doorway, his arm wrapped tightly around his favorite toy, a tattered brown bear named Lancelot that had been gifted to him by his beloved sister when he was a baby. Somewhere in the course of the morning he had lost his pants and Sarah had to laugh when she saw him standing there in a stained white tee shirt and his Batman underwear, sucking on his thumb. At almost four years of age, Robert and Karen were concerned about his continuous thumb-sucking, but Sarah found it adorable. Now, how could she say "no" to a face like that?
"Alright," she replied, trying to make it sound like it was a big decision for her. Toby's face lit up and he hurried into the room, his chubby legs carrying him as fast as they could. He wrapped his arms around her own slender legs, making carefully sure that he didn't drop his treasured bear and no matter how much Sarah tried, she couldn't pry him off. Finally, she went back to packing again, moving around as best she could with the added weight to her right leg. It slowed her down significantly, but since she had agreed to stay for dinner, she figured she might as well stay the entire night which gave her many more hours to pack everything up.
"Come on, kiddo," Robert said, scooping Toby up off of Sarah's leg. "Let's get some pants on you before your mother has a heart attack."
The last thing Sarah heard before Robert disappeared into the hallway, closing her door behind him, was, "No pants! No pants!" She chuckled as her attention turned to her overburdened bookshelf. It was a good thing her father had chosen to buy her a sturdy, well-built one, having quickly realized her love of reading. She could only imagine how long ago the shelves would have collapsed had she bought one of those flimsy ones that came in a box with assembly required. Putting together a few more boxes, she started pulling books off of the top shelf and reverently placing them in the boxes. She could swipe anything else into boxes without a second glance, but books were very sacred to her and she treated them as the long lost friends she felt that they were.
Caressing each spine tenderly, she relived each story in her mind as she read the titles before placing them into the boxes. With the increasing workload each year in high school and preparations for college, it had been far too long since she had had the time to curl up with a good book and just read for hours on end. She smiled as she remembered how often, as a child, she had hidden under her bedcovers with a book and a flashlight and one ear tuned acutely to the hallway outside her bedroom door.
It took her a few minutes to clear off the top shelf and when she reached up to make sure she had gotten everything, she ended up pricking her finger on something bluntly sharp. Withdrawing her hand sharply, she quickly checked for blood, but was relieved to see that it hadn't pierced the skin. As she stared at the redness that was rapidly disappearing before her eyes, she had an eerie sense of déjà vu wash over her. Another wound on a fingertip, angrier than this one, and gained in a most fantastic way. The feeling slipped away almost as quickly as it had come and she was left feeling utterly confused. She shook her head to clear away the confusion and reached carefully up to feel for what had almost injured her.
Slowly pulling it down, she was surprised to see an old music box. The box was actually smaller than the figurine on top of it. She smiled as she looked at it. The box had been a gift from Karen's mother when the whole family had gone to visit her several years before. She had gifted it to Sarah since the figurine on top had looked so much like the girl. Sarah got a wistful look in her eyes as she gazed down on the doll, mesmerized by the beauty of it. Her mind was miles away, running through memories of a long ago vacation. There had been a maze, but…there was something else, too. Something that was hovering at the edge of her memory. After several moments of quiet reflection to no avail, Sarah brought herself back to the present. Gently turning the key, she wound the box up and let it go. As the doll started twirling on her pedestal, a dancer without a partner, a hauntingly familiar melody started dancing through the air, an invisible partner to the girl on the pedestal. Without thinking, Sarah started humming along. Of course the melody was familiar; it was her music box after all. She'd probably heard it thousands of times before. And, yet… When words spilled from her lips to accompany the melody, she stared in horror upon the doll in her hands, still spinning, oblivious to the thoughts running through its owner's mind. "As the world falls down," she murmured. In the space of a second, an image flashed into her mind, gone before she could fully comprehend it, but leaving fragments in its wake. Blonde hair so pale it was almost white, mismatched eyes of stormy blue and emerald green, mysterious dancers in glittering gowns and suits, faces hidden behind grotesque masks. The image startled her so much, she dropped the music box. It landed dully on the carpet, the music ceasing instantly. "What was that?" she whispered to no one.
Quickly picking up the music box, she stuffed it into a box, not even caring to check whether it still worked. She eyed the bookshelf suspiciously and chose to hold off on finishing it, lest she come across any other surprises. Turning instead to her closet, she pulled the door open, bracing herself against a cascade of falling boxes and clothing. While the closet was packed pretty well, nothing fell out on her. Sizing it up, she wondered how she ever thought she could get everything packed and ready to go in four hours. On second thought, how did she ever think she could fit everything into her tiny little coupe? Squaring her shoulders, she pulled the first box out of the closet and opened it.
::~*~::
Two hours later and with the aroma of dinner wafting into her bedroom, Sarah finally pulled the last box out of the back of her closet. She had been rifling through each box and separating everything into piles. As most of the non-clothing stuff in her closet hadn't been touched in a while, most of it was going to the local donation center, but she wanted to make certain nothing crept away that she still desired.
Just as she opened the box, her father's voice called up from downstairs, announcing dinner was ready. She looked at the box and then at the door. She was one box away from completing the closet, but the tempting smell of dinner was too great to pass up. Shoving the box out of the way, she skipped out of the room.
Upon entering the kitchen, she stopped short when she saw Toby sitting in his place at the table, his arm still clutching Lancelot. From head to toe, he was wearing a red and white striped jumper with a matching cap. As she stared at him, she saw a younger version of him, wearing a red and white striped pajama outfit as he cried for his absent mother to pick him up. Eyeing him warily, she inched closer to the table and slid into her seat, never removing her eyes from his outfit. Karen must have noticed as she said to no one in particular, "Do you remember that little pajama set he had when he was a baby? I always thought it was so adorable, but he outgrew it so fast. I was so surprised when I found this little outfit when I was out this morning."
Having no desire to draw attention to all of the strange thoughts she'd been having all afternoon, Sarah merely replied, "He looks like a walking candy cane."
Robert snorted into his drink and Karen glared at him before casting a disapproving look at Sarah. She looked like she wanted to say something other than what came out of her mouth. Kissing Toby on the top of his head, she said, "Well, he's my little candy cane." She turned back to grab the last pan off of the stove.
Toby was not at all amused by the conversation and he shook his head emphatically, pronouncing, "No candy cane!" Thumping himself on the chest with a thumb that had resided in his mouth seconds before, he said, "Toby! Toe-bee!"
Robert could contain himself no longer and had to retreat to the hallway where his laughter could still be clearly heard. Sarah chuckled as she reached across the table to ruffle Toby's hair, trying to ignore the cap on his head. It seemed that when they finally sat down to dinner as a family, they couldn't keep the laughter out of their voices and Sarah had to admit that it was one of the best family dinners she'd had in a long time.