What About Yesterday? - anne with an e

Chapter 17- Repeat Until Death

Green Gables was silent to her reverie. 

She nearly tripped up the step, helplessly smiling at the memory of the countless occasions she had danced over it with no attention to her bare knees and trailing laces. How could it all feel so distant? If four months left her in such fond recollection, what would she feel after double that time? Or a year? Seven?
Her arm reached, muscle memory guiding her fingers to the door handle in the shadows, when a thundering from inside made her hand jerk backwards. Fortunately so, as in suit the entire frame of the door swings, nearly hitting her.
A long, flared nose, flushed cheeks and angular eyes meet her surprise abruptly. Then his arms are wrapping around her, and Jerry Baynard laughed by her ear.

"The sight of you- you're,"

He was holding her, long arms hugging her tighter and tighter. 

"You're back. Anne's home."

She had hugged Jerry before, but this- this was anticipation, this was relief, this was content.

And, she realised, as she managed to wrap her comparatively tiny arms around his now towering shoulders, and he let out something between laughter and a victorious howl, lifting her from her feet and spinning with a small stumble, this was their love.

"I have missed you, insanely!" Anne admitted, regaining her balance. 

"Funny," Jerry pointedly crossed his arms. "I barely noticed you'd left."

Anne scoffed, and they both left the doorway- the warmth washed over her splendidly. 

Humans are tied to a nature of adaptability, but she thought there was also something to be said about the sensation of relapse- the return to what you have adapted away from. When each function, each extension of body and mind has developed to satisfy a new environment. How fatally easy it is, to forget those mannerisms when met with a flow that runs so eternally deeper. How thoughtlessly simple. How dangerously painless. Familiar angles sparking a wave of rushing, desperate warmth that bubbles up in her chest and in her eyes. Blunt surfaces, so plaintive, unmoving staples of every memory that now ever seemed important. Long bare table with their tiny square chairs that are left untucked, not buried beneath. Their legs- smooth on smooth floors, the culprits of so many swings and tumbles. So open, the cream walls pull back from the reflection of fire dancing, sprinting unbridled loops around the rooms.
Then Marilla was altogether there and altogether untouchable. Her frame still nailed straight, her shoulders down. The sense of it being a natural or forced posture was still trained and unreadable. The fine bones that stuck out there, structures pressing hollows under her throat and collar, were over keen and pulled restlessly at the dragonfly-wing, semi-opaque skin that creases in fearful reaction. The folding fight of bone is decidedly avian, imitating the resistance of wings against their bodily containment. Her solemn chin and sunken cheeks lead to the protrusion of that eagle like nose and flash of beaded eyes. Clasped hands seemed to stifle the pulse of internal power, linked in front of her. An anchor, almost the last tie that rigged her to the ground. She was feather-light.

The moment she saw Anne, that pull seemed to increase eleven fold, instantaneous, her chest lifting helplessly.
The stress of a smile drew those bright tones into that single, unparalleled word.

"Anne."

Matthew was behind her, his eyes alight and cheeks glowing. His hands were big and secure when they held her, cradled. She didn't remember how she got here- she didn't know when. Only that she found herself in the warmest embrace, worn cotton and dry threads between her fingers, over her face. Wood and straw, rust and coffee- covering, soaking all her senses.