Rosie ponderings on 'career'

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Rosie was bemused (which was her natural state of being). She was also somewhat lost and a little up in the air.

She was literally up in the air as well, as she was currently perched in a tree in Sam and Rosalba's garden. Sam was obligingly keeping her company from the ground, which was exceedingly kind of him, and he was being relatively sane which made Rosie even more cheerful.

However, throughout the good cheer (which the midori and lemonade was helping with), Rosie continued to be bemused.

Life, it seemed, was changing.

Carin was gone, and so was Doug. Aria was now calling herself 'Sarah' which Rosie was still unsure about, and that somehow seemed to signify quite definitely that the strange little family they had formed together was over. Gone. With the wind, perhaps, or maybe with the tides. Tides, after all, wash everything away in the end. She didn't have a job, although Sam kept trying to pay her for work she hadn't done, and she wasn't entirely sure what she could do for a job.

Sam and Cormac had both offered to help her find work, and maybe find an entirely functional and human life. Drago seemed happy to have her potentially work in the pawn shop he was setting up in London (which had appealed more before he explained that people didn't pawn jewels quite as often as large screen TVs these days).

Rosie chewed on her lip, and slowly bent backwards, until she was dangling from the tree, with her knees wrapped around a branch, and her face covered with her shirt which had inconveniently started obeying the law of gravity. Sam made a slightly alarmed noise from below, and Rosie had to fight her way clear of her clothing in order to smile reassuringly.

Sam and Cormac had both asked her what she wanted. She wasn't entirely sure. They had both talked about a 'career'. She wasn't sure she wanted one of them.

Had she ever wanted a 'career'?

Rosie's memories of life before her Durance were hazy at best, although at times they seemed to seep back, like water through a leaky damm. She remembered her mother, and sometimes her father. She remembered a dress that she really wanted, and she remembered wanting to marry a soldier. She didn't remember a 'career' or any idea that she might want one.

Nursing. She had a very vague recollection of quite liking the look of the nurses in their uniforms, but she wasn't sure that was what she wanted to do. Did she want to be a nurse now? That might be interesting, she supposed. She would make people better. She liked that.

Rosie pulled herself upright, perched on the branch of the tree again, and pulled her skirt down slightly from where it had become rucked up about her thighs. What else did she like?

She quite liked animals. Preferably animals with sharp teeth and implausibly coloured fur who liked to bite people. Maybe she could find a 'career' with animals. She could be a vet (except the annoying man in Essex was a vet, and she did not want to be like him) or a zoo keeper. She would, Rosie thought, be a good zoo keeper.

She had also always liked working in a shop. She had worked in Amen's flower shop and really liked it. She liked flowers. They were pretty. She liked working with pretty things. She also had quite enjoyed working in Sam's pub, although she was not sure she wanted to work in a pub forever. The idea of working in Drago's pawn shop also appealed slightly, although she had a nagging sense that maybe that was not what one might call a 'career'. It sounded more like a job, which was also important, she had been told.

Rosie frowned.

It was all very complicated and she wasn't sure she approved. When she had first come out of the Hedge, her life had seemed to loosely fit with the little scraps she remembered. She had lived with her father (or adopted father, at any rate) and he had looked after her. This would carry on, she presumed, until she found a husband to look after her. And in return, she would be pretty.

Rosie understood this. But now everything was changing. The world was changing, or maybe it had already changed, and it had only been Carin who had kept her safe and away from it. But Carin wasn't here anymore.

The tree felt somewhat unstable beneath Rosie. But then everything did at the moment. She dropped out of it, landing lightly on her feet, and looked mournfully at Sam, until she realized he had failed to get the hint and asked if he could please provide her with physical affection because she understood that 'hugs' enhance one's sense of emotional well being. She clung to him a little when he did hug her, because he was Satrap Sam who was normally very good and clever and knew how everything worked.

"What do I want?" she asked him when he let her go. Because she wasn't sure that she knew at all.