Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Eighty

A/N So I know I've taken a bit of a hiatus, and I hope to get back on a weekly schedule. I think I am finally coming to a more stable place, but either way I am finding myself being able to ride the waves. Thank you for sticking with me! I love you all!

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, raining petals down on her as she walked through the lane. She smiled, closing her eyes for one moment and just breathing in the sweet floral scent.

"Anne?"

"Gilbert!" She gasped, her full skirts twirling with her as she turned to face him. "You frightened me!" He only grinned in response, and then she was grinning too, because how could she stay mad at him, dark curls falling into brown eyes filled with mirth?

"I wouldn't have if you weren't so lost in the land of dreams, Queen Anne," he replied.

"Don't tell me you're taking Marilla's side," she retorted, sniffing as she stubbornly turned away from him. Marilla? The name jarred her, and she frowned. Marilla?

Gilbert didn't seem to notice her faux pas, as he strode to be by her side, his lips slightly tugged downward. "I don't even know what you're talking about, Anne."

"Marilla told me I had to let go of what she called 'girlish fantasies.' Apparently, growing up means I have to give up all my romantic notions," She said, somewhat haughtily. "If that's what it means, then I won't do it!"

Gilbert laughed, and the two began to walk in tandem down Cherry Tree Lane. "I hope you never give up your romantic notions," He replied. "You wouldn't be you if you did."

Why did that make her stomach drop? For a moment, it felt like the landscape was blurring, and she turned back to Gilbert, her eyes narrowed in confusion. "I..."

"What?" Gilbert glanced over at her, his head cocked curiously, before once again grinning. "Don't tell me you're at a loss for words. You always have something to say," he teased lightly.

"Who would I be?"

"What do you mean?" His eyebrows furrowed, but she just stared at me.

"If I wasn't me, I mean. If I gave up all my romantic notions, and my dreams, and I just...became some frumpy old maid," she finished, but that was wrong too, and why did her mind feel like it was filled with sand?

"You could never be frumpy, Anne," Gilbert replied, waving away the question.

"But if I—if I stopped seeing the good in everything. If I stopped believing everything had scope for the imagination. If I didn't feel like giving beautiful names for everything I saw. If I stopped dreaming of sunbursts and a castle with marble halls. What would I be?" The words spilled out of their own accord, each one causing her heart to beat faster, as if her very life depended on his response.

"I...I don't know," Gilbert stuttered, his eyes widening. "You wouldn't be you, though."

"Is that what I am?" She spun around, the landscape seeming to shift around her—the Lake of Shining Water, Violet's Vale, Lover's Lane, all merging together in her vision, Prince Edward Island itself seeming to morph into something else entirely, a living entity that changed at will. "Is this what I am? Just a series of events? Am I so fickle that if my life hadn't panned out exactly like this, I wouldn't be me?"