Draft 1

The bell rang and a storm broke around Ms. Fischer. A conductorless orchestra of screaming throats and stomping feet and metal banging against metal played a deranged concert that mercifully lasted only a few seconds before fading away in the distance, and when she opened her eyes, nothing remained. A minuscule breath of air escaped her lips as she got up, but when she gave her books a glance, a jet of bright cherry red peeked from the corner of her eye. And the color had a name.

"Oh, hi Danielle. Did you want something?" Ms. Fischer said, silently wishing she could remember the little girl's last name.

"Umm..." Danielle-- Fellows? No, that was Luke. Beauchamp? No, no, that was Jesse. A dozen other last names piled inside her head until she realized something red was now being thrust towards her, the tone matching Danielle's dress so well that at first sight Ms. Fischer believed she was handing her a piece of herself. "Mum made too much yesterday an' she said to bring you some."

"Why, that's very kind of her! And of you, too." She accepted the offering with both hands. As it turned out, it was only a piece of strawberry pie. "Mmm, smells delicious. Can't wait to try it!"

And Danielle's cheeks blushed as a big smile made its way across her face and a voice as small as a mouse yet proud as a lion simply said "I helped." And then she was off.

The little girl's smile was nothing short of contagious, and Ms. Fischer found herself basking on her own newfound grin for a couple of seconds before returning to her books and realizing, with a sort of dull surprise, that her latest afternoon delight's cover was a dull, faded red.

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It was an old treatise on medieval armor and weaponry, with yellowed-out pages that had still managed to preserve most of the colors of the rather disappointingly numerous illustrations. They had their charm, these dodgy little caricatures of men in armors with dozens of thin arrows tying steel bits and odd names together, but there was an awful lot of them, and she began wondering if she really was within this book's intended age as she continued to gloss over it on the way home. She only lifted her eyes from the text twice the whole way through; once to buy some fruit at Mrs. Cook's shop, and another to dodge the MacKensie boys' new truck as it came roaring down Main Street. She'd only been in town for six months (Had it really been so long now?) but she still caught herself frowning at the bright red monster and the almost furious abandon with which it interrupted the dim homely hush of a quiet Friday afternoon in town. Six months, and somehow already acting like she'd lived there her whole life.

Of course, this was all Silver Eagle Creek's fault. If it'd wanted to make Ms. Fischer feel like a city-slicking outsider, it wouldn't have showered her with warm handshakes and kind words and slices of leftover pie. Its parents wouldn't have thanked her again and again for teaching their children what they never had time to learn themselves. Its store owners wouldn't have put in an extra apple or two in her groceries when she wasn't looking. It was a town of gestures, blunt and simple, but delivered with a smile and a wink, as if they were all tacitly sharing in the secret formula of what kept the world turning. So she accepted them and played her part in the invisible fabric of small town life, though always quietly looking for ways to weave in a couple of new threads into it. And in this, she'd found an unexpected ally in Mr. Anderton.

Craig Anderton was a shrewd, tall old man who ran Silver Eagle Creek's only bar, and coincidentally, also its only public library. A creation of his late wife Susan, the basement of Anderton's played host to a truly staggering amount of books, more than there must've been in the entire town, Ms. Fischer reckoned.