April 4, 1914
That April morning would always be one that Georgina Olga would remember even in the years to come. She knew that when she had become weathered & grey just like her own grandmother, she would remember how the sun had hesitantly peeked through the clouds after such a rainy night, how the alarm clock had rung twice before she had risen from bed with curlers still tightly bound in her hair. She would remember that slither of bitterness on the back of her tongue when she noted how cold her husband's side of the bed had gotten despite the cats' determination to keep it warm. It told her that he had either not gone to bed the previous night (instead preoccupied by his "hobbies") or that he had risen earlier and had seen her in such a dishevelled state. Neither outcome was welcome.
Georgina had always known that her husband, Edwin, was an eccentric man; that was part of the reason why she had been so drawn to him all those years ago. Stuck in a time when woman were only just beginning to fight for their own rights and men were just starting to fly, it was kind of nice to find solace from this topsy turvy world in someone so grounding in his strange colourfulness. But those times had long since passed, and with it, the initial attraction to his wild ways.
Edwin was a fine man—a good man—but good men still leave, they still die, they still drink & gamble, they still have all of these different little caveats that could break those rosy-tinted glasses at any time. He, like the other men, went out with friends to the local bars, who slipped away in the middle of the night to visit other ladies and who sought shelter in the dark smokey holes of gambling dens. He had his oddities—and part of that was what attracted her to him—but there was only so much infidelities and secrecy that she could take before she snapped.
She should've listened to her sister and left him years ago and she should've listened to her mother and never married him in the first place. Georgina had always claimed to be a strong woman, in both body and mind, one who took crap from no one; especially not men like her husband, who always seemed to smell of liquor. But no matter how many times she thought about doing it, about leaving him or worse, she'd stop.
Her love for him outweighed all other notions, even if it was to her own detriment. Georgina couldn't deny it, just as she couldn't deny any of her lingering fears about what would happen if they ever separated and she knew that he had loved her before…maybe of she tried hard enough, he could love her again. So they muddled through. Still, three years into their marriage without children or other such things to show for it, left Georgina often wishing for more.
In the end however, this new change to their life didn't come with a boom or a bang, there was no flash of light, no blood raining down nor a messenger from up on high who whispered words of fate, destiny and prophecies. No, it came simply with the chirp of the morning birds in their gutter-bound nests as they sang in the morning after such a stormy night and the sound of someone grunting with effort as slow footsteps hauled something across the backyard and into the house. At first, Georgina just assumed that Edwin was coming home late again, but that was strange in of itself because he usually stayed out later or spent the night in a motel.
With brows furrowed in puzzlement, Georgina rolled form the bed and quickly stepped into the slippers laid out by the bedside, eagerly waiting to be worn. Pausing to sling her paisley dressing gown over her shoulders, she tied the belt tight around her waist and stopped in front of the boudoir to take out her rollers and washed off the face cream she had applied the night before. Readjusting her dressing gown before she made her way out into the common area of the apartments (because a woman could never be caught off-guard, no matter her state of dress), she went to see what was going on. Because she was a strong woman who took no nonsense from anyone.
Instead, what she found made her steps stumble a little. When she had awoken that morning, she had expected to find her eccentric husband trussed up in his beloved pinstriped jacket that had clearly seen better days as he pottered about the garden, shuffling from the shed to the back door as quietly as he possibly could. His hair would be all askew from his latest tromp and his steps wobbily intoxicated that he thought he'd hidden from her.
Or perhaps Mr McFarland from upstairs was rearranging his furniture again as he went about "training" his pets for the circus. Mayhaps he had felt the rarest of rare urges to air out his dirty laundry upon the balcony. Instead, she found herself confronted by the sight of their newest neighbour, Delilah "Lila" Pitts carting in a young boy who was about her height & age, and absolutely soaked to the bone. He shook terribly, like the cold rain and sweat had seeped all the way deep down into his bones.
The rain from the night before had beat down upon the state in hair-raising bullets and it frightened her to know that someone so young & vulnerable had been left out in something like that, adorned in nothing more than a few threadbare pieces of clothing (however strange & inappropriate the ensemble appeared to be). The boy was young, possibly only just having entered his teen years and it didn't take a genius to see that he had clearly seen better days. Like she had noted before, both of the children appeared to be around the same age and size; all gangly limbs and recesses of baby fat clinging to their cheeks.
Upon his crown sat a soggy conical party hat that was blackened around the edges and seemed to give up halfway down, flaccidly flopping over like it had given up. Engulfing his shoulders was a war-torn vest of military make (possibly something that had been take from an elderly family member as it was far too big for the boy's slender frame) and bore several holes in the torso, with loose threads that hung from the edges like shredded yarn. Beneath that lay what appeared to be the base layers of a school uniform, although both the shirt & shorts were stained with ash and something bright blue.
His shirt had been ripped open at some point and in doing so, revealed the full extent of what had happened to him. Georgina couldn't even begin to fathom what could cause those webbed blue lines but they were fascinating to watch. It was almost pretty in the way that crawled over his torso, standing brightly in contrast to the pale flesh like the golden cracks of kintsugi pot. And Georgina found herself entranced with the patterns that those blue-stained veins made, twisting around and around like tiny little galaxies of blue or the mathematically-placed swirls of A Starry Night.
Her gaze then drifted towards his feet where a pair of bowling shoes sat in much the same condition as the rest of the ensemble, although this was one of the more absurd outfits she had ever seen and she had seen a fair few thanks to Edwin's eclectic tastes and her days as a Counter Girl at The Neiman Marcus Department Store. Bar from a few pained whimpers and mournful murmurings, the boy had yet to properly awaken despite the girl's ministrations.
Which would've been fine, if not for the brown coils plastered to his face with sweat and the rosy cheeks splattered with tear tracks over his faintly glistening freckles. A sure sign of fever settling in. There was also the scent of blood on the air; sharp & tangy, that set her on edge. It reminded her of her mother's birthing rooms back in the old country. All of this fluttered through her mind in an instant, thanks to her Counter Girl training taking everything in at once. The logicalness of the anecdotes did little to settle her nerves, though and she was sure that she would never ever forget this day.
A couple of hours after the early morning "package" that Lila had hauled upstairs to their apartment, the atmosphere in The Stellar Suites had finally started to come down, some. At first, Georgina had thought that the two children might've of been runaways, but how would two children—barely into their teens—be able to afford an apartment all of their own? And why would they need to? Yes, runaways were common these days, mostly from families whose children wanted to make something of themselves, there were those whose families treated them poorly or even those who were still suffering from the ongoing influenza pandemic. Money was tight these days and big families meant more mouths to feed.
But Georgina had seen enough in the eyes of frail women and frightened children to know that whatever had happened to the boy, wasn't anything good and if the children had run away, then it must've been for a good reason. Still, questions whirled around in her mind like a tempest as she nursed a cup of tea. Questions like, How on Earth did the boy even end up in the garden? What were the children doing alone? What had happened to them? And so on. She had so many questions, but no answers to soothe them.
Sprawled across the lumpy cushions of her love seat, she let her nosy gaze travel up towards the ceiling where the other apartments lay, high above her. The young brunette had introduced herself the day before, stating that she and her brother would be becoming their newest neighbours. That her brother would be showing up later, once everything had been moved in and that later—when Georgina had caught the girl for a word or two before she disappeared again—that the poor boy had a bad habit of sleepwalking; something that often landed him in trouble or bedridden with sickness thanks to his unconscious adventures.
Whatever the case, Georgina found herself endlessly curious about the mysterious new tenants in the apartment, upstairs. Consulting the tea leaves had done little to reveal their intentions beyond the usual blithering of fate and destiny. Shifting restlessly in an effort to find a more comfortable position, she found nothing but the taut springs poking into her back as they lumpy cushions—thrown aside early on—seemed to sag in on themselves as the cats claimed them as their own. Tucked into the couch and strapped there by a heavy quilt that her mother had made for their matrimonial bed, Georgina absently fiddled with the tassels as her mind wandered farther.
Who knows how long the boy had been out in the rain before Lila had found him? How bad was his sleepwalking that his own sister had to go looking for him in a storm and had been unsurprised to find him washed up on their back porch like beached whale, but looking like a drowned rat? Georgina feared that if he stayed in those wet clothes for too long, what might have become of him; there was a pandemic sweeping the globe, afterall. Fingers crossed his sister was able to put him something a little drier than the wet rags he had shown up in.
Absently tracing the raised pattern of the Tree of Paradise with a prettily painted finger, Georgina just couldn't get it out of her head that something—or someone—had delivered them unto their lives; children like she'd always dreamt of having. She wasn't a particularly religious person these days (having been prosecuted in the past for such beliefs), but she couldn't think of any other reason such a boy & a girl would end up on their doorstep at a time like this; cold, alone & looking for shelter.
It was like a sign from the heavens themselves and she would be damned if she tried to look a gift horse in the mouth—okay! They weren't hers, technically speaking, but the chance was there! Still, that didn't mean she had thrown her reason to the wind; she was still a logical person afterall and when the boy did eventually wake, she knew that she would be having words with him. She just had to get to him first. "Split my infinities…" Georgina breathed, gaze refocusing on the ceiling again "Just who the hell are you?"