Interlude
An Interlude.
For a story, with which I have fallen in love. I honestly don't think that I've ever been so invested in a storyline so much as this one.
And since I'm terrible at telling storylines, I shall say only this:
It is love. And pain, and sadness. But it is Love most of all.
This is to be accompanied by the song, Sweet Zoe Jane, by Staind. I took something that KC said, and ran with it, because she was entirely right.
Shanleigh slept. The tiny cottage was rife with tiny noises, miniscule sounds of life. Her mother hadn't slept properly for years. In fact, she was so used to catching only snippets of sleep that it hardly effected her anymore. Bryna ticked over as well as ever, if a little on edge.
The bed was still made, unslept in even past midnight. In its stead, the thin woman was curled within the confines of a wicker rocking chair, the sounds of the cottage sweeping about her.
A change in the air. It might have been any number of things that woke her, from the switching of the clock from night to day, to the rattle of a shutter in the wind.
What it was hardly mattered. It only mattered that there was something different, and that frightened the pale woman more than anything. She was on her feet in moments, sprung into instant wakefulness and leaving the chair behind her rocking wildly.
Two paces carried her to her daughter's room, and Bryna opened the door a crack.
But a crack was never enough, and on practised feet the ageing redhead navigated creaking boards to find herself at Shanleigh's side.
She didn't dare perch herself on the mattress' edge, for fear of disturbing the angel-child tucked up amongst patchwork quilts and down pillows. In the luxury of an adoring mother, the dark haired girl slept soundly, her father's features smiling ever constant, like a living death mask, a monument to all that he was.
Slender fingers brushed back curls from the unwrinkled brow of her daughter, seeing a man five years passed and a woman too-soon grown.
Following long established custom, Bryn took two steps backward and planted herself in a small chair by her daughter's bed, there to lay and watch her sleep.
She was not overprotective for no good reason. Things in the world had quieted, You Know Who had faded into rumour and hear-say. But Bryna could not forget.
She could not forget her Sister and her Nephew. Her Brothers. Her Fiancé.
She could not forget the scene, emblazoned upon her eyelids for eternity, never to be removed nor replaced - of the Two, her Angels, her Saints, or what was left of them.
She remembered the smell, even as she remembered his voice, heard it in new cadences. A song that enclosed the girls in that room, and filled Bryna with a grief and a love so deep. It forced a tear from eyes long dried, quickly wiped clear lest their daughter wake; she did so hate to see her mother crying. As did Fabian.
The ghost of a touch across her cheek, lifting her chin - Be brave, Be Proud - and Shanleigh smiled.
For a story, with which I have fallen in love. I honestly don't think that I've ever been so invested in a storyline so much as this one.
And since I'm terrible at telling storylines, I shall say only this:
It is love. And pain, and sadness. But it is Love most of all.
This is to be accompanied by the song, Sweet Zoe Jane, by Staind. I took something that KC said, and ran with it, because she was entirely right.
Shanleigh slept. The tiny cottage was rife with tiny noises, miniscule sounds of life. Her mother hadn't slept properly for years. In fact, she was so used to catching only snippets of sleep that it hardly effected her anymore. Bryna ticked over as well as ever, if a little on edge.
The bed was still made, unslept in even past midnight. In its stead, the thin woman was curled within the confines of a wicker rocking chair, the sounds of the cottage sweeping about her.
A change in the air. It might have been any number of things that woke her, from the switching of the clock from night to day, to the rattle of a shutter in the wind.
What it was hardly mattered. It only mattered that there was something different, and that frightened the pale woman more than anything. She was on her feet in moments, sprung into instant wakefulness and leaving the chair behind her rocking wildly.
Two paces carried her to her daughter's room, and Bryna opened the door a crack.
But a crack was never enough, and on practised feet the ageing redhead navigated creaking boards to find herself at Shanleigh's side.
She didn't dare perch herself on the mattress' edge, for fear of disturbing the angel-child tucked up amongst patchwork quilts and down pillows. In the luxury of an adoring mother, the dark haired girl slept soundly, her father's features smiling ever constant, like a living death mask, a monument to all that he was.
Slender fingers brushed back curls from the unwrinkled brow of her daughter, seeing a man five years passed and a woman too-soon grown.
Following long established custom, Bryn took two steps backward and planted herself in a small chair by her daughter's bed, there to lay and watch her sleep.
She was not overprotective for no good reason. Things in the world had quieted, You Know Who had faded into rumour and hear-say. But Bryna could not forget.
She could not forget her Sister and her Nephew. Her Brothers. Her Fiancé.
She could not forget the scene, emblazoned upon her eyelids for eternity, never to be removed nor replaced - of the Two, her Angels, her Saints, or what was left of them.
She remembered the smell, even as she remembered his voice, heard it in new cadences. A song that enclosed the girls in that room, and filled Bryna with a grief and a love so deep. It forced a tear from eyes long dried, quickly wiped clear lest their daughter wake; she did so hate to see her mother crying. As did Fabian.
The ghost of a touch across her cheek, lifting her chin - Be brave, Be Proud - and Shanleigh smiled.