return_to_nola

What did Hazel mean?! She understood what had happened to Katie? Did that mean she was someone else from a universe Katie didn't know, like Sam or Dani were? Katie hadn't recognized Hazel as someone she knew. Did it mean that she only had an artistic epiphany and didn't actually understand at all? Either way, Katie needed to know.

And also, she wanted to see her friend, and her friend's art. And also the face of a Hazel Jean who just told a boy that she loved him.

So Katie had a giant coffee in each hand, a bag full of snacks and water and yes, a bottle of wine, and when she made it to Hazel's shed she knocked with her foot. And by then, she was dying see Hazel, to know what was going on, to understand.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

nola_lucy

Hazel lived in a cute old house, or at least in part of one. Her landlords, an older couple around the same age as her parents, had converted part of the house into a mother-in-law apartment years ago, and when said mother-in-law passed, started to rent it out. That's where Hazel lived. It didn't leave her a whole lot of room for her art, even when that art wasn't inside enormous wardrobes, so they let her build a shed in the backyard they mostly didn't use now that their kids were grown and gone.

She'd actually slipped inside the house while she waited for Katie to get there--to drink some water, to brush her teeth, to laugh in the mirror at how she'd managed to get paint in places she couldn't even reach. That was, apparently, enough to wake Rusty from where he'd been snoozing, and he waddled after her as she returned to the backyard. Hazel saw Katie knocking on the shed and grinned even wider. "Katie!!!"

From:

nola_jeangrey

"Hey!" Hazel's smile was completely infectious. And almost as joyful was any Rusty sighting. "I'd hug you but I have coffee hands!"

From:

nola_lucy

Hazel took a coffee from Katie and kissed her cheek, though she was very tempted to spin her around, damn the consequences. Rusty ran an excited little circle around them both. "I'm so glad you're here. Everything is so !!!!!" she said, flailing her free hand.

From:

nola_jeangrey

"Everything is so what?!" Katie had to ask, dizzyingly perplexed. "You're happy, right?" No one remembered weird past/parallel lives and was happy!

From:

nola_lucy

"So incredible! And I'm crazy happy. I don't even know how to word about it all." Hazel pulled open the bigger barn-style doors to the shed, one and then the other, the only way she'd managed to get the wardrobe inside it. And there it was, though with the doors closed it just looked like a well-restored piece of furniture.

From:

nola_jeangrey

"I think I need your words, I can't read your mind," Katie teased, except, of course, if circumstances changed only slightly she'd find reading Hazel's mind very easy. Still, all Katie had to do in this moment was eye the wardrobe, which she did. "It's beautiful," she said, "But you're covered in way too much paint for this to be all you did."

From:

nola_lucy

Hazel was constant movement; right now, she was trying to clear a spot on her work bench to put down the coffee Katie had brought her. "One second." She flashed Katie a grin and then opened the wardrobe in a single flourish, stepping back so she didn't block Katie's view.

It was gorgeous color, all of it, each side a different scene. The ceiling was a night sky that faded to dawn at the edges; the constellations were accurate, just not to Earth. The floor was the surface of a sea with wild creatures dotted across it. One side was open meadows, as far as the eye could see, like you could run through them forever and never reach the end, or get tired. The other side was a lush old-growth forest, and some of the trees had vines wrapped around them like the ones in Kyle's tattoo. But the back was what seemed to glow: a golden castle lit by the rays of a rising sun, flags flying above it. "This. This was what I realized. Or remembered, or found, or... This was me. Is me."

From:

nola_jeangrey

"Oh my god," Katie murmured, taking it all in. This wasn't just a painted wardrobe. This was an entire world. "Hazel, it's so beautiful. It's... this is where you're from, isn't it?" Katie didn't recognize any of it, but she understood the love, care, and recognition it would have taken to create. "Tell me about it?"

From:

nola_lucy

"It's not where I was born, but it's where I was most me." She grabbed her coffee and sat down in front of the wardrobe, gesturing for Katie to sit down next to her. They could both easily fit inside, but then Hazel couldn't point out her memories. She started with part of the castle, pointing to one window in particular. "Through there is the throne room." Her fingertips moved to the forest, to a pinpoint of light that came through the trees from a clearing within. "And that's where I met Tumnus, my very first time."

From:

nola_jeangrey

Katie took her place next to Hazel, drinking her coffee and gazing at Hazel’s place. It was beautiful. “Where you met who? The throne— I think you need to start at the beginning?” Tumnus rang a bell, actually, but not one that also said Jean. “What was your name? Where is this?"

From:

nola_lucy

Hazel hadn't even questioned that Katie would understand, even before Katie had showed up. She was so grateful to have someone to share this with. "My name was Lucy Pevensie. This is Narnia."

From:

nola_jeangrey

Narnia? Narnia? Katie grinned, absolutely unable to help herself, as she blurted “Oh my god, I’ve read about you.”

From:

nola_lucy

"So have I! I don't know how I didn't remember when I was a little girl." She'd first read the books when she was around the same age as Lucy was when she first went to Narnia. "But I remember all of it now."

From:

nola_jeangrey

“I didn’t even read all of your books! But I loved Lucy when I read about her, and I love you now. Wow, you’ve had so many adventures. You’re like, a princess? Of Narnia? Wow, wow, wow. wow.” Katie was stunned.

From:

nola_lucy

"A queen, actually, but that's not like...important." It was important because Narnia and the way it worked was important, but Hazel didn't actually care about rank. "Who were you? Tell me things!"

From:

nola_jeangrey

“Yes it is, because that’s amazing!” Which meant it was important. “It was part of your life. Wow, and this is the best work you’ve ever done, Hazel…” Suddenly Jean’s life couldn’t really compare! "Oh, mine’s….. a lot less beautiful. My name was Jean Grey. I was a mutant? Telepathic and telekinetic, so I could read minds and also move things with my brain. My power was like a phoenix, hence the, you know, phoenix mural.”

From:

nola_lucy

"Katie. Katie." Hazel put her hand on Katie's arm, excited and impressed and really, really amused. "I know who Jean Grey is. Like, everyone knows who Jean Grey is. Anyone who's ever seen a cartoon or read a comic or gone to a movie..."

From:

nola_jeangrey

Suddenly, Katie laughed. She hadn’t met anyone yet who been excited and geeked-out about her other life! And because Hazel knew, suddenly it felt so much easier to bear. “Well, I’m front a very specific, like, universe? Like, I’ve met people I know who aren’t from where I’m from. This is so dumb, because I know people who are from comics you’ve read but I’m not. You really know Jean?” Katie had barely even known Jean until she realized she was Jean!

From:

nola_lucy

"I grew up watching X-Men cartoons on Saturday mornings with my brother. Tons of the artists I follow on social media work in comics, or in concept art, and have drawn Jean either professionally or for fun. Yeah, I know Jean." This was so crazy! Her best friend was an actual superhero! "Wait. You know other people like us?" She'd been so caught up in everything going on with herself that she hadn't made the connection that there were others. Of course there were.

From:

nola_jeangrey

“Oh my god, that’s so weird. But... kind of cool?” It wasn’t all, end of the world. At least. Not right now. “Well, I know other people like me. Only they’re all actual superheroes, I just fought an evil ancient god one time. Like, um, other X-Men? And Avengers?” She felt like the level of emotional drama from this information came across without her having to say that there was emotional drama.

From:

nola_lucy

"Ahhhhhh!" Rusty had settled very nicely a little ways away from them, but flapped his wings and quacked loudly as he startled away from them when Hazel yelled. "Oh my god. Sorry, Rusty. But oh my god. The X-Men and the Avengers are in New Orleans. This is insane. And amazing. And I can't believe you've been dealing with this the whole time and didn't tell me!" It wasn't accusatory, just...shocked, mostly.

From:

nola_jeangrey

“Sorry Rusty,” Katie chimed in, because it was only polite! “And I really did want to tell you. I just didn’t know how yet! It’s been a lot, all at once. Like, I found out, and then I posted about the movie that’s my life, and then I found all these people, and it was like, how do I say this and know you get it, you know?”

Katie gazed off into Narnia, smiling a little. “Don’t forget, I have wine too. Also, do you have a favourite superhero? Maybe they’re here. And I can introduce you. Make things good weird instead of weird-weird.”

From:

nola_lucy

"No, I get it, it's just..." Hazel shook her head, laughing. "It's all so much. And you can't just say things like introduce me to my favorite superhero like that's a thing!" Even if it was a thing. "But I don't have a favorite, I don't think. Though I loved Storm so much when I was a kid, I wanted to control the weather and look as good as she did while doing it." Storm had served up so many great looks over the years. "I am feeling so many things, I might actually explode." Yet she still kept drinking coffee.

From:

nola_jeangrey

“It’s all so much!” Katie agreed. “And now I have an ex-husband and a brother-in-law and god knows what else. Also, Dani’s a superhero. Also, it’s all so much!”

Katie handed Hazel her coffee and took out the bottle of wine. She didn’t have glasses, so she just opened the bottle and took a swig. Yes, that felt right. “No Storm sightings, sorry.”

From:

nola_lucy

Hazel's eyes just kept getting wider and wider as Katie listed things. They were going to have a lot to discuss in depth sometime soon, when Hazel wasn't riding on no sleep and recent awareness and all kinds of emotions. "Okay. I'm just going to cross my fingers that she has her mohawk if I ever meet her, because I love that mohawk so much."

She paused as something suddenly occurred to her. "Wait, Kyle isn't someone you know, right?" Hazel was trying to replay Katie and Kyle meeting in her head to see if there was anything there except a best friend meeting a boyfriend and vice versa, but she came up empty.