Rough Waters
Jan. 27th, 2012 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intheheartTitle: Rough Waters
Rating: PG-13 for cussing
Summary: In which Aaron is not paranoid and Ivy gets a shock.
AU: Fantasy
Notes: Sequel to Adrift.
Ivy, shifting uncomfortably on the gritty, sand-covered rocks, could not believe she was doing this.
Spying. On her own nephew! For Christ's sake, this was the trustworthy kid in the family, the one she'd envied Aaron when Andy hit adolescence and became moody and secretive. Molly she could have understood a little, but Billy...
She'd almost told Aaron to spy on his own kid. But he'd sounded so frightened on the phone.
"I don't want to tell Clara," he'd told her, his voice shaking. "What if I'm wrong? But what if I'm right, and he really is in trouble? What if he's into drugs, or something worse? I've got to help him, Ivy. I just don't know how to even approach him."
She'd thought then of her own gangly son and what she'd do to see him safe, and before she knew it she'd agreed.
Gina was going to be so disappointed.
Besides, it was looking more and more like Aaron was wrong. Billy still wasn't doing anything, just sitting on the end of the pier and staring contemplatively out to sea, over the dyed-orange waters of the sunset ocean, a sight so perfect it looked like CGI. Just like he'd been doing for the past hour. If he didn't do something else soon Ivy was just going to give up and go home, because the deserted beach was deeply uninteresting, the rocks were incredibly uncomfortable, and she was fucked if she was staying out past dark just to indulge her brother's paranoia.
She thought grumpily that she was too damn old for this, shifting position once again. Granted, Aaron was older, which was why he wasn't out here himself, but damn it, she was turning fifty-two in a week, it was cold, and she hurt. Kneeling on rocks all day to spy on relatives was a job for younger people who didn't have stiff knees.
Should've brought Andy. He could've done all the spying while she sat in a nice seaside café and had a cup of coffee. What were children for, if not doing the jobs you didn't want to?
Screw this. Billy wasn't moving, and Ivy was sore. She got up and dusted off the knees of her pants, and when she looked up one last time at her nephew, he was standing up, bare toes curling over the edge of the dock, waving at someone in the ocean.
Ivy hunkered down behind the rocks again. Likely it was just a friend Billy was meeting, but she'd promised Aaron. Besides, "he only met one person and they just hung out for a while" was a lot more soothing than "I left halfway through because he wasn't doing anything and my knees hurt, you paranoid idiot."
Which was not to say that she wouldn't append "you paranoid idiot" to the former statement. Just that it was more soothing.
Strange, though. She couldn't see any boats or any swimmers, just waves rolling in and a patch of smooth water right before the dock.
Unnaturally smooth water...
As she thought that, a geyser burst suddenly from the smooth patch and hovered even with the dock, then spouted just a bit further and shaped itself into a woman, an incredibly beautiful woman made of living water with white-cap waves for hair, tinted orange by the setting sun that shone through her.
She smiled at Billy, whose whole posture lit up at her appearance, and opened her arms. He stepped forward onto the geyser without hesitation, put his arms around her waist, and kissed her. The geyser sank out of sight then, carrying both of them beneath the waves.
Ivy rocked backwards and fell into a seat, hard, her heart laboring, her breath coming fast.
That wasn't real. That could not have been real. Somebody had to be playing a trick. Maybe Billy knew about his father's suspicions and decided to mess with them a little. Maybe it was just some weird hallucinatory trick of the shadowy sunset light and being out too long. Maybe he was testing out some sort of special effect for something. Maybe...
She knew that wasn't true. She knew what had just happened was no special effect.
How in the hell was she going to tell Aaron?
Rating: PG-13 for cussing
Summary: In which Aaron is not paranoid and Ivy gets a shock.
AU: Fantasy
Notes: Sequel to Adrift.
Ivy, shifting uncomfortably on the gritty, sand-covered rocks, could not believe she was doing this.
Spying. On her own nephew! For Christ's sake, this was the trustworthy kid in the family, the one she'd envied Aaron when Andy hit adolescence and became moody and secretive. Molly she could have understood a little, but Billy...
She'd almost told Aaron to spy on his own kid. But he'd sounded so frightened on the phone.
"I don't want to tell Clara," he'd told her, his voice shaking. "What if I'm wrong? But what if I'm right, and he really is in trouble? What if he's into drugs, or something worse? I've got to help him, Ivy. I just don't know how to even approach him."
She'd thought then of her own gangly son and what she'd do to see him safe, and before she knew it she'd agreed.
Gina was going to be so disappointed.
Besides, it was looking more and more like Aaron was wrong. Billy still wasn't doing anything, just sitting on the end of the pier and staring contemplatively out to sea, over the dyed-orange waters of the sunset ocean, a sight so perfect it looked like CGI. Just like he'd been doing for the past hour. If he didn't do something else soon Ivy was just going to give up and go home, because the deserted beach was deeply uninteresting, the rocks were incredibly uncomfortable, and she was fucked if she was staying out past dark just to indulge her brother's paranoia.
She thought grumpily that she was too damn old for this, shifting position once again. Granted, Aaron was older, which was why he wasn't out here himself, but damn it, she was turning fifty-two in a week, it was cold, and she hurt. Kneeling on rocks all day to spy on relatives was a job for younger people who didn't have stiff knees.
Should've brought Andy. He could've done all the spying while she sat in a nice seaside café and had a cup of coffee. What were children for, if not doing the jobs you didn't want to?
Screw this. Billy wasn't moving, and Ivy was sore. She got up and dusted off the knees of her pants, and when she looked up one last time at her nephew, he was standing up, bare toes curling over the edge of the dock, waving at someone in the ocean.
Ivy hunkered down behind the rocks again. Likely it was just a friend Billy was meeting, but she'd promised Aaron. Besides, "he only met one person and they just hung out for a while" was a lot more soothing than "I left halfway through because he wasn't doing anything and my knees hurt, you paranoid idiot."
Which was not to say that she wouldn't append "you paranoid idiot" to the former statement. Just that it was more soothing.
Strange, though. She couldn't see any boats or any swimmers, just waves rolling in and a patch of smooth water right before the dock.
Unnaturally smooth water...
As she thought that, a geyser burst suddenly from the smooth patch and hovered even with the dock, then spouted just a bit further and shaped itself into a woman, an incredibly beautiful woman made of living water with white-cap waves for hair, tinted orange by the setting sun that shone through her.
She smiled at Billy, whose whole posture lit up at her appearance, and opened her arms. He stepped forward onto the geyser without hesitation, put his arms around her waist, and kissed her. The geyser sank out of sight then, carrying both of them beneath the waves.
Ivy rocked backwards and fell into a seat, hard, her heart laboring, her breath coming fast.
That wasn't real. That could not have been real. Somebody had to be playing a trick. Maybe Billy knew about his father's suspicions and decided to mess with them a little. Maybe it was just some weird hallucinatory trick of the shadowy sunset light and being out too long. Maybe he was testing out some sort of special effect for something. Maybe...
She knew that wasn't true. She knew what had just happened was no special effect.
How in the hell was she going to tell Aaron?
