Title: hope in the air
Fandom: Phantom Manor
Relationship: Melanie Ravenswood/Lawrence (fiance)
Rating: G
Length: 1000 words
Summary: A year in the afterlife.

Winter gives a jolt to the air, a brisk chill that sends shivers down the spines of those still in possession of them. In some places, tall, pure snow drifts sparkle in the morning sun as it rises over rows of evergreen trees, stalwart sentinels of life in the darkest time of the year. Thunder Mesa is no such magical landscape — its winter is a still, barren cold — but still the season brings with it some little spark of ominous life in the air, a freezing wind in the black night that drives its denizens inside warm houses and warm embraces.

Melanie is used to waiting in the dark. Endless nights once seemed to swallow her days but still she persevered, believing that the lone flame faintly visible in the depths of the abyss was the sign that good things would come to her again. Now, she does not wait alone. She and Lawrence have no need of fire for warmth, but still they sit beside the fireplace, the glimmer of hope in the winter’s black void, and cling to each other like rafts in a storm, waiting for the sun to return. It is something of a triumph, that they can wait together.

Spring is a time for beginnings. The once-efflorescent gardens of the manor have fallen into decay, and it strikes Melanie as funny that what living hands neglected, dead hands now tend. The dirt is dry and hard, and it does not yield easily, but Melanie is not so easily defeated. She plants seeds of beautiful things she hopes one day to see, and brushes her hands clean of dirt that does not cling to them.

Hope is Melanie’s weapon of choice. For her, it is less the thing with feathers than it is the thing with a razor edge, and she wields it with brazen courage, as if to dare others to attempt to take it from her. The seeds she plants are promises: those she makes to herself, to succeed despite all odds, and those she makes to the garden, that she will protect the life she creates.

It is a slow start. The chill in the air stubbornly persists, despite the sun’s best efforts to warm it. Melanie tentatively begins the life of which she had been dreaming, realising as she does that she has no idea what, exactly, she had planned to do with it. Her wistful daydreams had never extended beyond Lawrence’s warm embrace tight around her ribs, his gentle hand in hers as they walked together in blissful peace, his soft lips brushing her forehead in the quiet hours between waking and sleeping. Perhaps that is enough of a place to start.

Throughout the summer, there is growth. Tiny green shoots push the dirt aside as they climb from their cold beds, and life returns from the ground to the world above. Heat does not bother them any more than cold does, but Melanie fans herself with an old lace fan as she and Lawrence sit together in the afternoon sun. Beyond the grounds of the manor, there is silence. Bones lie where they fell, and they bake in the desert heat untended and unneeded. But some things behind the gates of the house are growing.

In another life, where things happened as they should, there would have been a small house. There would have been discussions, deliberations about where they should go, and decisions made together, a foundation of building a new family life. The house, wherever it was, would have been bare wood painted in bright colours of far-off places, blues and greens and reds Melanie had never seen occur in nature before. Together they would have built the furniture they would use, and she would set dinner tables for people they wanted to see.

In this life, there is love, and that is the constant between the timelines, but Melanie wonders on what foundation their life can be built. What normal pitfalls of life would they face together and grow stronger for having overcome? If they simply grew as intertwining vines, upward forever in a circling chain, was that happiness?

Lawrence presses her hand to his lips, and in a moment she forgets to worry. It is something better, this life they have together. It had always seemed that people insisted conflict was what strengthened a relationship, but their conflict had always been what separated them. Their strength is in merely being happy together; it is their greatest victory, and never once do they take it for granted. Theirs is the fortitude of thick plant stems grown together, unbreakable, inseparable, and eternal.

Autumn’s harvest is the culmination of the year’s efforts. Love nurtures the seeds planted so long ago into something beautiful, something that sustains the hands that worked it for another year of growth. Wind rustles the dry, dying leaves in waves of colour, bright against the dark grey sky. Winter is coming again, as it always does, but until then, there is celebration in the dying of the year, for the work and growth and hope that got them this far.

The gardens had their moment in the sun, and now they are dying with the trees. But Melanie thinks the petals, curling and brown at the edges, are more beautiful in this liminal stage than any other. Neither living nor dying, neither blooming nor decaying. They are past hardship and suffering, but not lost to the world — part of it, but not subject to it.

The leaves dance as they fall, and Melanie and Lawrence dance amongst them. She laughs as he complains fondly about her leading again. His hand splayed against her back holds her close to him, with more pressure than necessary, as if some part of him is afraid she might slip from his grasp. Closing the space between them, she rests her cheek on his shoulder. Night is coming, but they have all they need to weather it.