The Changing of Sue

By Brian Conley

If ever there was proof that people can change, it would be found in Sue.

Most of the children in Parm, my brothers and I included, grew up almost carefree under the watch of family, both of blood and beau monde. Everybody was a parent, a guardian. Meals could be taken at almost any residence. It's how Parm was and how it is. A community of bonds that were knit steel. I was young when Sue's parents died, but still remember how it affected not only Sue, but the whole city.

Her Uncle and Aunt were nice, but away most of the time. Busy travelers, they were. Parm swooped in to care for Sue. Everybody stepped up a rung after she became orphan. For years, the smiles were brighter, the food was better. Beds were always made, rooms always available. In school, her peers flocked to her side, be it by their own volition or from parental advice.

She got Puffy not too long after her parents died, a sympathetic gift from the neighbor-boy Justin's father. It was some creature unlike I'd ever seen, small and round and sat atop her head like a bow. It peeped and squeaked, clinging to Sue like it was an extension of her body. I can probably say, with full confidence, that Puffy was her first friend.

She made her choice in other friends quickly, though. Every week I'd see her with less and less a crowd and every week the cliques would split and solidify without her. Groups of boys and girls running the streets, none holding ill towards the girl, but finding their own childhoods outside of her friendship. My littlest brother, born only a year after Sue, told me once after school that he wanted to be friends with her, that he tried to talk to her but she used big words and he got confused, scared off.

Everybody noticed her smarts right away. It wasn't just precociousness, though that was there in spades. She was genuinely bright. She'd come over for dinner every now and then and me and my parents would actually converse with her, rather than just placate her with feigned interest. In my last year of school, I asked the Young Grades teacher how she was doing and all he did was praise her. Everybody loved Sue. She was the northern star of Parm.

She was three when she first met Justin. He was a kid a few years younger than I, about my middle brother's age. He had bright hair and was a whirlwind ball of collected energy. I don't think I've ever seen him actually get tired. We played a little bit here and there, but Justin had a real eye for adventure, spurred I'm sure by his parents. He would gallivant the town, stick in hand and hat on head. Everything was something amazing to him.

It was this sense of adventure that drew Sue to him. She was a small, energetic girl that chased his heels excitedly. She suited him as a frame would a picture and their friendship did nothing but grow. As others had locked her from their circles, she did to them. Sue found purchase in Justin and rare was the day I'd see either of them alone. My mother used to call their friendship a 'storybook romance'. She said they were suited for each other by the Spirits themselves. That they were destined to be friends, despite their age difference.

Sue was seven when I enlisted and I saw her next at the Sult Ruins a year later. She was still at Justin's side and the two of them proclaimed that it was their break-out adventure. Their energy and iron camaraderie boosted my spirits and reminded me why I was in the military to begin with: to protect that which they had. To protect the town that grew family and friends plotted together.

Five months went by after that. I worked as hard as I could to climb rank. I exercised my body and mind. I, too, changed in that time. The night before my first home leave, I remember standing in the barracks head, looking at myself in the mirror. I saw how much I'd changed in the small amount of time I'd been away.

I began then to think about change. Not what it was, but how it happens and why. On my trip home, I saw it everywhere. It was one of those things you start thinking about it and then see it all the time. Like somebody teaches you a new word and suddenly it's in every conversation you have that day.

Parm had changed. Not too much, but to an observant eye, to a man grown in military, it was abundant. The hours to the Seagull Restaurant had been cut. The museum curator had stepped down. The streets I remembered to be long, were short. The days went by quicker. Everything seemed much more…insubstantial.

Then Sue came home.

I was a week into leave when she just appeared in the plaza. I was out on some errand and saw it. She came out of thin air, like spinning a leaf to its broad side. She greeted the crowd of familiar faces with her own familiar smile. Those who knew her best, Miss Lilly, her Aunt and Uncle, ran the crowd as announcement of her arrival coursed the city's veins. She didn't even make it to her house before she was tangled in hugs and kisses.

I didn't see her for the rest of that day, but attended the big welcome-back dinner hosted by Miss Lilly the next night. I didn't get much chance to speak to Sue, but I watched her, scrutinized her. Her movements were different, her speech much more defined. She'd only been gone less than half a year and if I hadn't been told that, I would have thought it at least triple that time.

Sitting at the head of the table, she looked different. Again, perhaps not to everybody, but to me, at least. She sat taller, her skin that much tanner. Little cuts and bruises pecked here and there across her arms and cheeks. Thin bags traced under her eyes and her hair fell free across her shoulders. She ate and fed Puffy in practiced efficiency. Should anybody had mistaken her for an adult, they'd have been in the right to do so.

Everybody asked her to tell of her adventures and she told them little snippets of things that were probably the least of what happened. I've always been able to tell when somebody didn't want to discuss something. Sue smiled at the end of every anecdote told, though, no matter how inconsequential it had been to the grand scheme of her time away.

I saw her around town a lot in the weeks to follow. Abandoned, for the most part, was her pink dress, replaced with a casual skirt and blouse. She walked around with purpose. Her shoulders up, arms stiff. I could see the muscle built on her arms and legs, noticeable most not only when she walked, but when she was around her peers. Other girls her age were lanky, typical children. Weak as children would be, always moving fast and catching breath, always looking for help when things were too heavy or hard to do.

The new Sue didn't act like them (not to say she ever really did). She relied on herself. She helped out at the fruit stands, hauling crates of apples and pears to and fro. She hawked trinkets to the tourists by the docks, shouting loudly over the bellow of the steamers. Not a day went by when she wasn't doing something to exert herself and at the end of every one of them, she was at the end of the longest pier, watching the horizon.

I talked to her once, and only that, the day before my leave was over. I approached her there, at the pier. The sun was setting wide, the sky shades of purple and blue. Gulls flew in the distance as little tiny shadow puppets against the gold of the sunset. She was sitting on the edge. She heard me coming and looking over her shoulder, smiled at me.

I looked into her eyes. They too were different. No longer the bubbly eyes of childhood, but also not the cold steel of a worn adult. They were eyes like I'd seen in my ranks. Young men my age, joined to military and exposed to the world. Kids who'd seen battle and adventure. Who'd worn away their childhoods with experience, like rubbing a stone across chalk.

"You've changed, Sue." I said, skipping pleasantries.

She tilted her head, "Have I?"

I stood next to her, stuffing my hands in my pockets. I watched the distant edge of the ocean, brilliant in the final light of the day. Gulls cawed, horns blew. The factories rang finishing bells. The ambiance washed over us like a curving wave.

"You look different too." Sue said.

"Isn't it funny," I said, speaking low, "How much somebody can change in such a short amount of time?"

Sue was quiet.

"It's only been a year and some months since I joined the military. That's not that long. Look at me now, Sue. I've changed."

Sue looked me up and down. She smiled.

"You look the same to me." She said, "Maybe taller."

"I wish." I said, "Maybe then I could get a uniform to properly fit me."

We laughed.

"I feel like I can't stop." Sue said, "Like I always have to keep moving. I try and sit at home and my feet just take me out the door. I always have to…keep trying."

"Trying to do what?"

I looked to her from the corners of my eyes. She wrung her hands and moved her lips in a half-dozen false starts.

"I have to be the best I can be for when Justin needs me or when he comes back. Every day I sit here and watch the edge of my world…" She waved out to the horizon, "I tell him, and Feena and Gadwin, that I'm okay. That I'm always here for them."

Tears ran the lines under her eyes. I too felt the pressure of her emotion, caught through the air. She stood up.

"Maybe you're right." She said, "Maybe I have changed."

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked. It was perhaps the culmination of all my time pondering the subject. She thought on it for a while. The sun was a tip of light when she answered. The lone pier lamp lit in dull yellow. Puffy slept peacefully across her shoulders.

"I don't think so." She said. She smiled at me with her eyes closed. Two tears crossed her cheeks. I turned to watch her walk away, carried by the last strains of daylight and vanishing into the dark of the city streets.

My leave ended and I returned to the military. I stayed there for fifteen years strong, finally dismissed with a bad leg born from an accident while mapping the End of the World. Every year though, I'd return to Parm and every year Sue was a little taller, a little stronger. Her demeanor never changed, her smile never faltered. Justin came back for a cup of coffee ten years in, a strong, able-bodied man with wife and kids. Sue still clung to him like she was his sword and scabbard.

When (if) I ever have kids, I think my big lesson to them will be that change will happen. You'll never be again the person you are right now. Should you stay in your city your whole life or see the world, you'll change. Is that a bad thing, though?

I'd say, for the most part?

No.