Children On The Roof

A Long Trek For A Cuppa

Ariel still wasn't happy about the rural location. The only shop in Okeford Fitzpaine was open for two hours on one day of the week. That's got to be against the Geneva Convention or something. That shop was all there was in town. Town? It was a small village really.

Ariel wondered where the few people of Okeford actually got their food, and she found out too. She and her little sister, Bria, had been out shopping with their mother. It was motivated purely by boredom. They drove to Blandford Forum, which was an actual town, with an actual supermarket. It was six miles from Okeford Fitzpaine.

Ariel took the bus to her new school, which was also in Blandford Forum. Suddenly Ariel genuinely enjoyed school, as it was situated in an actual town, with more than three people there, and she made new friends. This was really something, as Ariel hated the way the education system worked, and thought she could probably do better. Why where they teaching particle physics with Bohr's model? It was disproved a hundred years ago!

In her opinion, quantum mechanics was only as difficult to grasp as it was, because the school science curriculum implied that Newtonian physics applied on even the smallest scales. The result is that quantum mechanics goes against everything you've been taught.

There where many more teaching methods that bugged her, but it bugged her much less now, as school had become her getaway.

Her other getaway was the Internet. She loved it's vast variety of crazy people and information. She would often click from link to link on Wikipedia, reading about things she'd never have dreamed she would be interested in.

It was much slower than before the move though. In Bournemouth they'd had fiber optic, but people in Okeford Fitzpaine probably didn't even know what the Internet was.

One lazy Sunday, when Ariel was waiting for a video to load, she figured she had time to go downstairs and make a cup of tea. She was on her laptop, in her room on the top floor. Tea making facilities where on the ground floor. She left her room, and as she passed the room she'd explored on her first day in the house, she walked on the opposite side of the hallway. She didn't want to go near that room again, just because of the figure she'd seen or imagined. It was just a superstition to her, and there was no harm in it. Everyone believes in something. She knew that a great many of the world's top scientists are religious, and she also knew that there are a great many things that are unknown to science.

She walked down the curved staircase, which was proving hard to get a hand rail for. There was a window three quarters of the way down, and another halfway down between the stairs between the fourth and third floors. The stairs between the second and first floors only had one window, halfway, facing out to the driveway. the other two staircases didn't have any.

Outside the three quarter window, Ariel thought she saw a figure, but she ignored it. Not on the fourth floor. She was just seeing things again. She carried on down the many stairs, through the entrance hall, and into the vast kitchen. Mostly the kitchen was as old as the rest of the house, with solid oak shelves where most people would have cupboards, and lots of random plates hanging on the walls. There where some modern bits, of course. A gas cooker, a large fridge/freezer with rude words written in magnetic letters, and an electric kettle.

Ariel filled it with just enough water for herself, and waited.

Emma, the mother of the family, liked the kitchen's old vibe, and she made good use to the indestructible old scales, with their brass weights, and the enamel bowls.

As the kettle came to the boil, Ariel had an idea. with all those sinks on the top floor, she really ought to get a kettle in her room, with a mini fridge for the milk. That way she wouldn't have to climb all those bloody stairs, or risk bumping into her stupid parents.

She made her tea, and began the ascent back up to her room, thinking of those guys who first climbed Everest. Nearing the top she glimpsed a figure at the three quarter window again, and this time she looked, to see... a ginger kid.

"ARRRGGHHHHHH!" Ariel screamed and jumped out of her skin, spilling scalding hot tea all over herself. "Fuck!"

She regained control of the tea, and still in pain from the spill, she looked at the window again. The ginger kid was gone. How was that possible? A little kid outside a fourth floor window?

She put her tea down on the windowsill, and opened the sash window's catch. She tried to pull the window up, but of course, it was stiff. Almost all the windows in the house where. She gave it all her effort, and two seconds later, it budged, and slid up easily. She stuck her head out and looked around. No gingers in sight, but below the window, there where roof tiles. Apparently the floors below extended about another five feet out. Of course... the ceiling of the third floor sloped downwards on this side of the building. Ariel had just assumed the building was collapsing under it's own weight, and thought nothing of it.

Well she wasn't about to go climbing around on the roof to find some ginger that was trying to get itself killed. She wasn't going to keep waiting for the sash window to fall down on her head either. She ducked back inside and closed the window, making sure the catch was closed. Wouldn't want a ginger infestation... Ariel couldn't be bothered to go downstairs and look for this kid. She'd just been downstairs, and she had videos to watch, and tea to drink. Not as much tea as she'd planned to drink, but she still had most of it.

She walked to her room, passing the second door on the right as far over to the left as the sinks would allow, and say down on her bed in front of the laptop. She had a slurp of tea and clicked play.

A country scene. Green fields and hedges... oh no, not more of that shit. She was surrounded by it. Ariel knew this was t gonna be the best video she watched that day. Nothing happening, nothing happening...

"Fuck!" She jumped, spilling tea all over herself. Damn screamer video! She grabbed a random bit of clothing from the floor and wiped tea off her laptop.

She checked her tea, and found it was empty... fucksake.

She closed her laptop and made another expedition to the kitchen.