I
The Best Worst Decision on A Business Trip Ever Made
10-year-old Cinder Fall watched as the woman sitting across from her kept flipping a lighter side to side.
Open. Shut. Open. Shut.
The girl didn't know, couldn't know, the woman was intentionally tripping the circuit in her brain that smoking like a chimney for 3 years had cerebrally etched into her.
Open.
There wasn't a cigarette for her to light. She had been clean more than twice as long as she used, but old habits are often the hardest stuck, and they leave a residue.
Triggering and rerouting the 'want it, need it' sensation was what Diane Stahlgrinsen was using to get through this before she changed her mind.
Shut.
Cinder also couldn't have known that this woman was a widower who had a miscarriage due to the stresses of grief her husband's death in a car accident had caused half a year ago.
All Cinder knew was the sound was really, really annoying.
The orphan turned her head askance at the woman with a quizzical quirk to her brow as she considered.
'…do I want to be adopted by her?'
Open.
'Am I really doing this…'
The woman made a measuring lookover of the girl she had just adopted on a whim.
Jet black hair with a natural curl just long enough to reach her cheek bones; Eyes like molten gold whose gleam were enhanced by the slight narrowness to the eye lids and sockets typically found in the peoples of southern Anima.
She was cute, Diane would give her that.
Shut.
Diane Stahlgrinsen knew she was more or less just using this child.
She sighed tiredly, there were two daughters already waiting at home for her, why in Brother Light's radiant taint was she picking up another-
Open.
Images of a room furnished with a crib, toys, and the necessities to care for an infant pulsed behind her eyes.
The space was covered in a thin film of dust just thick enough to keep the impressions her steps had made the last time she had tried to walk in.
Shut. Hard.
Cinder squirmed uneasily in her chair as the woman slammed the lighter shut with her thumb and a vacancy in her sapphire eyes.
"Papers'realreadysigned," the woman whispered barely audibly, before focus returned to her gaze, "This place… ah, isn't the best, is it?"
The girl looked up at Diane, meeting her eyes for more than a second for the first time since they had entered one of the bedroom Cinder was assigned to so they could talk about the adoption in private and pack Cinder's things before they left together.
Deep blue eyes kind of like the sky just as it starts to shift into night, copper blonde hair down to the middle of her back that cascaded untrammeled over her shoulders with a slight curl to the strands, a fair complexion and fairer features only barely touched by the lines of age.
All accented by near expertly applied makeup and a dress of quality Cinder considered only a dream of her ever owning one day.
She was pretty, Cinder would give her that.
Pretty and weird.
But not the creepy weird of some of the people that had come to adopt during her time here. A couple of the older kids warned her to hide when people like that showed up.
Cinder wanted to like this woman; She was nice enough when they had talked earlier.
Getting picked out of the crowd had made the girl feel special.
It would be nice to be adopted, even by someone with 'quirks' as another orphan had put it, which Cinder was inclined to agree with but… it was a gamble.
"From what I know there is supposed to be interviews, background checks, security? I walked in and asked, basically," Diane said as she awkwardly leaned back in the child sized chair before having straighten up to avoid falling over, "Gah, they don't even- mmm… *ahem* Is there anything you, I don't know, want to say?"
Cinder was silent for a long pause, wringing her hands as she started and stopped before finally stuttering, "W-what do you want me to say?"
The woman squinted at her.
There was sudden repose to her, a straightening of her posture and a far sharper focus to her eyes.
Diane didn't think the buzz from the quarter bottle of wine that had emboldened her to carry out this harebrained scheme was what made Cinder's counter question send a shiver creeping up her spine.
Nerves could have explained the wording of it, maybe not wanting to fumble the adoption going through, but instincts honed from raising two daughters were screaming a gut reaction.
The girl was afraid. Very, very afraid.
'Get out if they ask to do something alone with you. It won't be something good.'
Cinder Fall was petrified to the spot in her seat as that specific warning from amongst the wisdom of her older peers in the orphanage replayed on loop in her head.
Her excitement had gotten the better of her.
She might not have known what happened to some of the other kids, but she knew they weren't the same afterward and they never, ever spoke of it.
Diane might have been a tad tipsy and ignoring details in this reckless headlong charge into staving off another depressive episode, but she was not beyond removing the blinders her of own desperate inner struggles.
As she carefully reflected on the situation both she and Cinder were in, especially Cinder, there was a slow dawning horror that chilled her veins cold.
Even if her gut feeling was off mark… Diane had the sinking suspicion this could only be less bad, not better.
Reflexively, Diane fidgeted with her husband's silvered lighter one more time.
Open.
She inhaled a calm, centering breath, and rose gracefully from her chair on the exhale in a single fluid motion.
Shut.
Stahlgrinsen glanced down at Cinder.
Cinder remained stock rigid in her chair actively trying to look at anything other than the woman's face, unsure if leaving or staying were the better choice.
The girl was surprised how much the embers of frustration sparked beneath all the ashen gray fear.
More than anything, like many a time before, she wanted the strength to not have to run, hide, or just let the world happen around her. Or to her as she had been so desperately avoiding for years.
Yet… there was a lot of ash burying that fire. So, Cinder waited, hoped, and focused on hoping harder.
'Blue. Her dress is a really pretty blue,' Cinder mused as she waited for whatever fate she was warned of to befall her. All she could do was wait.
The blue in front of her shifted as the woman knelt to eye level with Cinder.
Diane had put on her warmest smile and summoned the kindest mothering tone to say, "We're heading home, so let's get you packed.."
Whatever uneasiness Stahlgrinsen harbored about her decisions thus far was snuffed out like a match in a hurricane as she watched the desperate, genuine, pure hope in Cinder's eyes when she heard that.
(.:.) (.:.) (.:.)
Cinder Stahlgrinsen was carrying a duffel bag full of everything she owned, a notably very loose and mostly empty bag, walking along as she held the hand who was now her mother.
The child was having a hard time believing it, but this wasn't a dream.
Cinder followed her arm to the hand hers was clasped in.
To Cinder, Diane looked invincible.
She certainly didn't feel that way.
There she was, half a drink from drunk in a fine deep blue business proper dress that accented her eyes and sandals that staved off the Anima summer heat, holding the hand of a 10-year-old girl she just met that day, walking through the almost but not quite bad part of the multileveled Haven City's tiers with a glare that looked like it could level everything between her and the horizon.
The glare was from focus; Diane Stahlgrinsen was busy justifying the insanity of what she had just committed to, but she refused to change her mind.
She was there, and it had made all the difference in the world.
09/03/2023 – Perhaps this is a oneshot, maybe I will add more to it. Just felt like sharing it.
I decided to go the road less traveled with the 'Cinder Fall Minus the Abuse' concept; Making the Madame and her daughters fleshed out likable characters that are a good family.
This scene was set up to plausibly be how a canonically evil Madame could have adopted Cinder for nefarious purposes without anyone knowing or caring. This time she was there for a different reason, and thus, there was a different outcome.
I have ideas for interesting scenes, but not really an 'engine' for the story, if that makes sense. There is no real conflict for the characters to make anything interesting.
For now, I'm content with this. I had fun writing it, a far happier and more hopeful story than my typical fare. I'll revisit the concepts some other time.
Also, if anyone who read this is following the other story I published, don't worry, that isn't being abandoned in favor of other projects. I just needed a break from it.