Seventeen
Professor Layton - 10/06/2022
797 words.
Eighteen years is a long time. Hershel could see it in the shape of her face, the nooks and crannies of her features where the shadows of the night would nestle as she stood on the doorstep of the Ledore mansion.
Author's note:
This is part of my gift for JingaMingo in the Montedor Carnival gift exchange on tumblr!
I was like, I wish I could write about Angela, and Jinga said, I wish I could read about Angela... a match made in heaven! They asked for the Stansbury gang and more precisely the friendship between Angela and Hershel, I had a fun time writing about them.
It's very short, but I hope you like it!
Disclaimer : the Professor Layton franchise belongs to LEVEL-5.
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They had met for the first time on the hillside by the Ascot’s house. On the way back home from school, between two stray rocks on the paved street, Randall had halted and told him they should meet up with the others.
And thus, Hershel had followed to the place that would become their secret base. A bit remote from the outskirts of town, just enough to give it an air of mystery. Through the green foliage, two teenagers had walked in. Randall had slapped the first one on the shoulder and had introduced that odd, reserved boy as Henry. He had taken the hand of the other one and had smiled fondly as she greeted Hershel. Angela had welcomed him to Stansbury in that kind voice he would learn to recognise amidst a thousand.
The peaceful days spent together, the four of them, stretched under the gentle rustle of the bushes and the quiet lapping of the nearby stream. Often it would be Randall who’d chat animatedly about a new discovery Henry had helped him with, or the places he wanted to explore and enjoined Hershel to come with. Angela would, ever so kind, knock some sense back into him and they’d laugh.
Until one day, that equilibrium had shattered. Hershel could have sensed its forthcoming, a quiet but displeasing weight on his shoulders, like a whispering from afar breathing down his neck. But it had always been dismissed by school, laughter and smiles. The twinkle of the stars above their heads would eclipse the heavy skies foreboding the storm, and make it easier to breathe.
It had been such a night when they were walking together at a tranquil pace, and Angela had asked, or prophetized, he forgets which, “Do you promise? That you'll protect Randall?”. Her voice had fallen to the evening breeze like a leaf, vibrant green with trust.
He hadn’t had the heart to tell her. He hadn’t needed to. When their friends had heard that he had come back from the ruins and they had rushed to his house, and it had been the three of them in his living room.
There hadn’t been any meeting at the hillside after that.
⁂
Eighteen years is a long time. Hershel could see it in the shape of her face, the nooks and crannies of her features where the shadows of the night would nestle as she stood on the doorstep of the Ledore mansion. He assumed the light of surprise and subdued pain in her eyes was reflected in his own. Their gazes meeting for the first time in so long was like picking at the scar tissue over their old hearts. But still, the kindness in her voice remained as a witness to their friendship.
He had been shocked to learn that Angela was still wearing the coin Randall had given to her. But as he watched her fiddle with it while she talked to them, her fingers softly clutching to that fragment of their past, it had come to his mind that his hat and her pendant were the same.
⁂
The noise around them is deafening. It’s the clamour from the crowd when the performers pull a particularly impressive stunt, the trumpets and the drums from the marching band, the popping of confetti canons and the excited yells of children running around the Montedor festival. The Professor barely has the time to nod in agreement ad Emmy disappears with Luke who wanted to see the circus.
A hand on his arm makes him turn around. Angela looks up to him, the orange light from the street lamps colours her cheekbones while the dark purple of the night scatters in her blond hair, and she speaks: “Thank you, Hershel.”
They have pulled away in the crossing of an alley with the main street, and they can see in the distance Henry and Randall walking through the carnival. A little girl hands Randall a stick of candy-floss that he kneels down to accept. It has been decided that the morning after, he will serve a few months in jail. Randall had volunteered to it, and although Henry and Angela had protested vehemently, they had had to capitulate. We all atone in our own ways.
They see the two men come to a pause and turn around, a striking image of the boys they once were. The blaring of the spectacles all over Montedor could not be further from the peaceful clicks of the crickets, and the explosive lights of the fireworks share nothing with the gentle glow of the moon over Stansbury. But the kindness in her voice is the same.
Angela grabs his hand and as they skip through the paved streets towards Randall and Henry, it feels like they’re seventeen again.
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