the great american pastime. axyl&harley, day 1.

The little light keeps dancing on one spot, twirling and trilling to get Harley's attention. Eventually she stops her mundane search and stomps over to it, spitting a nasty "What?!" in its direction. The Seelie quivers slightly, head bowed and light dimming, but it raises a tiny little hand to point to the spot in the snow.

Harley bites her lip to keep her face from crumbling. Maybe it's the cold, or the shock, or the paranoia eating up at her with every minute that passes without a weapon in her hands, but she feels... off. More susceptible to empathy. She can't be feeling like that on day one. What is she, a fuckin' crybaby like Brielle Prescott?

Fuck no. With a hmph! she crouches down and paws at the spot in the snow until she sees-

A hiss of pain. A thin lick of red across her thumb. Harley jumps back instinctively, wound to her mouth to suck out poison. There's no venomous trap there, no - something else. In the Seelie's glow she sees it: a sliver of reflection, a shift in the light.

A knife.

Relief floods through her veins as she leans forward and snatches at the unsheathed knife, letting a gasp of air greet its blade, fog up the glint of her own green eyes. She spins it in her hand, once, twice, grips it and grins something wicked.

"Huh," her eyes shift from the knife to the floating creature. "Find me something else and I'll think about letting you stick around."

The creature trills, runs off, and a few moments later a gentle glow is heaving something wooden in its tiny little hands. It takes all of its effort to haul the object through the snow, the nails drilled into the sides of what Harley discovers is a baseball bat aiding in its struggle.

"This hunk-a-junk?" Harley frowns, taking pity on the struggling wee thing as she slips the knife in her jacket pocket and picks up the bat. Batter up; the Royce family used to play in the park back before everything went to shit. Harley can see it as clear as day as she swings through the air, the cool whoosh at her ears a strange comfort.

Maxen had a killer throw and was faster to bases than Harley, but she always had the best swing. A deadly arm that thwacked balls out of the makeshift neighbourhood pitch in Three for home runs over and over and over again. Baseballs turned to skulls turned to snowballs, Harley clumps a ball of muddy ice together and lobs it high into the sky. 

Batter up! 

A crack and the snow explodes. Flakes and clumps fall around her as the bittersweet memories swell like the roaring of a crowd, cackling all the while as she hits balls of snow over and over and over again. She hits one, two, three, then one makeshift snowball that's more ice than water sails over the roof of the cabin - home run!

Harley begins to sprint, glowing creature right behind her, through the empty snowfield below the cabin stairs.

[ coding by griffin ]