Going Home (Annie)

I wrote this mainly to explain where Annie had been lately while I've been away from WoW, so it's just a scribble rather than something I'm artistically delighted in -- but I kind of enjoyed it, so I hope you might as well!

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'Going Home'

Maximilian Landry knelt on the cold ground beside his cottage, his hand closed around the smooth wooden handle of a spade. A chill wind gusted past him as he bent his head, for it was very early spring here in the north country; patches of snow still lingered beneath close-knit pines and in the leas of boulders in the surrounding hills. Yet against the side of Master Landry’s house, in the shelter of the rough-sawn pine boards that had just weathered their first winter and to which the scent of the wood still clung, the sun had begun to warm the soil enough for the frost to leave the top layer. It was April, time for things to grow.

A weary smile crossed Landry’s face as he turned the dark earth, ignoring the stiffness that had already started to settle into his back and shoulders. The years might be catching up to him, but damned if he was going to allow a few protesting muscles to keep him from his garden. He was no old man yet; and he had crocuses to tend.

‘Mornin’ Max.’

He moved instinctively to his feet at the sound of a human voice, all thoughts of aching long forgotten, and turned–

‘Spring in the ‘ills. Always were nice, weren’ it?’

Landry relaxed, rubbing a weathered hand, crusted with fresh dirt, across his forehead. ‘It’s not healthy, lass, sneaking up like that.’

He shook his head but a smile touched his mouth nonetheless. The woman who had appeared so suddenly around the corner of his house was long familiar, and despite the rarity of their meetings and the long months, even years, that appeared between each, he had no reason to distrust her.

‘S’pose I jus’ wanted t’ see if I could get th’ drop on th’ great Max Landry, eh?’ Annie smirked, sweeping a hand through unkempt fox-coloured hair. She was much browner than the last time he had seen her – browner, and with an ease about her that he had rarely observed. It was a good change, this carelessness of spring.

‘I must be losing my touch.’ He sighed.

‘Na na course ye ain’t. I’m jus’ gettin’ better.’ Her grin widened, and Max was suddenly glad of her coming, as he had been glad of the warm sun that had fallen over his bedclothes that dawn, reminding him that the grip of winter was lessening.

‘But look a’ this,’ she said before he could reply, crouching down in the grass and tossing a satchel from her shoulder, rifling through it like a dog digging in a hedge. ‘I brough’ ye somethin’ I though’ ye’d like. Foun’ these up in Northren’ few months back an’ thought o’ ye.’

She pulled something wrapped in a piece of dirty cloth from the depths of the bag and held it up. Max knelt down again beside her as she drew away the wrapping. Three shrivelled bulbs lay cupped between Annie’s hands.

‘Called tiger lilies I’m fair sure they are. Brigh’ orange things, righ’ nice. Jus’ didn’ think they’d grow at home – always ‘ot or wet down in th’ Bay, y’know? But I dug ‘em up in this place called th’ Grizzly ‘ills when Led an’ I were up there, weather’s a lo’ more like this place.’

Max took the bulbs from her with the care of a nobleman handling gems, and inspected them more closely. Larger than crocuses, smaller than tulips... with any luck, they would flower before summer.

‘Thank you Annie,’ he said, reaching for his spade to break the soil beside the crocuses he had been planting. ‘You’re still in Booty Bay then, with this Ledgic of yours?’

The question was casual, like a castoff shirt flung over a wardrobe door, but he listened carefully even as he turned the rich soil. Annie usually came to see him when she was in need of help, and it was something new to hear her speak so lightly of being settled in the same place for so many months.

‘Mhm, still am.’ Brown fingers reached down into the loam beside Max’s spade, plucking an earthworm from the newly broken dirt and flicking it aside. And then she glanced up, and Max caught her eyes.

‘Well I love ‘im don’ I?’ A quick smirk, and then Annie cleared her throat, taking the bulbs from the grass and settling them, one by one, into the cool earth. ‘But ne’ermin’ tha’ eh? We ‘ave lilies t’ sort ou’, an’ I want t’ ‘ear ‘bout ye.’

Max chuckled, moving earth over the bulbs and packing it down with the flat of his hands. Yes, it was April, and it was time for things to grow. Annie, it seemed, had grown also over the long months of winter, and as he smoothed the last layer of earth over the new additions to his garden, he felt a sudden flash of pride. She was learning. Perhaps the promise he had made to Dorian Andural all those years ago would not, after all, be in vain: for the first time in ten years, Annie seemed to have decided that something – and someone – was worth sticking to.