Haruka liked to run, and didn’t really mind whereever it happened to take her. It was common enough, the other centaurs in the village had noted, to see a golden streak running carelessly across the fields toward the forests and the deep lagoons at the edge of the island.
Mostly they were right, that her head was all in the clouds and she never really knew where she was going, and did not notice the passing of time until nightfall, much to her parent’s chagrin.
BUt today, they were wrong. Today, Haruka knew exactly where she was going.
The village had spoken often of the mermaids who lived in the sea and relaxed in the deep lagoons. They were sorceresses, almost, and they would lead a centaur to their death if you weren’t careful, with their long, flowing hair and and their big eyes full of the sea, their voices sparkling like the sunlight on the water.
Haruka knew all of this, and it seemed good sense–they were only one half the same and who knew what kind of thoughts fish got up to–but she could not stop herself from returning to the girl in the water. The girl with the long teal hair, who moved like the wheat in the wind, wavering gracefully.
She plucked a small bouquet of the dark red flowers at the edge of the plain, and walked into the darkness of the swamplike forest near the ocean.
She picked her way through the darkness slowly. You had to be careful out here, a girl could break her leg over the large roots, and you’d be lucky if anyone ever found you. Centaurs died that way, she’d heard.
But the clearing with the little lagoon was there, just as she’d remembered, just as she’d prayed, and she stepped into the sunlight toward it.
“Michiru?” She called toward the water, unsure of how a mermaid would be able to hear her under it. “It’s Haruka. The centaur. The blonde one.”
She surfaced, brushing aside the water like a silken curtain. “Do you think I entertain so many, that I might forget you?”
“No, I mean,” she looked down at her little bouquet, and knelt next to the water, “I brought you flowers. They’re from the prairie, so I didn’t think you’d have seen them.”
She took them from Haruka’s hand, looking at the dappled sunlight falling on her coat, and how lovely the gold looked in the sunlight. She was lovely, this horsegirl, as they called them in the deep, but centaur, that was what they called themselves, sure as Michiru called herself a siren but was a mermaid above water.
“I have never seen their like.” She batted her eyes. “Thank you. What do you call them?”
“Lover’s lips.” Haruka blushed as she said it, but tried to brush it off. “See how they’re shaped?”
“Oh yes,” Michiru purred, “A very apt name. And the color, so very passionate.” She looked up at Haruka. “I have a gift for you, as well, I suppose. Come close, and I’ll give it to you.”
“SOmething from the sea?”
“Of the sea entirely.”
Haruka leaned in, and Michiru kissed her, the sea gliding softly against the land.
One of the aspects of Wednesday’s character – I think of all the Addams Family but her in particular because she’s a young girl – is that she’s not just the outsider, she’s also the voice of outsiders, she’s the speaker for the weird. She’s defiant but with a purpose: she defends the right to be different if different is who you are, when she is literally the person in the family who is most likely to be abused by the outside world for it.
Morticia and Gomez and Pugsley just ARE weird, in a sort of confident but unconscious way, and Fester struggles with being weird but not always knowing if he wants to be weird, but Wednesday is targeted for being weird and is well aware of it and fights back consciously. Which is why she would never grow up to be, say, a Stepford Wife type of creepy – she’s the antithesis of that conform-or-die mentality, even though the Stepford Wives are 100% a form of horror.
So I think she would be fine to marry a woman who didn’t apparently fit in at first, because “not fitting in” is who she is and it’s also what she does, aggressively. It’s why she’s instantly so likable, because she wins every fight she gets into about being a weirdo and a lot of us have repeatedly lost that fight. But I also think any woman Wednesday could love would still have to share the Addams family ideals of accepting the Other and unconditional love for family. She’s not going to marry the Queen Bee, she’s not going to marry someone cruel or normalizing, which is the immediate idea of “not like the Addamses”.
But I can see her marrying a woman who’s super awkward or not slim and slinky the way Morticia is and it’s sort of implied Wednesday will be, or even just someone who doesn’t quite get the point of The Aesthetic™ but okay hon, we’ll do the Dark Swing Dance, it’s not like I don’t LIKE the Dark Swing Dance. Or someone who’s really upbeat and cheerful and likes pictures of kittens and fuzzy blankets and wearing bright colors and the entire family is like “What…do you two even talk about” and Wednesday turns to her dad super deadpan and says, “Skeletons” and in the background her fiance-soon-to-be-now-that-she’s-met-the-parents, who also happens to be a forensic anthropologist, just nods super enthusiastically. (True fact, the most cheerful, upbeat person I know used to dig up bodies for a living.)
And Morticia considers this very carefully and then announces, “It’s time she met Grand Nana Sylph” and they get the shovels and head out to the graveyard. Grand Nana Sylph had the best bone structure of the whole family, and after Wednesday’s Young Woman articulates her, everyone can admire it in the comfort of the parlor!
And then she wears like, a BRIGHT RED DRESS to the Addams Family Reunion and everyone looks at everyone else in black Victoriana and then back to this ONE PERSON in bright red and thinks to themselves, “It fits. The Aesthetic™ is still served. Wednesday found her a keeper.”
You guys I have a LOT MORE THOUGHTS about the Addams Family than I expected, wow.
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