(Branching this one off to try an alternate take.)
There was an awkward silence in the kitchen for quite some time; Mrs. Violet didn't know what to say or do, and the girl said nothing, either, simply gazing at her with a look of quiet confusion. She half wanted to do something to break the tension and half dreaded any more interaction - if she couldn't even hide how she was feeling from the girl, from Harriet...no, it would be better to keep quiet. How she wished Shawn would hurry up and get here! Though at the same time, the thought put a knot in her stomach, for reasons she couldn't quite figure out.
Eventually Sabrina did get there, pulling up in the driveway. Harriet - it was Harriet, she knew those eyes - looked at her with a questioning expression - apprehensive and yet steadfast, something she was afraid to ask but wanted to know. Mrs. Violet felt her heart wrench as she met her daughter's gaze. Just that slight inclination of her head towards the door, the outside, the car - Will you send me away? Will you make me go? That was what she was asking.
Mrs. Violet paled, trembling, torn. She...she just wanted some time to figure this out...it wasn't like she was going to send her daughter away and then never speak to her again, she just needed some time...wasn't that reasonable? Surely she was at least owed that much! Even if she had only just gotten her daughter back...she couldn't be expected to deal with this strangeness and these difficulties with this...this changeling all at once, could she? But if Harriet misunderstood...if she thought that...that...
She was saved from this line of thought when the door opened and her brother breezed in. "Breezed" was only halfway the right word - it wasn't that she moved casually, so much as that she moved with stately grace with the same ease that an ordinary person strolled down the street. Mrs. Violet had found herself feeling faintly resentful of this newfound grace, but she was more irked by the ease with which her brother had settled into evident comfort with his new form, even deciding to take a woman's name! It was...it was baffling, it was unsettling, it was...basically everything she was feeling with Harriet, only less so because she didn't have a maternal attachment to Shawn to be disrupted.
The elven woman looked from the girl to her and back. She leaned down and put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "I think your mother and I need to talk for a while, Artemis," she said. "Why don't you go play for a bit."
The girl bit her lip and looked up at her, her face quiet but not unemotional. "I...don't feel like it," she murmured. Sabrina nodded. "Well, maybe go read for a little while, then. We'll come get you when we're done talking." The girl nodded and went upstairs. Mrs. Violet bristled a little - shouldn't she be the one looking after her daughter? - but she was still too torn with indecision to actually do anything about it.
Once Artemis had gone, Sabrina turned to her sister. Somehow her expression managed to be simultaneously tranquil, exasperated, and compassionate. "Let's get some tea put on," she said calmly, stepping over to the cupboard. "It'll make you feel better." She did so; Mrs. Violet watched in silent irritation as she boiled the water. Tea was supposed to make her feel better, when she had all of this to worry about? She almost said as much a couple times, but Shawn's movements were such a fluid, unbroken series that it was almost like a dance; she felt like she'd be interrupting something if she did. (Why did everyone in her life have to be so difficult to discuss things with!?)
The tea was brewed and steeped and Shawn sat her down at the kitchen table with a cup. It didn't alleviate any of her feelings about the issue of what had happened to her daughter (silly to think it would!) but the pleasant feeling of the liquid as it slid down her throat and warmed her insides, coupled with the taste, did serve to calm her a little. She looked up at her brother, unsure how to even start. "I...look, it's not...I don't want her gone," she said. "I...I just need some time...I don't know how to deal with this! I just need time to figure it out, okay?" She felt flustered with herself for being so stammery, and nursed her tea.
Sabrina frowned - barely perceptibly, on that so-peaceful face - and sighed. "People don't work that way, sister," she said. "You know that. You can't simply put Harriet on hold and expect to come back when you're feeling better and find her exactly as she was."
Mrs. Violet grimaced into her mug; there was no indication that her brother had done so intentionally (but then, there wouldn't be, he was just annoyingly perceptive now,) but he had hit on exactly the nerve that had been bothering before - what would Harriet think? Her daughter was already giving her a look that showed she understood exactly what was going on, and she thought that it meant that her mother was sending her away because...because she didn't want to be around her anymore...if she did send Harriet with her uncle, she'd take it as confirmation...even if she took her back after, when she was ready to deal with this, would her daughter ever feel the same way about her again?
"But...but I can't deal with her now!" she said. "I can't...she's acting so strangely, she thinks her...her 'other mother' is a goddess and she's been to the Moon...how do I even know where she's been all this time, Shawn? Off with some woman who tells her these things? For a month? I have absolutely no idea who this woman really is, where she lives, what her role in this was..."
"Have you asked Harriet?" Sabrina asked, sipping her tea calmly. "She says she went there when she changed, to see what it was like, and Selene sent her back to you the next time she could make the trip."
"But how do we know that's true!?" she sputtered. "If...if she's got Harriet thinking she was on the Moon...and now she's acting so strange...so distant, sometimes..."
The elven woman sighed - harldy a sigh at all, but a gentle exhalation, eyes closed, mouth just slightly downturned. "Sister," she said, "how should she be acting? Ever since she came back, you've been second-guessing everything she says and telling her she was imagining it or lied to. You've impugned the person who sent her back to you as a kidnapper - and no, we don't have proof of that, but if she was malicious, why would she have sent her back at all? And you've been wondering where your 'real' daughter is and how to get her back. Do you think she doesn't see that? She's not blind, Ruth."
Mrs. Violet winced, thinking guiltily back to the look that Harriet had given her at the door, and what she'd said earlier...how much did she guess? "I...I'm not trying to...I'm trying not to...hurt her feelings," she said. "It's just...it's all so suspicious, she disappears and then comes back talking about this woman who took her to amazing places and how this Selene is a goddess, and yet she conveniently can't come visit so I can figure out what the truth of all of it is, meet the woman who had custody of my daughter for a month, because she's 'not allowed' or something...I mean, you have to admit, that's quite a useful coincidence!"
Sabrina shut her eyes and nodded quietly. "I can understand why it bothers you," she said. "But suppose for a minute that it's actually true? Perhaps she isn't permitted to come down to you in power and glory and all that. Again, it simply doesn't make sense that she would have sent Harriet back to you if she were intending to kidnap her. It is quite a coincidence, but I can't say that in these times it's so far out of the realm of possibility."
Ruth made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. "Now you're talking nonsense, Shawn! She can't be a goddess, there's only one God! You know that!"
Her brother nodded. "One God with a capital G, certainly. But...well, suppose it's something of a terminology mix-up? God is an Old English term, you know; it's a generic term for deities, and it was made into a name for God Himself later on. In 'you shall have no other gods before Me,' the Hebrew term is elohim, which is a plural genericization of a proper name for God."
Ruth frowned, a little thrown off by this sudden diversion. "Where did you learn that?" she asked, genuinely curious.
Sabrina thought for a moment, then chuckled - a gentle, musical laugh. "Ah, right. Girls' teen Sunday school didn't have Mr. Conner, did it? He loved to go on about things like that." She smiled, then turned more serious again. "Anyway, think of it like this: God forbids us from replacing Him - Eloh - with elohim - but does that mean that there necessarily aren't beings under Him that god in the old sense might fit?"
She frowned again, irritated and a little uncomfortable with this line of discussion. "What are you saying, Shawn?" she asked.
"I'm not saying anything, sister - I'm just thinking of one possible explanation. Suppose that the person being called a 'goddess' is...well, sort of an archangel, set over the Moon. That wouldn't be completely without precedent - remember the angel set to guard Eden? Or the one who stirred the waters in the pool of Bethesda? God isn't diminished by having others operate under His authority. Maybe this is like that. Maybe, that is. I don't know."
Mrs. Violet sighed, trying not to think of how many different degrees of loony this conversation had gone. In some ways her brother had gotten even stranger than her daughter... "But...but why not just say that, then?" she asked. "Why use an ambiguous term, if the truth is something I'd be more ready to accept anyway?"
The elven woman eyed her critically; not vindictively, but she still felt uncomfortably like she was being appraised. "Would you, Ruth?" she asked. "If she showed up at your door this minute and claimed to be an angel of the Lord, would you really accept it right then and there?"
She opened her mouth to say that she would, but...if she were really honest with herself, she wasn't sure. She stared down at the last of her tea in the bottom of the cup. "Well, she could show herself as one," she said. "I mean, they did in Scripture."
Her brother nodded. "They did. But it was invariably terrifying when they weren't in human form, remember. And even then, in a world with so many fantastic things in it..." She stopped herself; she might be getting a little off-track here. "But I understand," she said. "I don't know why either. Maybe she's not allowed to. Maybe it has to do with the question of why God doesn't provide proof of Himself anymore. Or maybe I'm completely off-base and there's some other explanation for all of this."
"But what does it matter, anyway?" Mrs. Violet said, feeling a bit snappish again. "She won't, in any case. She won't come to see me, and I don't know anything about her, and all I know is that my daughter was missing for a month and came back acting weird and I don't know how to get her back the way she was..." She trailed off, tearing up and trying unsuccessfully to hold herself back from bursting into tears. Sabrina put a hand on her shoulder. "I know," she said. "I understand."
"H-how do you u-unders-stand?" Ruth sobbed, trying not to sound too bitter. "Y-you're...you're s-s-so spac, uh, calm...it's l-like you don't even knuh, know anything's h-happened!"
Sabrina smiled sadly and embraced her sister. "I put a good face on it, don't I?" she said. "Believe me, Ruth, I understand this fear of having to live with loss, to know things have changed but not how badly or what to do about it. But I've come to understand that through it all, I'm still me, just as Harriet is still Harriet. We're not the same as we used to be, and there's nothing we can do about that - but we aren't less us than we used to be."
Mrs. Violet was going to say something, but she heard a soft burst of breath, as if a certain little girl trying to stay quiet and unnoticed had reached the limits of her lung capacity, in the doorway to the living room, though yet again, she hadn't heard any footfalls preceding it. She turned, her face still streaked with tears. Harriet was looking at her, mouth open. "A-am...'m I goin' with aunt Sabrina?" she asked. She didn't have quite the same afraid-of-the-answer look she had earlier, but she still sounded apprehensive.
Mrs. Violet felt her heart wrench again - what could she say? She still didn't know how she felt about all this, or how to feel, or whether she was comfortable with having her around, or whether she even really believed Shawn that this was still perfectly Harriet. But...but...the thought of sending her away, the thought of more days without her in the house at all, the memories of a month of broken-hearted worry and not knowing where she was, and the idea of reliving that all over again and being the reason she wasn't here... "N-no..." she said, her voice trembling. "No...you're n-not. Y-your uncle was...just h-helping me...with all of this..." She sighed; she'd...she still needed to figure it out, but she couldn't just expect her daughter to go away and leave her alone in the meantime...if it bothered her...she'd have to deal with it.
Sabrina nodded, motioning Harriet over. The girl stepped lightly, almost drifting, across the linoleum and over to them, and buried herself in her mother's shoulder, holding tightly. The elven woman leaned down next to her sister. "You know," she said, "she might simply be too polite to come without a proper invitation. Have you tried inviting her?"
