Chapter Text
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;-Excerpt from Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
There was always something strange about Maysilee Donner.
He never found the words to express it though, maybe it would have done him some good if he had, called her weird or odd; maybe it all wouldn't have ended the way it did.
He always wanted to, not call her odd but say something to her, anything, back when he was even younger and not fully understanding of the divide they had. Not understanding why a Seam boy like him couldn't just go and talk to a merchant girl like her.
The first time that he recalled really seeing her was back when he was five. His Ma had gone to the Town all round and heavy, which obviously was her being pregnant with Sid but at that point he wasn't that bright, and brought him along for some reason or the other. He remembered it being a sunny day after nonstop rains and it had been a particular kind of sunny too. Where the sun didn't make his eyes squint and the wind actually was pleasant on his back.
Back then he reached not even halfway to Ma's shoulders, clutched up around her arm so that he wouldn't get lost in the big town.
Every shop he saw, be it the bakery with its freshly baked bread smell or even the look of the Shoe store gave five-year-old him endless wonderment. Of course they didn't enter any of those stores.
Ma only brought enough money to get medicine from the apothecary, and he didn't know it this then, brought enough temperament to deal with only one of those shops.
He still took in all those sights and smells.
The best sight was the one which he only saw fleetingly, the Donner Candy Shoppe. Probably the best thing for a child to see and the worst for a parent to see. The window was big and crystal clean, 'cause what laid behind it was the main draw. Sweets of all colors and sizes, bright and pleasing, and just there.
He wasn't that bright but he still knew that there were some things he wasn't meant to ask, like why he looked so much like the other kids in the town when he was from the seam or why did some of the folks at shops were giving his Ma angry looks.
So when Ma started walking faster across the street in front of the shoppe he knew that she didn't want him looking there.
Later, much later, he'd learn the reason was not because the candy's temptation.
When her business with the apothecary was done, she walked a bit slower across the Shoppe, he had been carrying the bag she got from there 'cause he wanted to help.
That was when he saw her for the first time. Standing across the glass door, frizzed blonde hair unlike his curled blonde hair— but eyes as blue as the sky, just like his— five years old like him, Maysilee Donner. He just saw her for a few seconds, but he still remembered how her face looked like for those few seconds as the years all rolled by.
Not just cause it was the first time he had seen her, but cause what she had been doing.
Smiling.
Smiling at him in fact, or at his direction, he never asked. It was a big smile, that showed her front tooth missing and that stretched her whole face, her eyes were squinting the smile had been so big.
That was probably the happiest he had ever seen her and it had been the first time he had laid his eyes across hers.
Every justification he gave himself when things got worse; that he remembered her cause it was sunny, or that he was smitten by the candies, or that it was a new place with a new looking pretty girl were lies.
He remembered it so clearly cause she had only smiled like that, at him, countably three times.
The next time was when he actually talked to her for the first time
They said her real dad was a peacekeeper or someone from the capitol, and Mister Donner just married her mum off to the town dullard to keep people quite.
They being his neighbors and people at his school, he didn't much get what was so wrong with that, but he kept his mouth shut his Pa had taught him as much. They also whispered similar things about them he could tell; probably cause he and Sid looked so much like merchants, like their mother.
Maysilee was a twin, her sister was just a mirror image in physicality though. Where Maysilee was quick to her wits, Merrilee was reserved and often sullen, in fact he couldn't recall her ever raising her voice in class. All while Maysilee was well known for her temper.
She had a spirit to her, a fiery one that intrigued him a lot. After that smile when he had been five, he learnt that Maysilee could be quite passionate about things. At the first day at school the smile that he had been the only thing he had known about her, quickly became irrelevant and frankly bizarre as a first impression.
The first day she got angry at a couple of merchants who had been whispering things about sharing classes with the Seam people. Screamed at them infact, not even to make friends with Seam folks 'cause they stuck in their own groups and were distressed by getting so much attention. That made her something of a pariah to both Seam and Merchant kids, but she didn't care.
Once when they were ten, a jumpstart from town called her Mum a whore, 'course he didn't know it at that time what it meant. She did though, and the verbal thrashing and the actual thrashing she gave that townie boy was still talked about.
His name was Nate Cartwright and he was a merchant, just like the Donners. He reckoned it didn't mean as much when they had already decided they were uncouth. It was one of their school's rare outing to the townie part. There was when Nate called her Mum a whore.
She had called Nate Cartwright a big lug with no finesse, and then slapped him with a sting; that was really unexpected, she had always shown her temper through words never hands, and Cartwright just started wailing and the crowd started dispersing. Someone dragged Cartwright off too, maybe it was his mother he couldn't recall.
He noticed her crying after that though, when the crowd had cleared from witnessing the slap she had hit and the lashing she had yelled. She had slinked to one of those gaps between shops, the ones that were tiny only fit for rats and children, and she had her head bowed. Even though it was dark, and she was sitting hunched over faraway, he saw her blue eyes glistening. They were that bright, and they had tears around them, he was ten and he didn't like when pretty girls cried.
He still remembered that conversation how could he forget.
"Don't listen to him he's an idiot"
"I don't need your words Abernathy "
"Of course you have a lot of them"
She had laughed a lot at that even when it wasn't that particularly funny, he actually had meant it in all sincerity, and to show his sincerity he had even gotten his hand out. More to help her stand up and not so much as the symbolic thing it looked like.
Here was the pariah of both seam and merchants, and there was he half seam and half merchant, offering her a helping hand.
She took it though, he still remembered that her hand been as big as his, the only time he remembered that fact being true.
She was only a couple of inches shorter than him at that time, almost eye level when she had gotten up in that alley. Red eyed and knees dirtied, she gave him the smile again, the one he had seen five years back.
"Want to be friends miss Donner" he finally had the words he didn't have all those years back.
"Friends" she had just replied with that smile again, no teeth missing this time though but still just as big as he had remembered seeing from across the shop window.
The past few hours unsaid in that handshake. Whenever he recalled that day, which was often, he didn't remember Cartwright's antics or her crying; he remembered that smile.
The second time she had smiled at him like that had been the day they had become best friends.