Celebrating continued existance (Kizzy)

Laura was drawing Kizzy a picture. She had seen her around, and she was very very happy that she didn’t appear to be dead in any way. She was drawing a polar bear, because of all the snow. She would have drawn penguins, but polar bears were closer and fluffier. And their babies were even cuter. And they played games and everything. And Laura was pretty sure everyone liked polar bears, unless they tried to eat you.

She’d wanted to talk to Kizzy, but she’d been so tired after all the worrying and snow and cold and everything that when she’d meant to wait until Kizzy came to bed so she could talk to her, Laura had accidentally fallen asleep the second she’d got into bed. And Laura couldn’t have a conversation when she was asleep, which was a little sad because it would save so much time with finding people so she could ask them things. She always had a lot of questions. People thought most of them were strange, but it was good to know things and she liked knowing things. It was just a shame none of the things she knew about were fractions.

She frowned and added a little more shading around the bear’s eyes. Snow was on her mind a lot lately. Not surprising considering they’d been waist deep in it for the best part of a week now. She wondered why polar bears rubbed their fur off on the ice when they got out of water. It was supposed to act like a giant cold towel, but all the ice she’d come across made her wet. Perhaps they had different ice in the arctic.

Lying on the floor next to the bed was probably not the most obvious place to lie down and draw, but she’d always done drawing on the floor. And it was good for hiding too, when people didn’t want her to be around. She could just hide here and pretend she’d gone invisible and they didn’t have to worry about her. Any way you looked at it, it was a good place to be.

Frowning at the picture, Laura decided it was more or less done. Maybe she oculd draw an iceberg in the background or something, but it was good. At the top she scrawled To Kizzy, I’m glad you’re still alive, love Laura. Well, she was. Never mind that this particular sentiment wasn’t one people often expressed, she could tell Kizzy all about she was scared she’d made her die and she was very, very glad she hadn’t. And she could tell her that she liked singing with her. And everything. Putting her head on one side for a moment, she thought hard. She liked Faith, but Faith didn’t like her. She liked Ira, and she thought Ira might like her… She liked Kizzy but did Kizzy like her? She wasn’t sure yet. She hoped she did.

Keziah did, actually like Laura. The little blond stirred up the instinct to protect she did not normally feel or indulge in towards people. mostly because she considered most people to be assholes beyond any help or sympathy. Only most people, much to her surprise Kizzy was starting to consider people around here friends, naturally only an adult and maybe one of her dormmates, but it was better then nothing. Much better than the girl's home back in Stirling.

Ever since returning form her little reprieve with Verne and the blow-up in the dining hall after Faith decided to be her very subtle best, Keziah was avoiding the girl's dorm. She just....the atmosphere was disdain going both ways was difficult to stand longer than it took to drop off in to dreams on a nightly basis. Her evening issues has not abated either and that was probably the only thing she would be willing to talk to her shrink about; either a dorm change (fat chance of that happening) or perhaps a bung change, at least if she was on a bottom bunk nobody would be complaining when the inevitable happened. She Would miss the privacy of being up top, but in her eyes it was a relatively fair trade.

After the unpleasant mess that the debacle in the dining hall turned out to be she was very slightly glad that Laura was sleeping, it meant there would be no forced attempt to be nice to someone who deserved it when all she wanted to do was scream, hit something... or cry. Why did she have to say that anything else Faith would have said and Kizzy could have taken the higher ground and let that little twit look like the nasty little vermin she was, only 'whore' and it's many cruel variants were what Iseabail called her the most and, then all pretense of maturity drowned just as Kizzy had threatened to drown the blond in the soup. On the bright side, she's gotten her trigonometry exam from before the break back and surprise suprise, a ninety-seven. At least maths didn't fail her although she did lose those three points for bloody spelling.

Slipping the paper in to her school bag Keziah adjusted the strap on her left shoulder and hurried up the stairs to her dorm she wanted to put her things away ahead of evening chores....even those were houses away she just didn't feel like carrying the damn thing anymore. Stepping in side she caught sight of Laura drawing on the floor and tilted her head to the side, stepping into the room and crouching beside her head, ""Hi Laura, watcha drawing there?" She hadn't yet read the note, from her perspective the writing was upside down, and reading front ways wasn't a strong suit, much less this way.

Laura sat up and waved to Kizzy. “It’s a picture!” Then, realising this was fairly obvious, she handed it to Kizzy and pointed. “It’s of a mum polar bear and a baby polar bear, because they’re cute. It’s for you, because I’m glad you’re ok. I thought I made you die and you didn’t so I’m happy.” It was clear that if hugging had been an option Kizzy would probably have been rugby tackled by now.

She watched Kizzy for any kind of reaction. She didn’t know if Kizzy liked polar bears. She hoped she did, everyone she knew liked polar bears except if they tried to eat you. Then you were supposed to start taking off your clothes, which sounded a bit weird because polar bears lived in cold places, but maybe they liked socks a lot. Maybe their paws got cold because of all the ice and snow. Chewing a nail, she pointed. “And I wrote on it in case I didn’t see you. Which would be silly because we sleep in the same room but I thought maybe you’d go away again. Is that ok?” She could feel worry squirming in the pit of her stomach and chewed some more, hoping she wouldn’t make her fingers bleed again. It was a pain to deal with when that happened, and she had to make sure nobody could touch the blood and it tasted icky and it was just a lot of hassle. She wondered if Kizzy would hurt her if she asked, then decided maybe asking now wouldn’t be good. She wanted to make sure Kizzy liked her and she couldn’t ask really any more. The lady at the other place said so.

Laura rubbed her shoulder where it had hit the floor that morning. Or maybe it had still counted as night… she still fell out of bed quite a lot, and she’d given up getting back in, just yanked the blankets back over her and went back to sleep. She was hoping other people didn’t mind when she went bump in the night, but she didn’t want to ask in case they did, in which case she wasn’t sure what to do. She was used to sleeping on the floor, and you couldn’t fall out of the floor unless you were lying on stairs, which wasn’t a good idea because people stepped on your face when they were trying to sneak out in the middle of the night and screamed and then there had been shouting and it hadn’t been good. So far people had only stepped on her hair here, which was good going. She had been contemplating sleeping under the bed, but she didn’t want to sit up and whack her head on the bottom of the bed. And it might freak the people who checked you were in bed out.

She turned her attention back to Kizzy and bounced a little bit, then spun in a circle. It had been funny being the only one in the room. There were six people in here at night, if you counted Laura, and she thought it was strange that she’d spent hours and hours in the same room as these people and the only people she really knew were Kizzy and Faith. And Laura was fairly sure Faith didn’t like her, which worried her a bit. She wanted people to like her. “What animal’s your favourite?” She was feeling bouncy in a way she couldn’t really put words to, but she wanted to know things. “What do you want to be when you grow up? It feels like there’s lots of people here, but not many at the same time. And lots of them are grown ups.” There was a short pause while Laura weighed the next question in her mind. “Do you miss before?” She tugged at her sleeves, and began to gnaw her thumb nail again. She missed before. “Do you like colours?”

Kizzy was grateful not to be rugby tackled, she was a bit tired and didn't fancy trying to keep from bumping her head on the floor after being taken down like an elephant on illegal safari funded by the kind of people who would do such an awful thing. A mum and her baby... Looking at the picture Keziah's fingers traced over the baby polar bear and she blinked very quickly, banishing the tears before they could flow, Keziah smiled brightly at Laura, "Thank you so much I think they're fabulous." and took the binder out of her school bag and put the picture into the front plastic sleeve, "Thanks so much Laura, really." It wasn't often she received the sentiment that someone actually appreciated her continued production of carbon monoxide on this planet. That was mostly her own fault, but still it was nice to be wanted.

Poor thing, if she could have without the girl panicking, Kizzy would have given Laura a hug, but she remembered when she was touch adverse...unsolicited hugs were a form of unspeakable hell and fear, you didn't want to be exposed like that, it was too much, like trying to swallow the sun it seemed to burn inside and out, "Yes it's totally okay and'm not going away, alright?" Not just yet, and when I do...you'll know. there was no point in raining on the girl's parade, or well with this weather, snowing on it.

Keziah was not one to throw rocks at that particular glass house, considering she never sleep a full night without waking at least twice--and once or twice with soaked sheets-- she didn't make much note of the little bump in the night followed but the rustle of blankets.

The first time she woke with a quiet stare with a quiet stat and rolled over to see what was making the noise only to see her little dorm mate on the floor and tugging her blankets off the bed. At first she thought it was weird, but now Kizzy didn't give it a second thought. One bump was nothing, two would be worrisome. Watching the younger girl spin in a circle made her laugh softly, "You're a funny one." and she meant it in a friendly way, as her tone made apparent, "Horses are my favourite, they're so big and gentle and you can talk to them without their getting to be judgmental, and all that." Keziah nodded, "Yeah... probably be nice with fewer of them... I, I don't really know what I want to be, Laura, it's not something I've thought about. Just...out of Highgrove, I suppose."

But what after that? Kizzy didn't like thinking about the future. Her life had been planned for her the second her tiny lungs took in their first breath on this planet but now that plan was gone and she had to make her own, and so far it was not much of one, and had little room for other people. "and I do like colours, my favourite's the kind of red orange my hair is...and green, I like green too, oo and the kind of blue-purple that's lavender..." why was she rambling about colours? [i] to avoid her other question, of course. Kizzy didn't answer at once but shook her head slowly, "No...I-I don't miss my before, it wasn't nice. What was your before like? It must have been nice to miss..." she put her school bag down and sat cross-legged on the floor he really needed to sit for a moment. Laura was a workout, just watching all that energy.

Laura smiled. She was really glad Kizzy seemed to like her picture, even more that she put it somewhere safe. Sometimes people just took them and didn’t keep them or anything like that. She tried not to let that bit bother her, because they were good people, not like her, so they must do it for a reason and everything but she was glad Kizzy hadn’t just said she was a baby and to leave her alone. That Laura was a baby, that was. Not Kizzy. Kizzy was very grown up and she knew how to make people feel better and she didn’t mind singing songs. And she knew all the words and everything.

She felt a little better when Kizzy said she wasn’t going away. “Ok. I just get worried sometimes because I think people might go away or have an accident and I don’t know or I should have done something to stop it but I didn’t know and because I’m evil I make bad things happen so I get all worried…” She was aware that this was all in a big circle, but she didn’t really know how to stop it. Her voice trailed off and she shrugged awkwardly, gnawing her thumbnail. It was probably her fault Kizzy had gone missing in the first place, but she wasn’t sure how. Maybe it had been the pretending. Or not. She was just scared. How could she know the right thing if all the things could be bad? “I’m glad you’re not going away.” Now Ira was gone she didn’t know lots of people, not for talking to anyway. She knew Faith but Faith wished she didn’t know Laura. People were complicated.

Giggling, she spun in a circle again. It sounded like funny in a good way, not a bad way, and she was happy about that. “I’m glad I get to share with you. I don’t think the other people want me here, which is ok, but it’s nice to have people who don’t mind.” She thought for a moment. “I like horses, but I haven’t really met one properly yet. My favourites are cows! I go and talk to them and they don’t even mind if you talk lots. Are horses like that? Only you get to sit on them instead of milk them.” She thought for a moment. “Can you milk horses? What do baby horses eat?” She’d never really considered this before, maybe the horses were like penguins when they had food for their babies, but she was pretty sure she’d have noticed that. Besides, horses had teeth. They might accidentally bite each other.

“Colours are really really nice. They have all different meanings! My favourite is when the light comes through the curtains really early in summer and makes everything all glowy. And I really like your hair! It’s very good hair. Mine’s just sort of… yellow.” She thought for a moment. “I think lavender looks like it smells, with the sort of dusty purple colour. I like the colour of the sky too, when it’s all really deep velvety blue and it looks black but it isn’t. I’m allowed to look at it sometimes as long as I lie on the floor and look at the window like that. I don’t like the yellowy lamp post light though. It makes everything grey. Like living in a really really old telly!”

Plonking herself down next to Kizzy, Laura smiled at her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask bad questions.” She thought hard. “I don’t miss my before, or the before before that, or the before before before that but I miss the one before that one. And two of the befores are the same place… My uncle Kenneth looked after me and helped me with everything and told me all about the rules and being good and things. He’s a very good man.” She watched Kizzy carefully. It was usually around this point people began to look like very surprised eggs with hair that had swallowed their eyebrows. After that they made notes and nodded a lot. Occasionally they muttered, or asked to speak to whichever grown up was in charge of her then. And then they came out looking like someone had pulled them out of shape and asked her what they’d do with her and told her for the bajillionth time she wasn’t allowed to see him any more. “They won’t tell me anything so I can’t send letters to him. And I keep trying to explain but it always gets muddled and then they try to point things out and then I tell them the answers to the things they ask and then they look sort of…” she cast around for an appropriately big word. “Exasperated.” She thought for a minute. “Do you think all the electric will go off again?” That was bothering her a little.

It was something heartfelt, how could she just stuff it under her pillow or her journal or someplace where it would get smooshed and ruined before a week was out? Besides, Laura was being sincere, the least she could do was not ruin it. Laura wasn't exactly like most other fourteen year olds; she acted so much younger and seemed a lot more vulnerable to the shittiness of this place. Yes, Keziah was very grown up, but only in the ways that made people hard and bitter, the ways that made her unable to recognise that perhaps she was too hard on her other dorm mates, that maybe she really was sent here to be helped not as a burden to be unloaded at the earliest convenience of the girl's home where she was previously housed.

Laura could also be completely confusing, that last sentence made no sense to the older girl who just kind of tilted her head in the manner of a confused puppy, putting her hair in a pair of low pigtails seemed to help with the puppy image, she then smiled softly, "Yeah I'm glad I'm not away too." It was a bit of a lie, but if that was the worse one she ever told the little blond, then she was doing well. Kizzy laughed as she spun again, silly thing, "The others can go fu-- well, the others have their own problems. Forget about them. Cows are alright I suppose, but milking them can get really tiresome. I've never tried talking to a cow before, though." She nodded, "Yeah, horses are like that, you can bend their ears and they don't really care." she looked at the picture one more time before closing her binder and placing it back in her schoolbag, "Foals--baby horses-- drink their mother's milk, once they get a few weeks old they start eating grasses and hay with their mum and the other members of the herd." Kizzy had started reading up on horses with all the time she was spending at the stables, it was good to actually know what you were doing, considering how little she enjoyed the activity, it was notable she would bother to do more reading than the bare minimum.

"You really like colours, don't you and Thanks, mine's just...curly and red." thick, unruly, unyielding, massive, un-tame-able frizzy, corse mass of fire."bet it doesn't take you ages to get your hear sorted in the mornings." she smiled, listening to Laura's love of colours, maybe that was why she liked to draw so much, her imagination was so much...more, "I never thought of it that way but yeah..."

"You didn't do anything bad, Laura you don't need to apologise, its not your fault."Keziah listened to everything she said about this 'uncle Kenneth' character, and she started to bite her lower lip, she didn't like the sound of him, and what were the rules? then again that was probably a lot to ask, especially from someone who didn't talk about her own 'before' aside to say it was bad. so many stones and so few reasons to throw them, sitting in the middle of her glass house. she didn't make the surprised egg face but she wanted to say a great many things, for now she just stuffed them away and shook her head, "I don;t think so, I bet all the trouble it caused'll make them invest in...I dunno but something to keep the electric on even when a storm comes."

Laura giggled. She was happy Kizzy said she was glad she wasn’t away. That meant maybe she’d be here with Laura for a long time, and Laura wanted to be with Kizzy for a long time because Kizzy was nice and friendly and she knew things about horses and didn’t tell her to go away. Not being told to go away was always a bonus in Laura’s mind, even if she didn’t like it when people got upset because they’d been trying to be kind and she hadn’t realised they didn’t want to talk to her. Her before doctor had said it was because she hadn’t been around with other kids for a very long time and Laura just needed to be around people and learn what they did and why. So far Laura didn’t think she was doing very well at that. People were funny though, they said things they didn’t mean like being busy or calling people right back or just five minutes or saying they liked her and then giggling about her with their real friends. She wasn’t sure what was funny about being evil, but she didn’t like it much because it made her feel like there was a mouse scratching in her tummy.

She smiled at Kizzy, thinking. “I’ve never milked a cow. What’s it like? Why don’t we milk horses too?” If baby cows weren’t the only ones who could drink cow’s milk, could they drink horse’s milk too? She’d heard that goat milk tasted of goat places, like on a farm. She hadn’t tried any though, at least not that she knew of. “Do you think some horses here will have foals?” It would be exciting to have baby horses as well as big horses, she wanted to see them grow up. Lots of animals were all out of proportion when they were born, like puppies had paws that were huge. She wondered if horses did too. “Do you think they like grass?” If they only ate it because it was the only thing there, how did they know horses didn’t like to eat chocolate or oranges or jelly?

Kizzy’s hair was very pretty. Laura liked that it had a mind of its own. Like Kizzy was so nice and Kizzyish it filled out all of her and her hair as well. “I think colours are my favourite.” Her favourite what she wasn’t sure, but colours were good. “My hair’s not as good. And it doesn’t take time because I keep forgetting you have to brush hair here. I didn’t do it much at home. Other things matter lots more but here they want you to not look like you slept in a hedge.” This was slightly bewildering to Laura, especially after the whole blackout thing. If you’d seen people when they’d just woken up it wasn’t like you could pretend you were all smooth and untangled all the time. And brushing hair kind of hurt and didn’t really seem to accomplish much.

“I hope they have something. It was a little bit scary and my knees hurt a bit and I don’t think I liked it.” She hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Things like that were scary one time but if it happened more it was really really scary. “Do you think there will be baby chicks in spring?” She hoped so, chicks were fluffy and yellow and you could tell things were good when they were fluffy and yellow. “I asked Faith when it was my first day and she said she thought people would hurt them. I don’t know why they would because chicks don’t make people upset. She said there wouldn’t be any eggs that turned into chicks because there wasn’t a rooster. But roosters don’t lay eggs.” Laura looked mystified. Somehow she’d understood that chicks came from eggs and eggs came from hens, but not where roosters fit into this equation. They seemed pretty much superfluous to her.

For all her short comings, which were laid out plainly, between manila folders in Highgrove and the girl's home in Stirling gathering dust in file cabinets, there was one thing those files had failed to notice, how she dealt with younger children. Keziah was frosty, rude, and impatient with age mates, argumentative, resistant, and confrontational to a fault with adults, but children younger or seemed to need protection bought out her maternal instinct. It certainly was not learned at her mother's knee. Keziah had been her mother's last child and only girl after a 'successful' line of sons, as such her mother denied her little daughter every imaginable kindness.

So Keziah learned by quietly observing others. A good mother attended their child's needs, be it a scraped knee, nightmare or just the comfort sought from a hug and soft words whispered to soothe the kind of overwhelming worries of little children. Years ago, as a mother too small, stroking the beautiful, frightening growing belly, she would flip through the lessons learned with the dedication of student studying for an exam. She didn't want her baby to hate or fear her like did her parents (and...spouses) she remembered and as their hands met, separated only by membrane and the thinly stretched skin of her belly, Kizzy knew then, that she would be a good mother because she choose to act as one.

But it wasn't to be.

Ethan never took his first breath or felt his mother's skin to his, and his sister followed much the same way. Instead--as observed but never noted-- she was first to speak to, comfort, and play with younger children. It was a small consolation, Kizzy couldn't bring them into the world but she could comfort them once here. Kizzy was not immune to Laura's eccentricity but somehow she didn't find her many questions and behaviours something she needed to comment negatively on. The thoughts about her children had made her smile drop and for a moment she looked sad, she pulled her self back to the present and out of the memories that felt like quicksand around her heart, and laughed as Laura did, almost envious of her happiness.

"It's like....Like milking a cow? It's hard to describe I've done it since I was little...maybe you can ask your chore supervisor if you can watch a cow being milked and maybe help?" She smirked slightly and whispered conspiratorially to the little blond, "Or you and me can head to the farm later and I can show you how. It's really easy all you have to do is be gentle, patient, and firm."She blinked and drummed two fingers on her bottom lip, "huh....I dunno why we don;t milk horses maybe it taste funny? Then again cow's milk kinda taste funny if you think about it...maybe cause its easier to reach cow teets while sitting?" now she was going to have to ask Verne about this, he would know why we don't drink Horse milk. He seemed to know everything about horses, and was faster ton consult that some stupid dusty tome, Laura's next question made her pause before she spoke "Maybe, I dunno if any of the mares are expecting." her response was a little tight, speaking around the lump that threatened to form in her throat, "I think they do, and minks, but we can't give them too many sweets or they'll get sick."

Kizzy did't think that was a good idea, especially when the third brush in a ten-week span broke in her hair, snapping at the handle, leaving the brush buried deep in fiery snarls. the red head grinned at her little companion,"It's about cleanliness, and presentability. Looking like you've slept in a hedge means you don't seem cared for." of course you could be meticulously groomed and still not truly cared for, as Keziah well knew, but why rain on Laura's parade? she'd been nothing be nice.

The older girl nodded, she was convinced that the kerfluffle of last time there was an outage would not be repeated as easily,"Your knees hurt? You mean from hiding under the table like we did?" Keziah bit her lower lip, she was buttoning it before she blurted out what an irredeemable cunt Faith was for telling Laura something so stupid. "Baby chicks would be safe, cause staff would's let people who were mean around them, we'll only get chicks if we have a couple roost--" Kizzy looked like a deer in headlights as she realised Faith had started and then chickened out of explaining reproduction to Laura.

Then again she was trying to figure how to dump that conversation on the girl's shrink, Kizzy spoke slowly as she was working out the answer while speaking, "Have you ever baked bread? it's kind of like that, you see the hens have everything but the yeast to make the bread, well the egg, and roosters have the yeast or se-- the um...stuff that baby chicks need to go from just an egg to a chick in an egg. Without rooster's and their yeast we have unleavened bread, or the eggs that you and I eat every day." She hoped that made sense, but she was going to add later the her shrink was the person to ask for more.

Laura hadn’t missed the sad look. She knew that when people had that look you weren’t supposed to ask them what was wrong a lot, because they didn’t want to tell you or they’d say anyway. Unless you were a grown up who fixed brains, they were allowed to ask whatever they liked. And you had to answer, which was hard sometimes because they kept asking things like what did she think and as soon as they said it she didn’t know what she thought. Like when someone asked you for a word and you couldn’t think of any words at all. And you knew words must exist but all of a sudden they were hiding.

“I don’t know what the chore person would think…” She chewed thoughtfully at a nail. “I have to be in the kitchen. We wash things. And I don’t think they want cows in there, except in burgers, but having a cow would be very very cool. They could be there out of the cold!” Cows must get cold. Laura knew they didn’t stay outside all the time because they’d become cowcicles, but it probably wasn’t that warm in their inside either because they didn’t have blankets and radiators and things. “I’d like to learn, though. Cows are nice and friendly. What do you think cows think about?” Maybe grass and springtime and funny bald creatures who only walked on two legs who kept squeezing parts of them. “Dolphins make milk too, and seals. But we don’t drink them either, just cows. But it could be hard underwater…” She wasn’t really sure. She tended to only be underwater in the shower and you couldn’t really swim in it. “Why do people and horses and things get sick if we eat too many sweets?” She was never entirely sure why, it just happened. Maybe Kizzy would know. Kizzy knew lots.

She thought about the hair thing for a moment. “But all the people here know what here is like and looking after us and things. If people already know…” She frowned. It hadn’t often come up with Uncle Kenneth because he said things about picking his battles and she could never find the hairbrush and got distracted and went to do drawing instead. She’d been better looked after there than anywhere else. After all, he knew how to help.

Shaking her head, she continued gnawing at her thumbnail. “No… when everyone ran away I ran away too but I didn’t have a light because I didn’t remember and I fell over a lot and up stairs and things. They’re getting better now, they don’t hurt lots any more. I was scared so I didn’t look where I went. Where did you go? I went all the way up the stairs and I couldn’t remember where things were.

Cheered up by the safety of the chicks who didn’t exist yet, Laura grinned at Kizzy. “I’m happy about that.” There was a sudden pang of worry. “Do you think I’d be allowed with them? I’m evil but I like animals and chicks and things. Maybe if I was careful?”

She listened to Kizzy, looking slightly bemused. She hadn’t really baked bread, but she’d seen them on telly sometimes and the bread got bigger and smaller, which she thought was very impressive, like magic. She hadn’t known yeast came from chickens. She tucked that away in case she ever needed to get some yeast or people wanted to know where it came from. She’d never even thought yeast could come from chickens, she’d just thought they made eggs. And chicken nuggets and things too, but mostly eggs. She giggled again. “So if there wasn’t any yeast all the baby chicks would come out flat? Like cheepy yellow flat things with legs!”

Keziah knew better then to think about these things during the day. These were night worries, thoughts to appear moments before sleep. She never could chase them off completely, like wolves circling weak prey the memories and emotions surrounding her unborn children avoided her uncoordinated attempts at shoving them off and always went for the jugular given the smallest silver of weakness or vulnerability. her right hand snaked along the nape of her neck and slipped into her crown, two fingers snared around a single lock of fiery curls plucked form her scalp and followed by a short sharp exhale, allowing her the ability to focus yet again on her little friend and not the burning sensation threatening to march along the back of her throat if she kept thinking about this.

"Well if they don't respect that the animals are as much a part of the kitchen as a form, they're idiots." In her life there was no division of kitchen and farm or kitchen and field, from seed to vegetable to kitchen and finally plate. The process was much the same with animals only there was a special step called slaughter between barn to kitchen. When Keziah realised that Kitchen chores only consisted of food preparation and the farm chores only animals, she balked to herself, what kind of stupidity was that?

Kizzy nodded, "but I think a cow in the kitchen alone might get lonely even if she were warmer. I'd be happy to teach you, Laura. Probably on a weekend when we have more time and freedom." Kizzy waited before speaking, letting Laura ask each question as she tried to think of responses, "Dunno, probably cow stuff like grass and which flowers taste best, like you said...and dolphins are in the water, humans live on land do if you were in the middle of a big country, with only lakes and rivers and no oceans... no dolphin milk." She twirled the plucked hair around her fingers and slipped it into the pocket of her binder, "Um....because it does? I'm not sure maybe you should ask a nurse about sweets and getting sick. Maybe it's because too many sweet things just fill you up with sugar and your stomach wants real foods but it's full?"

Kizzy shrugged one shoulder, Hair was something she knew well and according to everything she was taught Laura's hair was probably perfect...she bet when a brush was dun through her crown the handle didn't break, her mother probably never hit the bubbly blond on the side of the head, glancing the ear painfully before admonishing, "Nothing but a red rat's nest, a head of nettles that break every tool to tame it."

Watching Laura's slow progress nibbling her thumb clean off her hand it was all Kizzy could do not to reach out and stop her. But she knew Laura didn't like to be touched, when she was flinch-y, Kizzy always appreciated the girls and boys who wouldn't try to force contact who didn't touch her when she looked like it was required, for now she just ignored the thumbnail biting her brow knit softly, she hadn't know Laura was alone in the dark...she should have given the girl her torch... "I'm sorry you were all alone in the dark..." the older girl started, "I left the house and tried to...I don;t know I just wanted to leave, but while I was out there.." Kizzy paused and rubbed her left shoulder, she wasn't sure telling Laura about the wolves was a good idea, but if she ever ran off alone at night one of them might eat her legs. It was for the best, "I heard something howling, wolves howling so I ran, and I ended up falling in the snow in front of the stables just as Verne, --well Mr. Fitzwilliam-- was opening the door, he pulled me in and then it was too cold and snowy and windy for us to walk back." Keziah smiled, being stuck in a stable was so far the most fun she'd had here, "we stayed in the office and had tea, biscuits and hot chocolate! We talked about all sorts of random stuff, took care of the horses, and he even showed me some riding exercises, then we shared a chocolate egg and started back to the house once the snow let up and then when we got back." she smile softened, "After I show you how to milk a cow you should meet him."

"Laura, you're the first person anyone should be around chicks. You love chickens and I bet they adore you too." Kizzy felt confident in that along with what she told Laura about chickens, roosters, bread and yeas.t. If she knew anything about the girl's reason for admission, Kizzy would have swallowed her own discomfort and told her the truth instead of her little euphemism parade. For a moment Kizzy look, as Laura as though she would earlier, like a surprised brown egg. She was envisioning flat cheeping chickens and after a few seconds started to laugh the kind of deep belly-aching laugh of the truly tickled.

Laura watched Kizzy pull her hair and wondered why. Not that she could ask, it wouldn’t be nice. And she bit her nails, so she couldn’t ask anyone else about why they did things. Maybe it was just the same? “I think they only like dead animals in the kitchen. When they don’t have feathers any more. Where do all the feathers go?” There had to be something you used chicken feathers for, but she couldn’t think of it. Laura wasn’t always entirely happy that she was eating animals she liked more when they were alive, but that was what happened. Uncle Kenneth had said when she died little animals and plants would eat her, and then the cows ate the grass and things, so everyone ate everyone else really. That made her feel better.

Learning how to milk a cow sounded like a lot of fun, especially if the person showing her was Kizzy. Kizzy was her favourite person in her room, even though that sounded unkind to the other people. The other people didn’t like her much, especially Faith. Maybe it had been because she wasn’t like Faith. They both had blonde hair but Faith was grown up and knew things and collected eggs and Laura… wasn’t. Except she went to see the chickens sometimes and put the eggs together in a corner if she found some. She liked the eggs, they were in a good shape for hands and they were sort of smooth but covered in little tiny lumps as well. She liked the cows more, but chickens were fun too. If cows laid eggs maybe they would be like a milkshake, or scrambled egg because they’d have milk in as well. Ostriches laid eggs that were thirty of chicken’s eggs, but there weren’t any here. Well, not that she’d seen. “You wouldn’t mind showing me? I’d like to do that. I like cows a lot, do you think they’d mind me doing things? They let me stroke them and tell them things.”

“It’s ok now.” Laura wriggled her legs into a more comfortable position and giggled at the tickly pins and needles in her toes. “I was scared then but it was ok because it was all ok in the end. Why did you go outside? I got cold upstairs, do you still have all your toes?” Sometimes when people got too cold bits of them fell off. She’d seen it on the telly once. That was why it was better to stay inside in the arctic and wear gloves and things. “I didn’t know we have wolves here. Did you see any? I’m very glad they didn’t eat you.” She was sort of interested, but worried as well. Would wolves like her? Wolves were sort of like dogs and sort of like foxes, but they lived outside. She thought dogs might not mind her, but she hadn’t really met any foxes yet so she wasn’t sure about that. “I’m glad you’re ok. He sounds like a nice man! Did he get stuck outside too?”

She felt happier when Kizzy said she could be allowed with chicks. It had been worrying her after Faith had said that. She hadn’t asked other people though. She’d been too worried they’d say no, but she did need to ask someone. Still nibbling at her thumbnail, she giggled along with Kizzy, happy she’d made her laugh. Kizzy should be happy, she was really nice and everything. Laura wished she could hug people so she could hug Kizzy when she felt sad. But at least she knew the rules and Kizzy wouldn’t die. “They’d look like spaceships with wings! Only fluffier. And cheeping.” Chicks were fluffy even though they had feathers, which was funny.

Happily wriggling her toes, Laura wondered what they were for. Maybe so you could stay standing up on bumpy things. Although shoes made them less bendy. “Kizzy? What’s your favourite place to be?” More questions. It wasn’t as if she ever stopped asking, but she did like to know things. Especially about people. People were strange but nice.