//------------------------------// // The Hidden Heart-wood // Story: Twilight In Plain Sight // by Mitch H //------------------------------// Dusk Shine sat in the afternoon sun, with one eye on the uncertain late-summer skies, and another on Skyla jumping about the playground with a scattering of other children about the right age, chasing each other and the occasional wayward duck. Dusk's class plans and assorted schedules, half-constructed check-lists, and references were spread out on the painted wrought-iron picnic table in front of her, every pile or piece of paper carefully weighed down by paperweights of exactly the right weight. She'd been mostly ignoring the wittering of the other mothers and minders to her right, and doing her best to eavesdrop on the clique of cranky old retirees sitting in the shade of the currently-abandoned Norfolk Southern passenger station which served as the sclerotic heart of Metternich Park. Fat and happy ducks dotted the wide, empty green grass rolling over to the carefully-manicured riverfront; Skyla had required a few words an hour ago to get her to leave the ducks alone, and go make friends with the New Town children. Metternich Park was one of the interfaces along which the inhabitants of New Town and College Heights met and interacted with the less-advantaged folk from Old Town and the Bottoms. Dusk Shine and Skyla walked down here nearly every day across the Norfolk Southern grading, and along the high street's extension over the masonry bridge into the park. Relatively few heavy trains came through the heart of town anymore – a bypass had been built in the Thirties on the north side of town that took most of the coal trains and the through-traffic from Knoxville heading overland to Roanoke and down towards the ports of the distant Chesapeake. But just enough came through to make the crossing something not to be taken lightly by pedestrians, with or without small children to mind. The clique of retirees were mostly old Norfolk Southern hands, and the doings of the railroad were their core topic of conversation, whenever simple gossip and the current round of competitive bragging about grandchildren had been otherwise exhausted. Dusk Shine found that people were most likely to talk openly in your presence when you appeared thoroughly busy and generally distracted, so she'd been milking this task for the better part of a week, while she learned about the actual town of Dashville from its most knowledgeable codgers. She now knew that her neighborhood looked a bit run-down, but was largely working-class and respectable, aside from the infamous Wax Brothers funeral home. The neighborhood maintained its respectability mostly because the three churches that surrounded the Wax Funeral Home on the other corners of that intersection cancelled out the mild disreputability of the Wax Brothers' inclination to take all customers, Old Town, New Town, or even Bottoms. College Heights produced relatively little traffic for the undertakers; they were generally too transient and healthy to die in a convenient or locally-buriable manner. And even the Wax Brothers had their defenders, or rather, defender – an elderly aunt, as far as Dusk Shine could tell, one of the bosom friends of the queen of the retirees. Bees Wax seemed to have been a switchbox operator with the railroad; her good friend Gentle Grade was the center of the twittering crowd of blue-haired gossips. The retired menfolk were often found over by the picnic tables the other side of the station from the playground, playing endless games of chess. They muttered so indistinctly, so far away from her preferred observational station, that even Dusk Shine and her enhanced hearing couldn't make out what they were saying. The only reason Dusk knew some of their names was because of the gossiping of their girlfriends and wives. The local strip malls and main drag were located on the far side of the old brickwork passenger station, where the old switch-yards had been torn up decades ago and re-developed into a prosperous ant-hill of fast food restaurants, shops, and retail outlets, servicing the New Town, College Heights, and the Bottoms alike. The developers had, with their typical imaginative panache, named it The Switch Yards. The Bottoms were also working class, sort of, and true to the old cliché, was likewise located on the wrong side of the tracks, various small neighborhoods curling up various draws in the face of the bluffs, interspersed with metal-working shops, auto detailing outfits, and the like. Occasionally at night, up in Old Town, you could hear the tricked-out muscle cars and motorcycles come roaring down out of the Bottoms onto the local highways, or up the bluffs and through town to the country lanes to the north. Dusk Shine had yet to have laid eyes on one of these mythical biker-gang wakes she'd heard so much of from the retirees and others in town. The biddies had been so charmingly concerned when they'd heard where "this darling little flower" was living, it had really been touching. Although Bees Wax had tripped all over herself to swear on her family's honor that nobody really got up to trouble at the funeral home. It was a place of solemnity and regret, not to get drunk. They did that once the funeral was over and they'd returned back to whatever tumbledown shacks or converted warehouses they squatted in down there in the Bottoms. Dusk Shine forbore to point out that Skyla and she were living in some sort of converted space, the details of which she was still trying to deduce from the physical clues. Bees Wax had confided that she'd thought it had been a nurse's association office or something like that, but the building, despite its proximity to the funeral home, had never been their property, belonging rather to a somewhat infamous slumlord. Not Dusk Shine's current landlord, by the way. The gossips had gone off on a tear about the slumlord's infamous family affairs, and from the giddy chaos, Dusk had gathered that her current landlord had been some sort of mistress or girlfriend, and been given the building as a going-away present. The retirees were clucking over the scandal of the hour, which was Amtrak's decision to shut down passenger service between Knoxville and Roanoke, again. It appeared from what Dusk Shine heard, as she finished the last touches on the latest stack of prepped check-lists, that the government-run rail service could simply not stick to a decision on whether or not they wanted to offer continuous service from the metropolises of the Chesapeake into the Applelachian interior, and every season, it was a crapshoot whether the passenger trains would be bumping along two-thirds empty over the rough grades curling through the Smokey Mountain corridor. As economically and culturally fascinating as Dusk Shine found the Amtrak debates among the railroad retirees, she wasn't really here to write up notes on that particular policy question – she was collecting intelligence. And once the biddies got on again about the foolishness of Norfolk Southern and how they handled the bureaucrats of Amtrak, they'd be on about it for hours. Dusk began organizing her notes, plans, and lists, putting them away in order, leaving her paperweights for last. Only a few of the paperweights had been properly crafted yet. She'd had to expend a number of them during the stressful trial, and hadn't had time to work up new ones, so most of the 'paperweights' were simple polished bits of rock and ore. But there were at least two which were properly retaining their enhanced-hearing cantrips, and Dusk Shine handled those with reverent and delicate care, putting them on the top of the rucksack. The weather had held, and that was a very good thing. Dusk Shine called out to Skyla, who was engaged in boosting another child on the swings, just another happy pair of kids reassuring their mothers about how well-adjusted and careless they were, and nothing at all to worry about. Twilight was so pleased at how well Flurry Heart was keeping up appearances! Dusk Shine smiled at her daughter, and rubbed her on her head. "Where's your hat?" Skyla pulled the wrinkled mass from where it had been shoved into a pocket. Dusk held the dusty thing up with some skepticism, eyeing the little girl. "It fell down when I was feeding the ducks! It might have some bird poop on it." Dusk Shine pulled a plastic grocery bag from a side-pocket of her ruck, shoved the soiled hat into the bag and wrapped it up, to go back into said side-pocket, where it wouldn't get duck or goose poop on her nice neat paperwork. "Don't the signs say not to feed the ducks?" "Why would they put those coin-operated feed machines over by the riverside if they don't want you to feed the ducks?" "I don't know, Skyla, did you read the rest of the signs? I think those are for feeding the carp." "Who needs to feed carp? They feed themselves. And they're creepy. Food is for cute things! Except the damned geese, they come wading in and steal everything!" "Skyla! Language!" "Sorry, 'Mommy', blessed geese. Except nobody who's not stupid would bless geese! They're mean, and bullies! Why are herbivores so mean, it's not like they gotta be eating other birds to stay alive." "It's the way that nature works, sweetie. Some animals, it's easier to be aggressive than to be cute. Not everybody can live off of the love and charity of easily-swayed little girls with pocketfuls of quarters, and handfuls of food pellets! Speaking of which, you better have not spent all of your pocket-money on those damned birds." "Mommy! Language! What will the school kids tell their parents about their potty-mouthed teacher!" "Come on, kiddo. Let's go down to the woods while we still have some light." Dusk Shine liked to reward Skyla when she'd been particularly good, and it had been a good day for the little girl. Most of Metternich Park was carefully manicured with open prospects and after-hours lighting, but there was an extension downstream away from the placid open pool-like bend of the river, beyond the dam and the old converted mill, and over a small foot-bridge that crossed the gentle old millrace. Here, on the far side of the mill, you could find a tongue of relatively wild woodlot between the millrace, and the river downstream from the dam. There were more picnic tables here, and woodchip-surfaced paths, and most importantly, lots of trees and relatively thin brush that Skyla could scurry through and be wild for a bit. Always keeping up a front was a heavy burden for Twilight's little niece, and she occasionally needed a place to vent and be herself. Dusk Shine always checked the whole length of the tongue of wildwood to make sure there weren't any other kids or adults nearby, and then took up station at the picnic table nearest the mill. The mill itself had apparently been a working restaurant as recently as last spring, but had gone under for reasons that the retirees hadn't cared to explain to Dusk Shine. It was too nice of a location to stay unoccupied for long, but for the time being, the fact that it was shuttered meant that there was relatively little foot-traffic along this side of the Park, and Twilight could be alone to work on her stones, and Flurry Heart to be 'the wildwood princess' where nobody could see. Well, no, not nobody, not today. The local outfitters were set up on the opposite shore of the river, pushing canoes and kayaks out into the gentle semi-sort-of-rapids, and instructors were showing tourists how to conduct themselves in slightly rough water. Skyla exchanged solemn glances with Dusk Shine, and she sat calmly and demurely across from her 'mother' to watch as Dusk got her working kit out of the proper pocket of the rucksack. "I'll need three – no four sandstones of even surface, Skyla. Can you find me those? Flat and smooth enough to take some paint." "'kay." Skyla scurried off, to search the millrace side of the little peninsula, while Dusk Shine busied herself with working on one of her 'paperweights'. Fifteen minutes later, and one newly-prepared 'distance hearing' paperweight, Skyla came tripping up with an armful of a half-dozen rocks carried cupped in the front of her now-soiled shirt. "Really, Skyla? It's a good thing I brought a spare shirt for you, or else we'd be eating at home tonight. Here, let's see what you've got. Nope, no – ok, these will work." Dusk Shine took out a cloth, and went over to the millrace side to rinse off the rocks. She dipped her cloth into the running water, soaking it properly, and rubbing down the 'flat' surfaces of the rocks. Then she used one of the discarded stones to scoop up mud from the bank, and carried everything back to the table. As Dusk Shine daubed the stones with mud in specific patterns, Skyla watched, fascinated. Just beyond the thin screen of trees, the riverside rang with the laughing and splashing of bumbling tourists and students doing their best to drown themselves in shallow and gentle 'rapids', while frustrated instructors darted back and forth, pulling their charges out of almost-danger. After Dusk Shine was done, she handed two of the prepared stones to Skyla, and took up the other two, one in each hand. Skyla followed behind her as Dusk walked down the path towards the furthest far tip of the tongue of land, where it laid lapping in the confluence of the mill-race with her mother river, rejoining the two currents. Dusk Shine placed the first of her ward-stones here, high enough off of the water that it wouldn't be washed clean by the simple splash of the gentle river. They walked back upstream a little, and Skyla placed one of her own stones, likewise, and then Dusk her next stone, and then right by the guardian picnic table, the last of the stones sat high up the slope, almost where Dusk Shine's foot would be when she sat down again. Dusk Shine concentrated, and made the correct gestures – and then Twilight Sparkle sang a little tune, with a few special little words. And Twilight Sparkle and Flurry Heart were alone in a bubble of silence, the sound of the kids and tourists in their little boats cut off by the wards. Twilight knew that the boaters wouldn't see anything of importance on this, the farther shore, either, not while the wards were active. "OK, Flurry Heart. We have forty-five minutes until we lose the light. Stay inside the stones." "OK, Twilight! Come here, birdies! Come on out, Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel!" By the time Flurry Heart was half-visible in the brush beside the wood-chip path, Twilight could see a little procession of tiny animals following in their princess's train like the good little retainers they were. When Flurry Heart went into Druidic Princess Mode, Twilight couldn't help but be impressed. Especially when she saw so many critters rise up to follow their leader, you wouldn't think that an acre and a half of woodlot would have so much life in it. Twilight left the Princess of the Wild Wood to her subjects, and worked on her own projects, quickly going through what supplies she had brought with her. It was so handy, living in a town with a Hobby Lobby right across the river, anchoring one of the strip-malls in the Switch Yards. By the time the light failed, she had another half-dozen surveillance fetishes ready to be seeded around the Park and the streets leading up into the various neighborhoods feeding into the gentle heart of Dashville. "Flurry! Come on out, it's time to close up for the evening!" Flurry Heart emerged from her brush-fortress, covered in sticks and mud, her face painted like a savage's. Twilight roughly brushed out the twigs from her niece's hair, and used her last clean hand-towel to wash the muck off of her face and limbs. She put out Flurry's spare shirt, and turned her quickly out of the filthy original article, and shoved her just as quickly into the fresh bit of clothing. Bundling up the filthy shirt and her pile of dirty little towels, Dusk Shine deactivated the wards, examining her daughter to see if she was decent for public consumption. "OK, you're not dining-room presentable, but we can do take-out. What are you feeling like?" Skyla named one of the fast-food restaurants along the strip, and Dusk agreed, it was on the right path for her to place one of her surveillance fetishes. Dusk Shine's daughter's excess energy had all been burned out, so the two of them didn't so much run, as amble towards their dinner as the dying of the sun in the sky summoned the flickering street-lights. The day after tomorrow was the first day of classes, for both of them. Dusk Shine wondered if they were truly ready.