Cara #1 (freewrite fiction)

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When Cara was good, they allowed her to go outside and play in the grass. Alone and completely unsupervised, or so she thought, in any case oblivious to the old nanny spying on her from the front room window, Cara played on the little porch for hours.

Or maybe not.

Nobody had taught Cara how to tell time, so she had no way of knowing how long it had been. They only let her out during the day, she knew that, and it was always warm. She was never let out in during the cold times, although Cara didn’t know why. It must’ve had something to do with the whiteness on the ground. Cara was afraid of the whiteness and with good reason. Once, her nanny had gone away during the cold times and when she’d come back, she’d been all red, like she was sick somehow. It frightened Cara and she decided right there she would never go out when it was cold, even if they did let her.
But of course, that was when Christopher was still around. Things were always different when Christopher was around. For one, her nanny could go away sometimes and Cara always liked it better when her nanny wasn’t around. Christopher knew all sorts of games and he sometimes even spoke to her. She used to like it when Christopher talked to her. Always when they were alone, always when nanny was out of the house, because Lord knows what she would’ve done to him if she’d heard him. Nanny never spoke to the little girl. But then, Nanny didn’t sometimes get sad for no good reason, like Christopher sometimes did.

She wished Christopher would come back already, that he’s been gone long enough, but he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t understand. You can’t understand things you can’t hear, except sometimes you can.
At least, she would’ve liked it if her nanny would go away sometimes, like she used to, if she would leave Cara alone sometimes. Because she hadn’t been able to practice ever since Christopher had gone and she was afraid she might be forgetting. Sometimes, in the dark, when she was pretty sure her nanny was sleeping, Cara would mouth the words in perfect silence, trying to remember the exact shape Christopher’s mouth had gone when he’d spoken.
But it wasn’t the same and it always upset Cara to think he might come back one day and then, nanny would go again, but she wouldn’t remember how to say anything and Christopher would never speak to her anymore.

But she couldn’t risk speaking now, because although she didn’t know she was being watched, she knew it wouldn’t be wise, not even mouth the words. There were eyes in the woods that surrounded the house and they saw things and they heard things they weren’t supposed to hear sometimes.
Cara’d always been firmly convinced that something might run out of the forest one day. That some beast would lash out and snap her up in its strong jaws before Cara’s nanny could do anything. And she’d be whisked away into the dark, to live with the beasts. And she’d never been able to tell this to anyone, so there hadn’t been anyone to sooth her and make it all go away.

A doll. One eye. Blonde hair.

Cara didn’t have blonde hair, but she didn’t remember what they called her color. But it wasn’t ‘blonde’.

A teddy bear. Old.

Like nanny, Christopher had said. But Cara didn’t know why he said that, because teddy wasn’t nearly as bad as nanny. In fact, teddy wasn’t bad at all, so how did Christoper know he was like nanny?
But Christopher thought it was funny, because he smiled and Cara smiled too. She liked smiling, too. There were a lot of things she missed about Christopher and she wondered if he might come back again before it got cold outside. And as she sat and thought about cold and old and the darkness, an idea crept into her mind, unbidden and most unusual.

She thought that she didn’t know when the cold would be coming and what if Christopher couldn’t come back before then? What if he was stuck out there in the forest, ‘cause maybe the beast had got him? Cara was afraid of the beast, even more than she was afraid of nanny, but it saddened her to think of him all alone with the beast. It seemed unfair, because if the beast had to take someone, why wouldn’t it take nanny instead?
Cara thought maybe if she could tell the beast that, or at least go and save Christopher, although she wasn’t quite sure at all how she could do that.
She looked down at her doll and thought maybe the beast only has one eye, too. Maybe it’s not as hard to get around it and maybe there is a way, even if Cara doesn’t know about it yet. But first, Cara would have to get around nanny.

And how will she do that, she wonders?

But there’s no time left to wonder, because just then the heavy iron door opens behind her and nanny calls Cara inside. Well, she just calls out ‘Cara’. Loudly.
And Cara knows what it means. Nanny knows about thirty different ways to call her name and Cara knows what each of them means.

Cara, Cara, Cara.

to be continued

This is a 5 Minute Freewrite (though not quite) based on the prompt "grass" offered by @mariannewest, who is generally awesome.

Thanks for reading,