Missy was different when she woke.
She gently wrapped up the dress she had danced with the night before, making sure the brown twine she looped across the front was tight enough.
After labelling the colour, it was placed on top of the box of other dresses she hadn't yet turned into the new creations.
The helmet was dropped on top a little too hard.
Missy avoided eye contact when she disappeared for a shower, only to return wearing another of her new dresses I had yet to see.
This one was a beautiful light yellow with wildflowers dancing up along the hem and short sleeves.
I could see a flash of sky blue underneath when Missy walked past me to prepare two bowls.
She seemed flat when she poured out the last of the leftover food for us to leave on the kitchen counter itself. Even her little smile when she rubbed Stew's nudging head came out forced.
There was a little scowl at her old shoes that didn't match her dress. I noticed the sigh at the box she briefly stopped to stare at.
I followed Missy when she scooped it up anyway. We were out the door and on the verandah when she cradled the box and locked the door, leaving the key on the windowsill instead of under the pot plant.
I noticed the change and tilted my head at it. Missy didn't wait for us as she trudged through the grass towards her scooter.
Stew sat beside me instead of chasing her.
"She cried last night because of you" she stated as she watched Missy curve around the fence "you were mean."
Is that why she had been avoiding my eyes? She didn't want me to see I had upset her?
I pulled my eyes from Missy clipping down her dresses to huff at Stew.
"There was nothing I could do."
"You could have come into the room" Stew looked up at me "you never do. She doesn't leave the door open for me, she leaves it open for you."
Turning back to Missy, she was on her scooter that shuddered to life. There was hesitation before she turned back to us with a brief wave of farewell.
"You didn't have to kiss her to let her know that you care for her. Coming into the sewing room would have been enough. She's been waiting for you to see that dress and tell you all about it. It's been sitting by the door for days."
Missy took off, leaving us to sit there and watch her whipping red hair disappear from sight.
"She cried because she thought you didn't care about her anymore."
"How do you know that?" I frowned back.
Stew looked at the way Missy had gone longingly.
"She tells me all sorts of things. She cries to herself when she thinks I'm asleep; about all sorts of things when I pretend to wake up. She's scared she's going to be alone again."
I watched the swaying grass with Stew who pressed herself to my side.
"Why would she think that?"
"She's not making money" Stew replied softly "she gave us the last of her food, and the vegetables aren't enough for all of us. She's already gone so long without paying Temmit...."
My ears flicked up at the strange name.
"Temmit?"
"The old guy with the noisy dog?" Stew prompted, to make me nod "he says he doesn't care if she can pay or not, but Ma says she feels bad that she's taking advantage of his kindness."
That would explain why she was so insistent on giving him food when he came around with the kennel. It was literally all she had to try and repay his overwhelming kindness.
I didn't know she felt so badly about her situation. If I knew she cried most nights....
What would I do to change that?
"I want to help her out" Stew spoke up firmly "looking after the house is good, but there has to be another way to make her happy again."
Money could solve a lot of those problems, but there was only so much Missy could do. We couldn't exactly take up sewing ourselves, and taking money from the good people in the town was out of the question.
I hated it, but Missy needed a lifeline. We just had to be very careful about how we went about saving her from this cruel world.
Starting in town would be a good start. We could work back to nothing from there.
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Stew trotted beside me proudly when we left home. Her tail flicked in glee when we rounded on Bartie and his newspaper that folded down at the sight of us.
"She's letting you two roam free, huh?" Bartie laughed with a shake of his head "I've got a shady place out of the sun if you prefer?"
Stew grinned at me as Bartie folded up the paper and started his shuffle back to his store.
"I was wondering when you'd earn your keep" Bartie joked to me, grunting when he lifted himself up into the store.
The little fan on his desk blew around the hot air smothering the shop. It had comical pieces of plastic tied to it that waved in the flow forced through them.
"Mearve!" Bartie called out to the beaded curtain of the back room "bring the bucket for our guests please!"
"Coming!" a chipper voice responded before the beads were knocked aside as the back of a teen pushed through, hauling a stack of bound newspapers.
As soon as he turned and his brown eyes found mine, we were both frozen on the spot.
Round glasses sat on his little nose that was spotted with freckles. His tanned skin was peeling pink on his face and hands that grew slack on the stack.
Light brown hair was curled on his head in a style that flicked out above his ears to give him a kind, whimsical look.
The light blue shirt that hid underneath the brown apron Bartie had given him to wear was stale. I could see his blue jeans were the same with the dirt at the hems. His coated shoes were some shade of white underneath the layer of filth he had tried to buff off.
Through it all, I saw it.
The brown contacts. The white layer of skin ringing the peeling. The fake freckles. The dark markings hidden under his skin.
The newspapers collapsed to the ground that Mearve dived for instantly, apologising profusely to Bartie.
"Boy, these are Soup and Stew" he introduced us as Mearve kept his head down to try and organise the papers "they're a little bit to take in at first, but you'll get used to them."
Mearve breathed nervously and adjusted his glasses up to Bartie.
"They shocked me just a little" he admitted.
Bartie was amused in the boy's flustered state and went over to the fallen stack that Mearve handed up a paper from.
I kept my hard stare on Mearve who finally managed to get the stack sorted so he could heave it onto the spare space on the counter beside the til that dinged from the force.
"Sorry" Mearve mumbled to Bartie, fixing his glasses, before quickly rushing back out of sight behind the curtain "I'll get the bucket!"
Huffing at the beaded curtain, I made sure Stew was first to leave so I could block her from sight as we exited back onto the street.
Bartie walked us up the side of the store to the tap. He only had to wait a moment before Mearve came rushing out to dump the bucket underneath and start to fill it.
Bartie fished a shoe-brush from his own apron to hand to Mearve. The teen blushed and looked down at the shoes that obviously needed a bit of care.
To me, it looked like he had been walking in them for endless kilometres. The souls were ready to peel and the material on top was overwhelmed with creases and cracks.
He must have been walking for days before he rolled in with the train. His clothes certainly looked like they had been slept in and beaten clean for a few days now.
He'd need money for more. Getting a short job here while drifting through was a smart idea. Bartie would be kind enough to give him a few morsels of food too while believing he had his own home to return to later.
Where did he live? Out by the water? Or was he actually with someone else here who was housing what they believed to be a normal teenager?
Mearve saw me trying to figure it out when I looked him over. His brown eyes darted to Bartie who rubbed Stew's head that dipped down next to the pounding stream of water.
"Isn't that better?" Bartie smiled warmly to her.
"It tastes like the inside of a hot tyre" Stew muttered, grumbling when I nudged her roughly for her rudeness.
I heard Mearve let out a laugh that he disguised as a cough in the back of his hand.
Glaring to him while Bartie was turned at the noise, I kept Stew close when they snapped off the tap and promptly headed back to the store.
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I could feel every muscle in between my shoulders coiled uncomfortably when I shepherded Stew back to the tracks to head for the safety of home.
The wind felt like someone lightly brushing my skin with every stroke. Now that I knew that another one of us was here, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was still being watched or that he was following behind us.
"He understood us" Stew spoke up with a glance back behind her as we slinked through the grass "did you see his arms?"
I grumbled back as I nodded.
The fact that someone else outside of our little group could understand anything we said through the noises the humans only heard was unnerving. It already had me way too much on edge knowing that another one of us was so close to our home and living somewhere in our town. We couldn't find our money solution with him lurking nearby.
What if he didn't follow the same rules? What if he didn't care who saw him turn into a creature? What if he hated the thought we were here too, taking up the town that could solely be his?
I didn't want to think about it. It was making me way too nervous, especially now I had Stew to keep safe.
"How about we sleep on Missy's bed tonight?" I smiled to her "is it really as comfy as the floor?"
"It's better!" Stew laughed "you'll love it! It's so warm!"
"I don't know...." I faked ignorance "I need a bit more convincing than that."
Stew gasped at me and instantly started to rattle off a list of things while I pushed back with my own silly contradicting reasons not to.
It kept her entertained and it helped shake the unease chilling my blood and bones.
Anything to keep our minds off what was lurking in town....
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