She's Here!

Hi, this is Bree. Sorry it's been about a week since our last blog post. We've been busy with school stuff, and not a lot has really happened in the meantime. Gia did her werewolf transformation thing three times, uneventfully. Each time it happens, she seems to adjust more quickly, and to experience less shock over it. I think that gradually, it'll become part of her normal life. Or at least her "new normal," as most of us in this family have had to redefine our sense of what's normal several times.

We had a really nice Easter. Some of us went to mass in the morning, then we had a yummy family dinner. The food was traditional Newfoundland holiday food: turkey, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, vegetables, and salt beef. Then we had lemon meringue pie for dessert. After we ate, we had an egg hunt. It was too rainy and cold to do an outside one, but we had fun hiding and finding our dyed hard boiled eggs indoors. Hunting eggs was followed by lots of Easter candy.

Since the holiday weekend, things have been busy but mundane. School has been hectic, because we're getting toward the end of the semester. We've been doing our usual extracurricular activities. Kaya, Fiona, Marie-Grace, and Cécile are eagerly awaiting the casting for their spring recital and story ballet; they'll find out on Monday what parts they got. All the students are in the recital, but not everyone is cast in the story ballet, so they're excited to find out if they get to do both.

Today, though... we had other big news!

In the afternoon, shortly after we'd gotten home from school, the doorbell rang. Ever since the fair folk told us how we were supposed to repay our debt, we've kind of jumped every time someone comes to the door, wondering who would be there. If it would be... her. Our "exchange student." Would she be nice? Mean? Would we be friends? Would she be indifferent to us? Or would we have an enemy living in the same house with us?

We got apprehensive every time someone knocked or rang the bell. Up till yesterday, it was always just a friend coming over, or a delivery, or someone collecting money for charity. When we opened the door this afternoon, we knew this was something different.

She was about my age. Small, slight, slender. Her hair was blonde and long, and her eyes were hazel, but there was something about the shape of them that suggested she had some East Asian ancestry, in spite of her colouring. She was wearing a sort of robe, green with white designs that looked like flakes of snow, and despite the fact that it's still chilly here in April, her feet were bare.

The girl smiled at us... but there was something hesitant about the smile. She was charming - deliberately so - but I could tell she was pretty nervous, too.

Suddenly, I felt bad for her. We've had a lot of emotions about the fair folk lately  - apprehension, frustration, fear. But we haven't really thought about how our "exchange student" would feel about the exchange. Just about how she would act toward us. In that moment, I realized she was probably a lot more scared than we were. After all, this was our house. We have a big family, and we're quite close knit. This girl was all alone. And that's a lot to walk into.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Bree."

I stuck out my hand, and the girl grasped it lightly and then released it instead of shaking it, like I saw Inna do with the fae woman in the clearing.

"Greetings," she replied. "My name is Senara. Thank you for allowing me into your home."

Senara smiled, but she looked a little grim as she stepped through our door. Since then, she's mostly been in her room - which is also my room. I'm going to be sharing with her. I've been giving her some space, but it's getting to be about bedtime, so I guess we'll kind of have to talk then. I'm looking forward to getting to know her, and finding out why she's really here.

Love,
Bree