Original Fic: The Ghost in the Playhouse. (Epilogue)
Title: The Ghost In The Playhouse. (Epilogue)
Author:
nights_fang
Prompt: Words: concept, sky, paper, "you", wind, gold, end.
Rating: Teen maybe?
Warnings: Creepy concepts used romantically maybe.
A/N: This is for visualcomplex 's Original Fic Writing Meme
The scene is reminiscent of a childhood dream, Lydia thinks. Like a faded sepia photograph, but still breathing bittersweet nostalgia fills the air here and she can taste it in the back of her throat. Even the strange one-eyed man (the one who calls himself a story-merchant) that she’s brought with her doesn’t seem out of place.
Aunt Marianne sits on the rocking chair reading out softly but animatedly. White hair gracefully pulled to one side, as ever bright brown eyes restlessly move across the page, using her free hand to gesture about, when not turning the page. Her voice cracked with age and sickness, has yet not lost its vibrancy. Each character is given a different voice, each mood a different tone, each description a different approach; all done with appropriate facial expressions. From behind the old woman, a deeper voice chips in for the voices Aunt Marianne cannot do. It’s smoother than Aunt Marianne’s, and younger, but there is a hint of an older time bound to it. Ah Raphael’s here, the butterfly of thought floats through Lydia’s mind, before fluttering away. Suddenly it’s not them reading any more, but the characters speaking through them, bringing the ink and yellowed pages of the book to life. She’s grown up like this, on stories, and the voices in which they were told; on words as soft as cotton, and as sharp as daggers; on whispers and dramatic pauses; on the extra-ordinary, and on the mundane; in colourful meadows, and deserts, and wind-swept fields, and lush forests and by the oceans, and in different worlds.
Together the voices work in unison weaving a fantasy world. They flow over Lydia, around her, through her, and envelop her, and Lydia is lost in the fantasy. She can see bright blues, and vivid greens, faded yellows; she can taste the wine the heroine drinks, and smell the flowers, and the perfumes, and hear the children sing. She can feel the heroine’s pain, the hero’s conflict, the hurt of a forbidden love and a chase for happy endings. By the time it’s over, and Lydia is back in the normal world again, the afternoon is long gone.
Now the sun has slowly begun it’s descent to it’s daily death - and expression forever burned into Lydia’s mind since she first heard Marianne use it - sends weak rays through the window bathing the room in hues of yellow burning bright orange and red. Lydia watches it as it plays against Marianne’s skin, turning it gold, and white hair catching fire. She watches the light shine through Raphael making him seem more like smoke and ether than she ever remembers his evanescent form being.
Aunt Marianne has tears in her eyes and a smile on her wrinkled face. Behind her, Raphael’s wearing an expression that Lydia recognises as something akin to fatherly pride. “Thank You,” they both whisper, a mix of emotions heavily colouring their voices. Marianne clutches the old note-book like it’s an ancient treasure. To the old woman it’s probably worth more than that. It’s her story, proof that the old woman loved, even if was someone she wasn’t supposed too, and she lived proud of that choice, and she lived happily.
“The end is up to you. I’d appreciate if you gave it a title as well,” the one eyed man says softly and suddenly from the door-way, where he’s been standing for hours together. It is his first words of the day, and the first smile Lydia has ever seen on his face in the short span of time she’s known him. He bows respectfully and moves out of the old shack and Lydia follows him, leaving her aunt, guardian and mother of all these years to the phantom’s care. As she leaves she hears the old woman start reading again, however this time the only audience are the people who the story is about.
When Lydia comes back to deliver dinner Raphael is nowhere to be seen, faded away as he’s usually prone to do. He’ll come back in a while, this Lydia knows, he always does. Marianne is sleeping soundly in her chair, the book open to the last few pages. The end of the book is finally written by the hands of the two who the story is about.
There’s a Ghost in the Playhouse, and he’ll never go away.
There’s a Ghost in the Playhouse, and forever with me he’ll stay.
Lydia’s grown up on stories and the voices in which they were told; on words as soft as cotton, and as sharp as daggers; on whispers and dramatic pauses; on the extra-ordinary, and on the mundane; in meadows and deserts and lush forests and by the oceans, and in different worlds. Sometimes those stories were real.
Well At least now I know how I'm supposed to end this one.