Anne Shirley

ANNE'S BID FOR ISLAND COUNCIL - NOVEMBER 2011

I can hardly believe it's this time again already! Oh, how the days fly by when you keep your hands busy. Would you like to sign for me to run for Council again? Thank you for your time, and do enjoy one of these cookies, fresh out of the oven.

Mailbox for Mrs. Anne Shirley

Anne could do nothing at all at first, for she had a crying child in her arms and a whimpering dog at her feet and a profound sense of absence in her home and in her heart that weighed her down, kept her sitting by the bedside long after she should have begun to take care of things.

She had been here before, and oh at the time she'd thought that nothing could be worse. She wished she had been wrong, for that loss, and any losses that had come before this, were nothing compared to waking up and finding that her beloved Ariel was gone.

She could not continue to do nothing, but neither could she move forward yet, and at least she was not too proud to admit that she couldn't do this alone. After carefully pulling herself together and finding something decent for both herself and Matthew to wear, she managed to find her way to Joe's.

While her discomfort had begun some time in the night, waking her irregularly and forcing her to change positions often, it wasn't until some time after dawn that Anne realised these weren't the same kind of false contractions she'd been experiencing from time to time over the past couple of weeks. They were more regular now, a little stronger, and as she had already just passed her due date it seemed likely this was not another false alarm.

Still, she didn't say anything for a little while for it would still be some considerable time before the baby came anyway and she wanted to be quite sure this was time. Instead she sat quietly at her sewing machine - which was not at all as easy as it once was! - and put the finishing touches on a few items for the baby she'd been working on. It seemed she was going to need them very soon. Finally the early contractions grew too distracting for even that simple task, and she moved from the sewing machine to sit in a sturdy nearby chair.

"Ariel?" she said.

Anne practically flew out of the compound and towards the party, keeping her eyes open for Ariel's distinctive hair. There were a lot of people she wanted to talk to, but only one she wanted to talk to right now, and she wasn't going to stop searching till she found her no matter who might've tried to stop her to congratulate her.

She finally found Ariel outside the Hub but near the food, and without saying a word excitedly pulled her away from the crowd so that they might find some privacy. A walk behind the compound, through the garden, ought to be perfect.

Anne had certainly been kept busy in the wake of the giant waves, when a great number of people had visited the IPD office to learn just what had occured and determine what was to be done about those persons had been temporarily displaced. But as dedicated as she was to her duty, she did not hesitate to abandon her post when she heard that Ariel had been brough in to the clinic (and not only Ariel but others, though Ariel's name was the only one that stuck in her head.)

"Oh my goodness," she said, clutching at Ariel's hand as soon as she found her. "Oh Ariel, what's happened?"

Anne had gotten over the novelty of the snow, but not her delight in it, when it finally came time to make their way to the ceremony. Billy and Kate -- well, mostly Kate, but Anne wouldn't have done it without Billy present -- had helped get her ready, which had mostly consisted of pinning her hair up and making sure her dress was buttoned, but for the first time in a long time Ariel was back in her own hut, with her friend River to help her get ready. They couldn't bear to be apart, though, not on this day of all days, and met back at Anne's hut before the walk down the path to the waterfall.

The dresses weren't warm enough for the sudden and miraculous weather, but Anne had insisted that Ariel take their one coat, as Anne was more accustomed to the cold. They hadn't gotten more than twenty feet outside their hut, though, before Joe was foisting his own coat off on Anne, and would hear no arguments.

And that was exactly how they walked down the aisle, Ariel with a pirate coat over her sleeveless dress and Anne in a trenchcoat that brushed against the snowy ground when she walked.

There might have been tears in Jim Lennox's eyes when he gave Ariel away, though no one would later be able to prove it. There might have been tears in Ray Kowalski's eyes, too, when he gave away Anne; this would be easier to prove, as Christopher Robin pointed it out in a voice that carried unexpectedly when Ray rejoined him at the edge of the small group of guests.

Eostre, bundled up in a warm sweater and a coat on top, had just smiled at them for a moment as they stood before her, then seemed to come back to herself and started in on a ceremony that was both familiar and excitingly new to Anne. Most of it went by in a blur, until they got to the part where she got to both give and receive a ring all over again, and pledge once more to give her love to Ariel always.

Their kiss was soft and sweet and lasted what felt like both a very short and a very long time until they parted, smiling delightedly at one another. Anne gave Ariel an affectionate kiss on the end of her nose before they finally turned to face their guests. They were married.

There was a well-worn path now, winding from Anne's hut and across the main path through the Hamlet to Ariel's hut. The amount of time Anne spent traversing it, she thought maybe she ought to line it with stones or flowers or something pretty, but that thought always dashed from her head when she saw Ariel and her mind flitted to other things.

"I brought bananas," she said, displaying them as she approached Ariel with a radiant smile on her face. "The tiny sweet ones; I found some growing not far from my hut. These are the ones you like, right?"

Anne still hadn't fluffed up her bed to quite the way she liked it, but she could go out in the morning and gather some more leaves and grasses to stuff under her blankets; she didn't need to fix it right that moment. Perhaps she could even figure out how to build a real bedframe, though that was certainly not a priority. Still, the not-quite-fluffed bed -- or at least, that's what she assumed the problem was - left her tossing and turning a little, not sleeping quite so well as she had when she had been sharing a bed with Ariel.

That was how she came to be drowsy but awake, lying in bed after dark, when she heard some faint noises from outside her hut. It could certainly have been an animal, for there were a great many in the jungle, but Anne still called out softly.

"Who is it? Who's out there?"

Anne found that wandering the halls of the compound didn't suit her, and she had no home to go to at the moment, so she decided to put herself to use back in the IPD office again. In the aftermath of the hurricane and all of the missing people, after all, there was plenty of work to be done and rarely enough people to do it. It didn't help her think about Billy any less, or anyone else who was still missing, but at least it kept her busy.

She hadn't really thought through just who she might run into in the IPD office until it was already too late.