Rooted to the place you sprang from...

[gotacigarette]

On the beach, Eden's chasing birds. She's running around with bare feet and Alice helped her roll up the cuffs on the camos she found, and she's got a khaki coloured t-shirt and a jacket discarded near-by and the clothes box even gave her a cap and a plastic gun. When Eden was nine years old, she hadn't done much playing. There hadn't been muc

Comments

[theonionknight]

Davos was still his normal age, thank the gods, but while he had no desire to be young again he still liked seeing happy children around. He had always got on well with the young and between his sons and Edric Storm he had learned o'erwell how fragile they could be. If there was anything he appreciated most about the Island, it was the youth and the fact they grew up safe here. Safe enough to be children and not young soldiers.

So when he saw the young girl chasing seagulls down the beach, he smiled to himself and watched her play with a quiet contentment. Such sights gave him hope.

[gotacigarette]

Eden pauses in her game, looks up and shades her eyes. An uncharacteristically broad smile spread across her face. She takes off at a run, her longer hair bouncing on her shoulders.

"Do you know who I am?" she demands, head tilted on one side.

[theonionknight]

That meant she was someone he knew aged down, presumably, if not simply very arrogant but try as he might, he could not guess who it was.

"My pardons," he admitted, "but I fear not."

[gotacigarette]

Eden gives him a look of mock horror, and then she lifts one hand and touches her fingers against her right eye.

"Now?"

[little_moons]

It was almost a disappointment. At first, I hardly noticed anything was weird. Woke up wedged between two bodies, just like normal. Went about the morning routine, just like always. But the cheap Halloween decorations all over were the first clue. Then I realize the child population 'round here's just about doubled and I think... oh.

It was fun, the other times, but the good memories are tainted now. Building sand castles and climbing furniture and dashing through the jungle with Logan as my side. Curling up with Eostre in her big chair.

Okay, maybe I don't mind being myself today.

There's a little girl darting around in the sand, stalking a flock of birds with a plastic gun in her hand. There's something familiar, in the way she moves and the determined scowl on her face, but I can't be sure...

"Startin' off small, huh?" I call out, the bird scattering at the sound of my voice.

[gotacigarette]

"Playing," she calls, turning to look at Neil and running backwards across the sand in her little combat boots. She's smiling, her face hurts she's smiling too much, and, when she almost trips, she starts laughing.

She never played when she was this age.

"No babies?"

[little_moons]

"Baby free," I say, breaking out in a grin and covering the distance between us quickly with my much longer legs. "They're with their daddy this mornin'."

Combat boots. Gun. It's not Kara, not blond enough. Eden, maybe. Yeah, that seems about right. I'm not sure I've ever seen her smile before.

"Watch it, kid. You're gonna bust your skinny little ass."

[gotacigarette]

"Not if I bust yours first."

Eden pauses and takes aim with her plastic gun. She was only five years older than this the first time she was given a real gun to hold. It took a while to compensate for her eye. It's strange to be this close to the ground and still see out of both eyes.

[waltsnothereman]

Wanda's enjoyment of the situation was officially extending beyond scientific curiosity. Not that random age-reversals weren't pretty damn fascinating, but there was only so much goofing around in a Halloween costume that could be justified as exploring a change of perspective. In the end, she chalked it up to a side effect of all the sugar she'd been eating as well the fact that having fun as a kid was more of a new thing than it might have been for some other people. She'd been kind of a serious little boy.

"You really think you're going to catch something with that?" she grinned happily as she called at the girl chasing seagulls.

[gotacigarette]

Eden stops in her game and turns, setting her hands on her hips, still holding the little plastic gun.

"I'm playing," she points out. She doesn't explain that she's still working out what playing actually feels like.

[waltsnothereman]

Wanda looked like she was thinking about that for a second before shrugging. She knew what playing was like perfectly well, it was just apparently a little bit different as a kid. "Fair enough. Can I play, too?"

[gotacigarette]

"Sure."

Eden drops her plastic gun in the sand and looks at the other girl expectantly.

"That game was sort of a one person one. What shall we play instead?"

[resident_alice]

"So, I guess you're feeling better," Alice said, smiling as she watched Eden run around. Okay, so she'd been - passively - tailing her all day, but Eden didn't have to know that, and Alice was just glad that she knew she was safe.

She wasn't going to let anything happen to her while she was like this.

"The gun's a nice touch," she added, grinning as she approached, hands in pockets. Watching was all very well but Eden looked like she was having...fun now and maybe, just maybe, Alice was a little jealous.

[gotacigarette]

"I found it in the clothes box," says Eden, abandoning her solitary game to trudge over and show Alice the gun. "It goes with my costume, see?"

She does a little twirl and then squints up at her friend.

"You wanna play something?"

[resident_alice]

"I like it," Alice said. "It suits you."

She tilted her head. "Play something? Like what?" Unfortunately, her guns were real.

[gotacigarette]

"We could play..." Eden thinks about it for a second, twirling the toy gun between her fingers and huffing her too long bangs out of her eyes. "Tag. Or we could go swimming. Or you could be my prisoner."

[yo_babe]

This ain't a good age for Babe. When he was nine, he looked six, at least in size. His cheeks always flushed easily and his hair had a cowlick in the back. It's one thing to wake up in your nine old body. It's another to walk down the beach in the cowboy outfit the clothing box had given him, a water pistol in the holster, with a piglet following him as he kicks up sand with his boots. Then, to see his...girlfriend? Is that what she is? Hell - no, no - heck, girls have cooties and other playground viruses at that age, don't they?

Yeah, that's what she's got. Cooties. That's why there's birds flyin' away from her as quick as ya like 'em. When she's stalking them, Babe moves to crouch down beside her, his own water pistol drawn. Oh, God, they had sex....he's really tryin' not to think about that. "Are ya goin' through all this trouble for a bunch-a birds?" he asks, not really doing a great job at whispering.

[gotacigarette]

His accent, the way he holds himself. She knows who he is the minute she looks at him. He's got a gun, too, and, whereas, when she's an adult, there's this flicker of want in her belly when she sees him as much sense as that makes, now she can feel her cheeks flushing.

"I'm playing," she points out, saying it quietly and deliberately. "You don't have to play, Babe."

[yo_babe]

Babe, despite himself, is offended. His nose wrinkles up and now he's gotta stay, just to prove something. What that something is, he doesn't know, but he's gonna damn well prove it anyway. "Nuh-huh," he shakes his head, his red hair flopping around his forehead. When he stops, he asks, "What are we playing?" Funny how he doesn't understand the question would've been a lot more than about water pistols and bird huntin'.

[gotacigarette]

"Chasing the birds," she says, like it's the most self-explanatory thing in the world, keeping low to the ground as she stalks forward against the birds. It's easier to keep playing than to sit side by side with Babe in the sand and try to make sense of a tangle of thoughts far too complicated for a little head.

She turns and squints at him in the sun.

"Are you coming or what, soldier?"