01 ~ 11th of April 1921 ~ Homecoming

Blue and Rose reached their hometown. Half of it was a full-time working site. Houses and buildings were still being repaired or rebuilt.

The few houses left to decay were telling that the family was either dead or gone.

The streets were black and grey, sootier than one could imagine. Everyone was wearing long boots outside the buildings.

It was a little of a strange sight to see this wounded town being repaired, but it was lively. Everyone was working as a large family and easily helping each other.

The Herson manor was outside of town, on top of a hill closely. It was the gift of a lord to the community a few decades ago and served as on orphanage for a while. Then a tragedy occurred because of famine and the big house was abandoned for years. At the very end of the previous century, their father bought it, soon settling with his newly wed spouse.

The family had so much good memories there. But on that fateful day, it was burned to the ground. The walls were a shallow shell over a mountain of soot and charcoal.

The sisters walked slowly toward the main gate, which had been left open since Rose left. Behind, they could see the house with sky behind every window. The wall was black now, contrasting even more with the windows. The eyes of the dead.

The main door was gone, and wreckage was blocking the corridor anyway. They made their way around through the garden.

The fountain in the middle of the circular rear garden was not functioning, but was still standing. There was still some flowerbeds and rosebushes intact. Following the path behind the house, were a part of the roof had fallen somehow, they reached the lounge door.

Rose was about to enter but Blue stopped.

On the side, next to the sled left unburn, there were visible traces of ploughing on the ground.

A large square had been dug and filled again.

There was the gravestone of their father next to this square of upturned earth, and Blue understood their mother and remaining sisters were now with him.

Rose said softly how sorry she was, but Blue couldn’t hear her. She walked very slowly toward the square of ground and sat on the bench in front of it.

She was absentminded. She sighed but couldn’t cry somehow... Rose came to sit by her side.

B - I... have memories of them; inside the train... But it was so different...

R - What were they showing, or saying?

Blue was overwhelmed by short memories of Scarlett and Elise being mean with her... But that was not all.

She could remember things spoken differently, whispered directly to her very soul. Softer sounds...

S - Oh, Mary... It’s been a while... How do you do my dear?

Bitter sounds overall... Blue lost a tear and answered.

B - They were suffering... Because I had forgotten them; and Esther was only going to help me, only me... They were both so sad... But they loved me despite everything we did... Elise wrote a... promise, for you and me... Then there was pain and sadness again...

R - Sorrow, and love...

B - I feel so guilty toward then... They were my sisters... They felt betrayed by me all the time... I’m so sorry...

E - And yet, I wrote you that recipe... And yet, I wrote you that letter...

A letter Blue was clenching on. The last feelings of her blood sisters...

Blue burst into tears again, hiding her face between her hands. There was still too much emotions for her to fear. She stained the letter a bit.

Rose comforted her softly. They would take the time they needed. They were planning to rebuild everything

The ghosts were still so vivid in Blue’s mind, it was almost like being haunted.

She was feeling completely powerless about her own existence.

Hopefully, someone she could and did trust was along with her.

Slowly, very slowly. They were going to rebuild everything; their house, their life and their mind.

~

They returned to the town before night. They would stay with distant family friends for a few nights.

As there were a lot of daily workers available in town, they would be able to start working on the ruins as soon as the next day would rise.

Rose would go sort the posts at the shop first of all. This business had been on hold since the tragedy. She would need to sort things out to start it again. Between contractors left without reply for more than a month and suppliers left in the same midst of uncertainty, she would need to write a lot of business posts in the following weeks.

Every contact that had been lost or left aside during that whole painful time would have to be found again.

Before considering reopening the shop, they needed to mend the web behind it; as it had considerably shrunk.

Blue had rarely seen the shop during her childhood and would be utterly unable to help her sister in that regard.

Actually, although she was in age to work, she could not remember any experience of it.

But this, her memory was almost not tricking her.

Because of her sudden and seemingly random bursts of partial amnesia, her troubles communicating at times, she had been cared for and somewhat spoiled by her family. As the last daughter, and sickly one, in a family with comfortable income, she didn’t keep any job brought her way to try, until then.

She had actually even volunteered for various jobs as an apprentice, but her memory and communication troubles made every attempt end up awkwardly. She sometimes could forget up to a week had passed and making her even forget she had started something before. She had never been reliable in any social way.

In the end, she was more suitable for common housework where memory loss and drop in cognitive behaviour would not handicap her. After a crisis, she would just need to check what was left to do on a list.

She learned to sew and craft stuffed animals with her mother in the past, but it did not become her job yet. She would now consider it onward since they were on their own to provide their next income.

Blue’s mind was finally seeing some of these aspects and discrepancies from her past behaviour.

She realised a little more how she had been all this time before the tragedy, and how she would need to help Rose onward.

These new sensations were accompanied with the lingering whispers of the ghosts she felt she had met inside the train.

Blue looked around and into herself, feeling that everything and the entire world had changed, but was clear enough to realise it was only her that had. A veil had been lifted inside her mind, and she now felt this push into adulthood widely.

~

The evening with the married couple of family friends was something warm, which both young women discovered again as if it had been the first time.

A nice hot soup and a bit of bitter wine over a long friendly chat was something long forgotten fort both of them, and unexpected.

While Rose did most of the talking, Blue was feeling at ease with these two persons. A joking old man with a large scar on the face, only dating from the town fire, and a chubby woman with grey and greasy hair and the sincerest of smiles.

The sisters could not yet laugh as much as they might have, for what had occurred in their life. They had lost all their family along with a wounding separation; while the couple only got a scar on a forehead.

Yet, while they seemed to laugh at life together, probably after harsh things they lived through, strengthened by their age and experience; they were also respectful of the young and sad ones at their table. They never asked them jokingly to laugh or smile for a while. They also knew how awful it was to hear insensitive things when suffering.

They respected the sisters and played around never trying to bring the harmful topic. They would never pressure then to talk about it. They would agree to talk about it and listen to them without hesitating, but never forced them to do so. They only focused on keeping the mood light and lively, inviting their guests along.

They were there to help then in anything they would want, with enough respect not to step ahead unless asked too.

The young Herson ladies felt they were with the friends they needed.

~

The dinner over, they went to the room their friends lent them, to sleep early. They were exhausted and their light constitution didn’t help them resist alcohol effects. Blue was feeling dizzy.

The room belonged to the couple’s son until a few years prior. Rose wasn’t sure if he had left or died and couldn’t manage to ask then. She wanted to be as polite with them as they were toward herself and her sister.

They shared the old bed which still smelled like burned wood and ashes. The scents from the city that awful day had sank into everything, and still could be found in places like there.

But for the first time since the day they left the hospital together, Blue fell asleep quickly and deeply.

Exhausted but alive, she had the best night she had in ages.

Rose could see her sleeping peacefully for the first time.

It was a relief for her too. Maybe no bad dreams through the night this time?

~

12th of April, 1921

~

When Blue woke up, the sun rays were coming straight into the room through the opening left by the curtains. It was full morning already.

She found herself alone in the room. Her heartbeat went a bit faster, but she was able to cool it down easily. Rose probably went to their shop in town. They had discussed it before. And if she felt up to the task, she could start hiring workers to clean the ruins of the house. It was needed, before considering the main work.

Something disturbing was swelling in that shady room. Blue could remember something and was scared. Each time anxiety came, she was almost hearing the distant rumble of a train.

While fearing that sound in the air, she recalled to herself a bit of her last dream.

It was a dark place, darker than black. It left like a jail inside. There was something in the dark. Something she could only imagine as there was no way to see it or hear it. Something hidden in the shades were she was lost. It was the stereotypical fear of darkness that came in a rush within that dream.

And then she saw something falling slowly, spinning. A small feather was falling. Looking more closely at it, she saw the feather was blue... A moment later, she had been waking up.

Blue could not help but be worried about it. She managed to push the thought and thing aside still, to focus on more important and real subjects.

Reality was different than a dream. There were so much things being and happening at any time, solely close to her, there would be no end if trying to describe them all.

Her mind felt much better in reality, aware, and conscious. She could tell something had changed, since most of the blur and fog in her perceptions of the world were now cleared.

Blue left the bed and went to dress herself with her town clothes. Something not as dirty as their travelling clothes. She did not like the touch of that long dress on her legs, but she had to look like a proper lady to do what she needed to.

In the main room of the house, there was no one left, but a breakfast was awaiting her. She wasn’t hungry because of the stress from her coming duty, cutting short her appetite. She packed a sandwich in a piece of cloth and put it in her apron for later. She checked her hair and clothes again before heading to the door.

She left the louse nervously.

The street was another world with a lot of various noises and many people going up and there, all the time. She held her fidgety hands together, holding herself straight.

Blue had to work her way through to a hiring spot in the middle of town for the daily labourers.

She took a short breath and pushed herself forward in the street, as if swimming through cold waters.

She walked briskly amidst a small crowd speaking loudly. She was clenching her hands trying to manage her large blend of phobias at hand in the situation.

While she was feeling dizzy, Blue did it well enough.

~

She distanced herself from a group as they were going to a worksite across the street. She kept walking in the muddy and sooty paths until she reached a small square where more people came and went along.

The trees in it were reduced to black claws like skeletons of themselves. They looked a little ghastly to her.

When getting closer to it, she was a little reassured to see a few buds sprouting here and there. A soft touch of greenery.

Still, the place was not really welcoming. Blue went across the square and into another dusty street. Only a few people were passing by in that one, but soon enough many more would appear.

It was strange to see the streets ground so dark when a large number of buildings were unscathed and colourful.

The tragedy had been caused from an explosion in a deep part of the nearly coal mine.

It produced a large amount of blackened dust and soot along with the fires that ensued.

The town had suffered a disaster reminding of a war, the survivors now eager to put it all behind.

While they were away, they missed the numerous grieving and processions of memories.

Now was the time to rebuild, and everyone was clearly motivated to get it done fast.

The first day following the tragedy, it probably rained dark ashes Blue thought.

She was there at that time, but probably still unconscious. She still had no recollection of that time.

She did not feel frustrated from missing the according sights, as it surely had been an awful series of moments.

From what Rose had told her, she might have seen her mothers and sisters die in the fire.

Blue had conflicted feelings about her memory loss.

The people living here were eager to make the town rapidly look as if the tragedy was long in the past.

She could relate to that feeling.

Putting this stress aside, now she wanted to do her best to help with what was ahead.

Blue was not used to sell things as a merchant, and even less to hire people. She was not confident with her ability to successfully negotiate and make the sales.

But she wanted to try...

Hopefully, in her current nervous stance, she was unable to think about the worst case scenarios that would otherwise petrify her.

~

Soon enough, Blue reached the corner to a larger street, where a local hiring spot was set.

They were all speaking very loudly. Most of the people hiring workers were construction managers and chiefs of building companies, hiring extra hands to work on more sites at the same time. They left their usual and experienced employees lead smaller teams of daily workers apparently.

There were a few women hiring too she noticed, and others looking for the job offers. But from where Blue stood, these ones looked like men as well.

In that constant ruckus, Blue would never be able to scream loud enough to be heard and still being polite. She was too small to make an impression and too weak to manage her way through that wrestle.

But there was another way to reach her goal she could figure out. The written way. There was actually a desk and a register at that spot, not just people yelling. Even if most workers went and left without even looking at the desk, some used it as an agenda for a list of workers and contractors and a message board for various offers.

Speaking to the man writing and working around that desk all day long, she could maybe find some people to work for her without needing to add noise to the ruckus.

And if workers were agreeing on a booking, they would search their employer too... For five minutes maybe. Afterward, they would surely go somewhere else, given how plenty was still to do.

She managed to find her way through the chaotic and sweaty crowd and found the ledger.

The injured old man behind his desk looked at her without as much surprise or contempt as she feared he would.

She had trouble speaking and asked the thing all too politely and meekly, but he seemed to agree.

He searched some names on his large book and wrote three of them with an old pen on a shred of brown paper. He lifted it, saying they should be back soon.

Blue thanked him when he handed to her the paper and asked him what was the average daily pay to give them.

She could not relate to the answer he gave, since she was not used to handling money.

She stepped back, trying to recollect her lacking understanding of money and values.

Blue realised then she had no clue of what “they should be back soon” could mean. Most workers had already started their day of work. They probably were not coming from another site therefore.

She waited for a moment beside the desk, hands behind her back. Her dress was already dirty. She saw it, a little sadden therefore. She already had made a mess of herself, which brought back some uneasy emotions. She understood she was not careful enough when walking these streets.

Maybe half on hour went up, and the crowd vanished almost miraculously. The noise went slowly down, and she didn’t realise the silence was there before it was entirely settled.

Before she could worry, the man said they were arriving.

A new crowd was getting close. They were workers coming by the first train from another town. They couldn’t get there earlier, but they ended their day later on as well.

Because of the train fare, they were usually asking for a higher wage. But to do the journey, they also proved to be more skilled in their domain. Blue had a timid smile, appreciating the idea of patience bringing better outcomes.

Next to the young woman she was, were other employers and team leaders waiting for this new crowd to arrive.

The team gathered up, and Blue waited. Many of the men left the place without even looking at the officer. The few remaining men without job for the day spoke to him then.

Blue couldn’t overhear what he said to all of them, but he probably hinted a few words about her.

Four men at last twice, and maybe three times her weight, got closer to her. They weren’t really tall, but they were heavier than the average man while she was skinny.

She tried her best not to appear afraid by them. She noticed how their wrists were as large and muscled as her legs might be. It was the first thought crossing her mind, to her bewilderment.

She still had to look upward to see their faces. Something reassuring to her was their expressionless visages.

They would not bully her or make fun of her. They were here to get a job and get the job done; no more, no less.

Even if she felt that polite formalities were unnecessary in this time of need, she was compelled by her anxiety to introduce herself before talking about the work. She struggled for a moment.

B - I... I am miss Herson. My family home is outside of town and would need a cleaning before the start of the main reconstruction work...

The four men exchanged looks without a word. Blue felt under pressure.

She told then she would pay the usual price for the day.

There was a good walk to reach the place. So because they would start later than usual and then need to leave early to catch their train, it was a reasonably generous offer. Blue did not realise that though. The taller worker answered with an unexpectedly normal voice.

- Sounds good. Lead us.

Blue felt a little proud hearing her success and did a small bow, mechanically. She turned around and started to walk away. They were following her steadily.

~

That same morning, Rose had woken up earlier than everyone else in the house. She left the warmth of the quite soft bed and dressed blindly. She was used to do things silently and in darkness for some reason she could not quite explain. She never had need to be that quiet, it was just instinct.

She ate something frugal and left the house. Outside, the dawn was ending just then, but many people were already working.

There were working noises everywhere, but it was not loud yet. She wanted to cross town while that moderate expression of calm lasted. She walked quite hastily, keeping her dress a bit lifted above her ankles to avoid messing it with mud.

Soon enough, she reached the family shop. It was so dark that the slop front looked almost like a part of the wall. The wide windows were so black they looked like they had been painted. No one had come to clean them yet.

It was a painfully strange thing to see.

Rose unlocked the door with the spare key she had recovered at their friends’ house. She stepped back when opening it, letting a curtain of ashes fall to the ground first. A quiet reminder.

She then stepped inside the dark place. It reeked of ashes, simply ashes... She would need years and swarms of flowers to make that awful smell go away... She was tired of that smell...

Next to the door, Rose opened the mailbox. It was filled to the brim with various posts that scattered on the ground to her surprise. There was tenfold the amount of letters she expected. She piled them up and brought the stack to the counter hidden in the shades. She let go of the posts there and went to close the door behind.

On second thought seeing low little light was successfully passing the window, she changed her mind and left it open wide.

~

Rose took the remaining posts scattered on the floor to put them with the others. She paused for a moment, listening closely...

There were no sounds coming from anywhere but the street... The voice of Scarlett reaching her from the back of the shop was now gone... It would never be heard anywhere else or ever again.

Rose had stopped there for a moment, lingering on that.

Somehow, realising she would only have past memories of these kind of events and times from now on, she felt deeper she had lost her sister. Scarlett was dead...

Even if they had not always been in the best of terms with each other, they still had loved each other.

Now in that absence here, Rose was abruptly missing her.

Scarlett’s voice in the back room... And when Rose was entering the workshop, her silhouette.

Scarlett was never binding her hair, even when working with sewing machines, which was quite dangerous. Her hair had been beautiful, and she simply had been the prettiest of them all. She had been a nice sight when working there, trying to keep this odd shop profitable.

Rose now missed that soft painting in a corner of her sight, and sweetly sharp voice...

Scarlett was no more, and Rose now felt how much and truly she was affected by her loss... Since the tragedy, she had been too obsessed with finding Blue and her recovery to face that yet.

But now that she had succeeded in that regard, she could feel the return of what she had pushed aside all that time. Her younger sister Scarlett was dead, and the emotion stirred her mind up.

She had to sit. She had to cry for a while.

She missed her so much...

~

Rose sat there in the shades, hopelessly for a while.

She had secured what was the most important for her, meaning Blue. But what she had lost along was still great for her... her two other sisters, a house, their mother...

She had done everything to find Blue because she was important for her; but also, because she was everything left from her life that the tragedy had not suddenly swept away.

What would she have done if Blue had been gone that night, her body found?

Rose would have been left all alone, with too much painfully sweet memories. Life would be a living nightmare... Or rather, the blissed past would become a dream, and reality a living hell.

Knowing she would never live that dream again... She would not have been able to bear such a reality.

If Blue too had died, she realised she would have probably killed herself shortly after...

Rose was depressed in that place.

She managed to stand against her twisted procrastination and decided to leave.

She grabbed a suitcase from under the desk and filled it with the posts. There were at least eighty enveloppes... How could so much post could gather in only a little more than two months?

They never got so much correspondence before...

Rose would probably understand why by reading it, but she would do so elsewhere. This place was too much to bear for her right now.

She took a pen, a vial of ink and a box of white clean paper. She would probably need more than a day to write all the needed replies she thought.

Rose closed the suitcase and left the place. Closing the door of the shop, she realised she had left the key on it all this time. She locked it, a bit doubtful that anything would happen if she did not.

She lifted a bit her dress and left the place.

Getting far away from the shop was the best thing to do for her spirits currently.

She knew where she wanted to go, but got a little worried about Blue.

Would she be able to do what was needed?

Blue was not a child anymore, and not as absent-minded as before. Rose wanted to believe she most probably would manage on her own as well.

~

It happened while Blue was on the road leading to the manor. They were all walking quite silently. She was leading the way, trying not to think about it.

They were a bit nervous because it was unusual to go so far away in the side country to work... And going by foot was taking time.

Did the town fires propagate so far away from the centre? They were not sure... The reality was a little more complicated apparently.

The explosion in the mine underground had expelled all the flames in town from below, more than through the mine entrance; and underground coal veins and fissures had also ignited through the bedrock at that time. In a large area around, the shockwave had created rifts, fissures, and small fires or gas exhausts sometimes.

The Herson manor despite being quite distant from the city was unfortunately located above a large underground series of mineral veins, and then too close to some gas pockets.

Nobody was sure about every little detail, but along with the mine underground explosion, some spots all around town were caught up in flames, and the manor suddenly found itself filling with flames and toxic fumes as well.

The workers understood this situation a little more when their walk was crossing large scars on the ground here and there. Small crevices and holes had spewed soot along the road and paths.

It had not been a mere single gallery explosion.

The entire undergrounds and mines network of the area had been ravaged, putting a brutal end to the local mining prospection and industry.

Blue had her time realising her survival story was nothing special. Everyone still standing in town had lost someone or more.

And now, it was their turn to rebuild a life from the ashes.

They still had a few minutes to walk before reaching the gates of the property.

Soon they would all see in the front yard of the manor, a few of these dark scars were left on the ground, as if lighting had tried to rip the ground apart, or small volcanoes attempted to rise. They could tell the top of this small hill had likely been the chimney of a funnel for the fires below.

But as they were still on their way and reaching the woods, one of the workers asked a painful question.

It was the taller man one who spoke out of the blue.

He was probably the talkative one of the group Blue thought.

- Excuse me Miss... Did you receive a wound to the head recently?

Blue couldn’t understand what he meant right away. But she realised he was taller and walking behind her. He probably saw in her hair the multiple scars she had. Some hair had already started to grow back above it, but she had been shaved on a small spot for a trepan.

Thinking about it, with her hair still being dirty from the journey; her lead was probably not really pleasant to look at. Blue touched the back and top of her head to feel some of the scars. Some dried blood got off and stained her fingers. One of the sutures had open itself again recently... That was why he asked that. He saw the bits of blood.

Blue felt somehow nothing about that nor the state of her head. She looked at him, expressionless like they were, to answer.

B - It must have opened up again, that’s all...

She turned back, continuing to walk.

B - I received a lot of wounds to the head indeed...

With that kind of answer, they would not ask anything more, but they didn’t wish to pry anyway. They were not curious but a little worried maybe. Blue looked failed already, but with these stains on her head, her empty cheeks and pale complexion, she looked like she was about to die or pass out any minute.

In the end she was healthier that one would think. She successfully brought them to the front of the house.

The front wall was dark, but still as large and high as before. It was a very large house... Larger than any in town probably. They called it their manor.

Maybe it impressed the men, because they walked at a slower pace when getting closer to the house. Perhaps it was the other incendiary scars along the way they noticed being unattended so far.

A few meters away from the main entrance, Blue turned around and simply told then, plainly.

B - I want you to start the cleaning of this house. It will be rebuilt as it once was in time.

- We have to check if the site is secure first of all. If the walls could collapse, it could be easier to bring then down also.

Blue thought for a moment about that. She was attached to what the manor had been, but not overly emotional in the face of pragmatic issues and prospects.

B - Please check everything you need to. About destroying the walls, I’ll agree if it’s really necessary. Oh, and one more thing. If you can bring other people to help the work starting tomorrow, please do.

- How many people can you hire?

Blue didn’t really know, her sister was holding the finances and managing their inheritance.

B - How many people could work on a demolition and reconstruction site like that?

The two men on the side took a better look around and agreed on something.

- Easy twelve for now. Above twenty would be a waste of labour work and your money. When the main construction will start it will be more people though. Could work in shifts as well, or hire a company to oversee it.

B - Okay... Between twelve and twenty for starter. Then if you come back with twelve more people tomorrow, it would be fine

Once this was agreed on. They started to walk around the house. They would look around before anything else, to make sure nothing would fall up on them or collapse below.

When reaching the main garden, Blue was surprised to see her sister sitting behind a large desk, seemingly working with papers and sorting then in the plain outdoors.

They looked at each other with some emotion. Rose waved slightly at her and nodded a welcome at the workers. Blue did a small wave back. They would talk later. Blue kept guiding the small tour.

~

Once the tour was over, they set foot inside the ruins. It was a common burned house. Most of the ceilings had fallen to the ground. Each level was missing more ground and ceiling than the previous. The roof had fully disappeared.

The ground level was clogged with the burnt remains of everything else in various places.

It was a hazardous site, but it could be worked out. The walls were pretty large and heavy, and they were made of real stone that had apparently not been too damaged by the temperature. The outer walls would be kept.

They could use the garden tools kept in the small shed behind the garden, that was unexpectedly well furbished.

A painful question came though.

- We could need to set some piles of trash and rubbish where the garden is. It that a problem?

B - You want to remove the Rose bushes? I... Well, do what you must... I’ll see if I can dig and move them elsewhere before this happen...

- You don’t want us to do it for you?

Blue did not expect it. She thought at first they would only do construction work. But after all, there was something else to it.

B - No, you don’t need to. I was planning to help you anyway. So please focus on the main thing, I will take care of that.

One of them couldn’t help but grin when he heard her saying she was planning to help then.

B - I know what I am... But I can do menial tasks, and my doctors said I should do a lot of exercise...

It was true. Rose, who overheard them, did recall a doctor saying it.

Although it was a little true for her as well...

- Alright then... Let’s start this.

The work began that day.

~

R - Congratulation Blue!

B - Thank you...

R - Oh. You wonder why I am here? Actually, the shop is as dark as coffin. It made me feel depressed. So I came to work all that paper here instead. The weather is merciful enough as well.

B - I understand what you mean. Well, things are starting to move, right?

R - Oh yes. And seing how many letters of worries we received, I can tell you the business is not dead... But still... Congratulations!

B - Thank you Mary...

~