Sweetest revenge

Another chilly day rolled into town, the fairies stayed curled up in their flower homes, smoke rising slowly from the mountaintops where the dragons kept their caverns warm.

Lillies favorite thing to do each day was spend as long as she could staring out the window watching all the creatures and people on the street get cozy. She looked forward to one particular couple the most, they were sweet and old and incredibly in love. It warmed Lillies heart more than a dragon fire could.

Each day the two would walk together hand in hand until they reached the bench across the street from Lillie. She got to watch as the coffee shop next door brought them out their pixie dust lattes and how they sat and drank, and laughed, or reminisced, or sometimes stayed in comfortable silence.

as each day grew colder they drew closer together for warmth.

The previous day Lillie watched the man sneakily throw a snowball at his wife and they both laughed and laughed until their coffees grew cold. Lillie was excited to see them again today and maybe they’ll start a whole snowball fight. The man arrived, on his own for the first time ever, which confused Lillie because she couldn’t hear what he told the barista on why he’s alone today. She wasn’t worried too much because he seemed happy and in good spirits, and took two coffees to go.

Lillie searched the park for someone else to watch this morning and no one was nearly as interesting or sweet as the elderly couple, so after a while she decided she would head downstairs for breakfast.

She couldn’t help but check the kitchen window if anyone else would stop by the park, maybe the Mailmaid would have a delivery on this side of town and she would see her swim up the channel to drop off the letters in the large box by the bridge.

She chewed her toast thinking about all the things she might do today, her friends were snowboarding and invited her but Lillies mind was still on why that lady wasn’t with her husband today. Lillie had always fancied detective stories, maybe she would stay home and read a bit, and think about what a detective in her story might do, and tomorrow she’ll see them both together again.

By lunch Time she realised she couldn’t think of what her favorite detectives would do, because they always have more information. Her curiosity ate away at her all day until she couldn’t take it anymore and thought she might do some investigating for herself.

All she knew at the moment was the direction they came from and that one morning she saw them with a purple letter, colour coded to match their letterbox for easy distribution. There were several streets down the way they came from and she walked down each one seeing which have purple letterboxes. She saw three that were a similar shade, so without the letter for herself to compare, she decided to see the people the lived in the houses. It was about two o’clock now, so many people weren’t home so she couldn’t look through the windows to see them. She also knew it would be wrong to break in, but she had some detective tricks of her own.

For the first street, it was the rubbish pick up day and she remembered the man taking the coffee home with him.

She looked into bin of the house with the purple letterbox, and couldn’t see any coffee cups, but could see lots of vampire supplement packets. That ruled out this house.

The next street already had the rubbish taken, so she had a look at the kind of house that it was. It was a sweet old cottage and had a few magazines stacked up by the door. A quick look wouldn’t hurt…

she rifled through and found some crochet magazines and tried to think is she had ever seen them doing this at the bench. The rest were quite regular for a magical town, and as she reached the bottom of the stack she heard a car pull around the corner of the street. Afraid that she would be accused of stealing or breaking in, she hid behind the bins at the side of the house.

she couldn’t believe her poor luck, the car was for the house she was hiding at.

Lillie began to think of ways to sneak away and check the next street until she saw who emerged from the car. It was the lady! Lillie wondered what she was doing home

so early. She had seen one morning, her company lanyard for the city maintenance crew which had standard hours of 11 am until 4:30 pm. Maybe she had an early shift today. The lady got a phone call and Lillie strained to hear what was said:

« yes, thank you for covering for me until 4:30. If I don’t get this finished today you might have to tomorrow.

Yes I know I apologise.

Of course, this is very important I just can’t talk about it yet. Yep. Goodbye . »

Lillies heart was beating with excitement, what was this sweet old lady up to?

The lady headed inside, after undoing all her locks which suggested her husband must not be home. She put down her bag and went straight to the garage, while Lillie snuck around the side to see if she could find a window.

she found a small one at the perfect height for her to peer through to see what the lady was working on. It seemed to be a very strange mechanical contraption and Lillie couldn’t make out what it possibly would be for.

The time flew and as the front door knocked, Lillie was startled and noticed the time, it was already 5pm, she really had to get home.

She snuck around to the front after seeing the lady hurriedly cover up the strange machine and rush to answer the door.

Her husband had arrived home, and Lillie could overhear his wife telling him how good her regular shift was and left out how she left early today.

Lillie got home as quick as she could, and thankfully was just in time for dinner. She didn’t talk much as she ate with her family, all she could think about was this mystery she had found.

She went to bed but couldn’t sleep. She was running through the day and what she found making sure she didn’t miss anything.

she woke up extra early that morning so that she wouldn’t miss anything.

Lillie saw the man grab the two coffees again, not quite as happy looking as yesterday. By the looks of it he wasn’t pleased about getting the coffee on his own and missed out spending the time with his wife.

Lillie had her breakfast, and went straight to the couples house hoping to see the lady before she went to work.

She arrived and snuck to the window of the garage door to peek in. The project was uncovered now, but the lady wasn’t in there. Lillie thought about knocking on the door and introducing herself but after a few minutes the lady came back in with an armful of metal pipes, and bolts and screws and things. Over the next couple of hours, it seemed to come together more but Lillie still had no idea what it was. She could see it had spikes on the bottom like pointy legs, and a long singular arm with two ice cream scoops on the end. Lillie kept watching her work and noticed she seemed to struggle with screwing in the small bolts.

The lady finished up and headed to work to start at 11, so Lillie went home for lunch and so her dad wouldn’t be too worried about her being gone so long.

After lunch and some of her daily chores she headed back to see if the lady was going to come home early again. Maybe she had to wrap the machine as it was a gift for her husband. Lillie took her pushbike this time to be a bit faster.

She must have arrived just after the lady, her car was in the driver way and when Lillie headed to the garage window she had just stepped in. It looked like she was starting on a whole new project, like a large blanket that looked like it was made from leaves.

as it approached 5pm the lady was hurriedly finishing up the blanket and took to to her car, and came back to wheel the machine to her car as well.

She dialled a few numbers into her phone and it didn’t take long for the person to pick up.

« Are you still free to help me with the last part of this?

yes just five minutes away. Okay thank you. Bye Jason. »

Lillie remembered the only Jason she knew was the barista at the coffee shop. How odd.

as soon as the lady left, Lillie got ready to speed down to the coffee shop to see why the lady needed Jason’s help.

But as she got ready to go, the man arrived home and noticed his wife’s car was gone. He looked quite sad and mumbled to himself just loud enough to hear, « I knew she was upset with me for that snowball, »

Lillie was very confused with this, as they seemed to have a good laugh about it, but then again the lady didn’t seem keen on making it a snowball fight.

As she rode her bike home, Lillie kept thinking about it all. Before she went inside she had a look over to the coffee shop, and the old couples bench. Everything looked perfectly normal, maybe the lady just needed Jason’s helping planting the new bush by the bench.

Lillie went to bed that night feeling disappointed that she couldn’t solve the mystery.

When she woke up, she looked out the window, the snowflakes falling and the squirrels getting ready for spring in a few short weeks.

After the past two days she felt she knew exactly what would happen. The man would arrive and get his two coffees, and undoubtedly the lady would be at home in the shed working on another strange project.

What she actually saw a few minutes later was much more interesting.

The lady turned up today on her own, and much earlier than usual too. She ordered both coffees and sat down, not before checking this new bush which seemed odd to Lillie. The lady sat down for a little bit until her husband arrived.

He seemed quite down today, and didn’t seem to notice his wife sitting at the bench. He went over to order the two coffees, but Jason pointed him towards where his wife was sitting with the coffees. His smile grew warm and headed over to her. It looked to Lillie like he was apologising. The lady seemed happy and they shared a sweet hug for a few seconds before sitting closer than ever while they drank their coffees. It was silent until the end where the lady started telling him something that made him look confused a little. She went to the bush and revealed that it was no ordinary bush, but her machine converted by her leafy blanket.

He still seemed a bit confused, until she lent down and pressed an unsteady finger to a button at the bottom and the machine started to move. Lillie saw now that is strange legs kept it in the ground while it’s arm reached down into the snow. When it came back up and dropped a perfect snowball into her hand, and before he could react she threw it straight at her husband. He was shocked for a moment and then started laughing harder than Lillie has ever seen, as the couple had a real snowball fight.