<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/55/Harmony_Pleasant.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Harmony Pleasant<br/><strong>Location/Time:</strong>Mobile, AL / One Week Before Arrival<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>None<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>Scrubs & Her Worries<br/><br/>"Nana, I'm scared."<br/><br/>"Of or for?"  The younger of the two Pleasant women on the porch stared at the older for a few seconds too long without a response, prompting Harmony's grandmother to repeat the question.  "Of?  Or for?"<br/><br/>"I don't quite follow you, Nana."  As usual when a life problem was too big for herself, Harmony went down the block to where her grandmother - Nana - had lived since, well forever it felt like.  The house had originally been a shotgun shack but generations of additions made it into a sometimes confusing warren of rooms but unless it was super cold, and Mobile didn't run to cold that often, Nana preferred sitting out on her porch.  Harmony stood up and leaned against the railing surrounding it, arms crossed over her chest.  She'd come from the hospital instead of going home and still wore her scrubs.<br/><br/>"Well are you scared of something, child, or scared for someone?"  Nana's hands rested in her lap, a blue, chipped enamel colander half full of snapped black eyed peas beside her.  A bigger pile, not yet broken, were in a paper sack in her lap.  Nana's arthritis swollen fingers twitched and trembled but she didn't make a complaint.<br/><br/>"Both?" Harmony answered.<br/><br/>"Mmmhmm.  Might be.  Might be but I bet if'n you think about if for a spell instead of answering right up we might get somewhere.  In the meantime these peas ain't going to shell themselves."  Nana watched her granddaughter move off the rail and sit cross-legged on the porch at her feet, just like her mama and her aunties and uncles and her cousins had all done one time or another.  Nimble fingers used to working with the tiniest of patients all the way up to kids grown in all but the eyes of the law began to snap the peas in inch long segments.<br/><br/>"I guess it's really for," Harmony answered after a few dozen snaps.  "Scared for me.  Nana, I've never even flown before and now I'm going halfway around the world to meet some woman and maybe fall in love with her and she with me?  And she's white.  And rich.  And - and just everything, Nana.  What if she doesn't like me?  What if none of them do, or if they make fun of me?"<br/><br/>"You keep up talking like that, girl, and best you go inside and get your old plastic barrettes so I can put your hair up like you're six again," the old woman scolded.  "Say it."<br/><br/>"Nana," she protested and stopped when her grandmother rapped the top of her head with her knuckles.<br/><br/>"Say it."<br/><br/>"Yes'm.  I am somebody.  I was somebody when I came and I'll be a better somebody when I leave.  I am powerful and I am strong and I worked hard to deserve to be here.  I have things to do and people to meet and places to go."  Harmony snapped a pea almost angrily.  "You're telling me I shouldn't care what any of them think about me."<br/><br/>Nana shook her head and the hand that had rapped Harmony now soothed the younger woman's head, old fingers pushing through Harmony's thick, natural hair.  "No.  You should and you better care what they think about you because you better be preaching the gospel with your actions and how you treat them.  Harmony, you got a powerful uphill road to walk and ain't no one but you can do it.  I can't do it.  Your mama can't do it.  Only you can, and you will, and when you get to the top and look back won't none of what you worrying about now matter none."<br/><br/>"Only worry you need to have is how you're going to convince Pastor Evans to marry you and her if it comes to it.  Now finish up them peas and let's get to cooking."<br/><hr/><strong>Name:</strong>Harmony Pleasant<br/><strong>Location/Time:</strong>The Deck and Suite / Arrival<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Maya & others as they desire<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>Black high-waist flare trousers with a denim shirt tucked in.<br/><br/><em>Thank you, Jesus</em>, Harmony said to herself when Maya didn't just prevent an awkward moment but snuffed it out before it ever caught on fire.  No one was overtly averse to sharing a room with her, or talking, or laughing or anything but when it came down the intimacy of lodging there was going to be a selection process and, well, Harmony was different and that made it awkward.  Maya genuinely didn't seem to care and Harmony loved that about her already, almost as much as her sometimes raw sometimes sweet accent.  It wasn't exactly Australian Harmony thought but it was pretty close.  Kind of like the difference between someone from Alabama and Mississippi.  Maybe a little more pronounced but a close enough analogy for Harmony to grasp.<br/><br/>"Can't abide brownies without nuts in them," she answered with a smile that had more than a trace of relief in it.  "I can handle them just fine."  Harmony nodded to the others and followed Maya into the suite they were going to share.  Taking a chance, Harmony flopped down on the same bed as Maya, leaving their heads more of less side by side.  "Thank you," she said and turned her head to look at Maya from just a foot away.  "I mean, some of them are sort of pushing thirty but I wasn't looking forward to, well, I reckon you know what I mean.  Your team, soccer you said?  A lot like our group age wise, right?"<br/><br/>"That's got to be tough.  I mean, you're - we're - not old but it seems like it when the just barely twenties crowd comes around."<br/><br/>