Chapter Text
The morning came both far too quickly and as fast as expected. With it came the conflicting feelings of having had the expected amount of sleep for how long she was unconscious and simultaneously not enough. Laraine expected to wake up to her phone alarm, as she usually does before a day of classes that are more like a job, where she’ll hopefully finish off animating that last shot for her and her team’s short film. Though, knowing 3D animation, it will likely drag out over a few more days or she’ll find something lacking in one of her previous shots and have to rework it to fit her own standards, as she has numerous times already. No alarm came, however. Instead, Laraine blinks awake to find herself staring at an unfamiliar wall. She stretches and feels the strange sensation of a nightgown tangling around her legs. Confusion pulls at her mind. She hates wearing nightgowns unless she’s run out of options. She’s always preferred the oversized t-shirt and sleep shorts over being trapped by the too long fabric of nightgowns, she moves too much in the night for the pulling and protesting of the garment to be comfortable. Wiggling much too similarly to a demented worm to untangle herself, Laraine mentally wakes up more and more and further notices how the blanket is too thin and the wrong colour to be from her bed.
Oh yeah. Laraine thinks to herself, slumping onto her back when the nightgown is untangled enough. I’m not at home anymore.
Grabbing her phone that she had put on the side table late last night before she went to bed, knowing that she would want to go on it when she woke up like usual, she stared at her lockscreen, not knowing what she was expecting. The clock changed from 10:13am to 10:14am, hours ahead of the real time, against her background of someone's garden art that she found on Pinterest some months ago and never bothered to change. There were no notifications, no bars or Wi-Fi, and the battery said 63%. Oh, right. It’s meant to be Saturday today, she thinks, reading the date on the screen before it goes dark from inactivity. Her alarm goes off at 11am on weekends. Mostly as an incentive to wake up if she hasn’t already. Turning her phone back on again, she unlocks it with her thumb print and goes right for her clock settings to turn off her alarms, surmising that she probably won’t be needing them for now. Besides, she’s already awake. With that done, she hesitates on the home screen before heading to her texts and opening her mum’s contact. Their previous conversations sprawl upwards, the latest message from two days before when Laraine had to tell her that she was going to be taking the later train to get home and her mum’s thumbs up response. Laraine stared at that thumbs up for longer than she would like to admit. Her thumbs hover over the keyboard for a long time. She knows she has no bars, no reception, no Wi-Fi, no data to connect. She knows she’s something like 60 years in the past in an entirely different country. She knows that it will never go through. And yet, she types. “ i’m okay, mum.” And ignored the tremor in her thumb as she pressed send. Ignored the red exclamation mark that immediately followed on her forever unsent message. Her fingers carefully kept typing and sending, ignoring how each message had their own red mark.
“i don’t know how long I’m going to be away from home”
“I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t know how i got here or why, but I'm trying”
“i know you’re probably worried but I'm ok”
The words burn into her eyes, or maybe it’s the tears trying to form. ‘- i’m ok’ she had sent. I’m not okay, she thinks to herself, and she can barely hold in the sob that suddenly tries to burst from her chest. I’m not okay , she thinks, and she curls herself into the bed, facing the wall and away from the world. Her phone is pressed to her chest, the contact of her mum still open and filled with texts she’ll never receive. The kind of scratchy, too thin and wrong coloured blanket is pulled over her head and Laraine lets the wet feeling of her tears wash over her face and her muffled sobs fill the little space she’s made for herself.
She ignored the gentle sound of tiles clattering in sympathy by the bed. She ignored the creaking of the doors on the windows swinging and trying to get her attention. And she ignored how the sounds faded away without her response before the bed started gently rocking as though to soothe an upset babe. She ignored this too.
It’s sometime after her sobs had decreased to sniffles, the rocking had stopped, and the sniffles turned to heavier breathing than the average person that there was a gentle knock on the door. Muffled from the wood separating them, Julieta called her name along with some Spanish she still didn’t understand.
Laraine sagged even further into the bed now that her time to sulk and be depressed by her lonesome was over for now. Sniffling to stop the watery snot from leaking out of her nose, she sat up on the too stiff bed and felt her head pound from the dehydration of her cry session. She dug through her bag for her tissues and cleared out her nose and wiped her face. When she got up to get dressed in her clothes from yesterday – considering she didn’t have any others to wear – a couple tiles clacked quietly in the corner by the wardrobe where she had stashed her clothes, not wanting them to become wrinkled from being stuffed in her already stuffed full bag.
“I’ll be okay, Casita.” she sighed. The tiles clacked even more, seemingly not believing her.
“Eventually,” she mumbled. The tiles didn’t move. Laraine got dressed. Before leaving the room, she hesitated for a long time beside the bed, wondering if she should bring her phone with her. Logically, she knows it’ll be of no use to her, but emotionally, she’s not used to being without it. After a period of hesitation, her logical side won out. She powered off her phone completely, knowing she had to conserve as much battery as possible and even went as far as to put it inside the drawer of the side desk. She didn’t know if anyone would come into her room. To do laundry, maybe? But she wasn’t quite ready to explain her time traveller status just yet when she’s struggling with existing so far away from home already. With one last moment to herself, she heads off to where she thought the kitchen was.
______________________________________________________________________________
After eating a ridiculously delicious breakfast that would turn to ash in her mouth when she thought about her family back home, she ended up waiting at the table for Bruno to come out of his room and start her lessons. After Julieta had finished cleaning up from cooking (she had swatted her away once again when she tried to help), and Pepa had made her appearance (to grab a cup of coffee) and disappeared again, they were left on their own. Laraine felt strangely nervous. She had never been alone with Julieta before. Though it was only the second day so she reasoned to herself that it would probably be a reoccurring thing.
Julieta quickly left the room. Or not, she thought. But Julieta quickly reappeared holding some neatly folded clothing in her arms. Laraine found herself ushered into a bathroom with the clothes shoved in her arms. She took the opportunity to do her business and assessed the clothes she was given. A plain white blouse with a second coral shell edged layer attached to the neckline that draped to the edge of the shoulders and a plain greenish-teal skirt that looked like it went to mid-calf. Along with a type of baggy pants that cinched around the knee area for under the skirt. There wasn’t that much personality to the outfit and Laraine knew she would be much more comfortable with her pants and t-shirt and maybe her jacket, but she knew from yesterday that the weather was very different here compared to back at home.
She put on the clothes and looked in the mirror. It didn’t quite fit her. The blouse was too tight on the chest since she inherited a larger bust from her mother and was also tight around the shoulders. Contrariwise, it was too loose around the stomach and bunched a bit awkwardly where it was tucked into the skirt. Laraine tried untucking it, but it looked sloppy and gave her a boxy shape that was unflattering, so she re-tucked it and tried to make an artificial fold where the band of the skirt started so that the creasing was less obvious. It kind of worked, if you didn’t look too hard. Next, she looked at the skirt. The colour was fine, in fact she thought it matched her eyes quite well. However, it was a bit too loose at the waist and too tight at the hips. It wasn’t the first time she cursed her hips for being so wide and high up, giving her considerable hip dips that made most pants not fit her correctly. And now she could add the skirt to the list. The skirt was also a bit shorter than she expected it to be, ending closer to her knees than the mid-calf she was expecting, though she didn’t mind this as much. It would help with the heat.
Julieta didn’t give her any shoes, so she stuck with her sneakers even though they didn’t match the outfit at all.
She put her old clothes back in her room and headed back into the kitchen, wondering if Bruno had finally come down for her lessons.
As she was heading down the stairs, the sound of quiet and muffled Spanish reached her ears. Is Bruno finally up? She wondered. Could be Pepa, though.
Crossing through the kitchen doorway, the triplets came into view. Ah, it was all three.
Bruno was sitting at the table, eating a plate of breakfast that was probably almost cold at this point while Pepa was talking with Julieta who was in the process of making the food of the day for the village people and to give out later. Pepa had an empty plate next to her with some crumbs on it, so Laraine assumed she’d eaten while she was changing.
Pepa was the one to notice her standing just through the doorway, unsure of what to do. Laraine was once again amazed to see a rainbow appear above her head, giving her another halo and making her curly red hair look closer to fire. Pepa greeted her enthusiastically – or at least she hoped it was a greeting – and quickly got up from her seat. When Laraine blinked Pepa was suddenly in front of her and Pepa had her arms in her own, pulling her to a seat on the table next to her. Julieta turned from her cooking for a moment and gave her a warm smile that made Laraine feel a bit bashful before returning to her cooking. Pepa and Julieta kept talking throughout the whole interaction, but Laraine still didn’t know nearly enough Spanish to even begin to understand what they were talking about.
A squeak came from the table and Laraine quickly looked down. “Frankie!” she greeted with a smile. The speckled rat had been a little shaken up after their little trip through Casita the day before and hadn’t stuck around for long after escaping her pocket, but she’d tried not to feel too upset about it. It was nice to know that the cute little rat hadn’t run away or anything.
Frankie squeaked in response and came closer to the edge, sitting up on her hind legs. Laraine gave in to her urges and started giving her head scritches which quickly turned into quiet coos and a double ear massage that had Frankie melting into her hands with a pleased face and closed eyes. Laraine couldn’t keep the soft smile off her face if she tried. Frankie was just being too cute.
Pepa laughed loudly at something Julieta said and Laraine looked up from her affection session and immediately caught the eyes of Bruno sitting across from her. Eyes that were wide and staring at her unblinkingly with cheeks stuffed pull of food like a chipmunk. Bruno seemed frozen in place and Laraine froze in turn. Upon realising that she was looking back at him, Bruno’s cheeks dusted a bit red, and he coughed as he turned away, clearly trying not to choke on the food in his mouth while also suffering the embarrassment of being caught. Laraine also looked away, back down to Frankie who had almost fallen asleep in her hands. I understand, Bruno , she thought to herself, I too, want to die of embarrassment when someone catches me staring. She scratched under Frankie’s chin and earned a pleased squeak and cute little rat smile of happiness that made her heart squeeze.
“-Laraine!” Pepa called. She quickly snapped to attention. Pepa was halfway out the door and waved at her, seemingly on her way out for the day.
“Ciao!” Laraine said, not quite able to remember if that was the correct word for goodbye or if she had just said the Italian version of the word.
From the slightly confused look on Pepa’s face it was the wrong one and Laraine had to struggle not to shrink and die from embarrassment. Oh look, she thought miserably, I've joined you in death by embarrassment, Bruno...
After a while of her stewing in quiet self-pity, Bruno quietly cleared his throat, and she redirected her attention back onto him. He wasn’t quite looking at her, but he pointed a mildly trembling hand at the vase of flowers sitting a bit off to the side but still in the centre between them. His finger brushed a yellow flower that she didn’t know the name of but was quite pretty.
“Flor,” he said, his eyes glancing at her expectantly before looking away again. His ears seemed to turn a bit red, hidden behind his curls.
“Flor.” She repeated, diligently. And so, her Spanish classes began anew.
Not long after they began her lessons for the day and Julieta had confirmed Bruno wasn’t going to completely mess it up and frustrate the both of them, she too left to fulfil her duties for the day.
The rest of the day continued much as it had the day before. Laraine found herself back in bed, in that too long white nightgown in a bed that was too stiff and on the wrong side of the room, trying to fall asleep. This time, however, there was much less exhaustion willing to pull her into the depths of slumber and it took much longer for Morpheus to grasp her consciousness and pull her under.