Ellery
The ivy had grown more than she'd expected, exceeding the boundaries of the trellis before the windowseat to cover the ground around it in a six-foot radius, which led it to start climbing up the foot of the brick house. She shrugged, wondering if she should water it or if she should just let it find its own water. She turned away, her steps taking her up the four stone steps to the small porch built into the corner of the house. She stopped and looked up at the ceiling covering the porch, knowing that what she was searching for lay in the room right above her head. Nobody would know she'd been there, just as nobody had known she'd left.
She opened the creaking wood door, the hinges and knob both screeching in protest. She'd not locked the door when she left, so she entered cautiously, in case the noises drew unwanted characters hiding out inside. Luckily, the only sounds she heard were those of the door and her own steady breathing.
Stepping across the threshold and onto the dusty wooden floor of the foyer, she peered around, looking at all her old memories scattered here and there, smiling at her emptily like a crowd of senile old aunties without their teeth in. She smiled back warmly. She didn't regret that she couldn't take those memories with her; she knew they'd always be here in this dank, dusty corner of her world, ready to open up like books for her to read. Memory is never lost to those who know how to hide it well.
Casting one last glance over her old belongings, she started for the stairs, the rickety, steep, unlit stairs that used to hold so much mystery for her. She climbed them without a problem now, but she grinned at all the times she'd run away from them, worried about falling through one of them into the home of a ghastly troll.
She reached the top of the stairs quickly, and stopped. Gazing at her with its sad look was the door to another memory, a sadder memory. Sad is always there, covered up with happy, she thought, just like the dust all over my memories downstairs. The corners of her mouth turned up in a rueful smile, her mind already in the room whose door her eyes still focused on. She shook her head, quietly accepting the sadness before the full blast would hit her when she opened the door.
And so it did.
She opened the creaking wood door, the hinges and knob both screeching in protest. She'd not locked the door when she left, so she entered cautiously, in case the noises drew unwanted characters hiding out inside. Luckily, the only sounds she heard were those of the door and her own steady breathing.
Stepping across the threshold and onto the dusty wooden floor of the foyer, she peered around, looking at all her old memories scattered here and there, smiling at her emptily like a crowd of senile old aunties without their teeth in. She smiled back warmly. She didn't regret that she couldn't take those memories with her; she knew they'd always be here in this dank, dusty corner of her world, ready to open up like books for her to read. Memory is never lost to those who know how to hide it well.
Casting one last glance over her old belongings, she started for the stairs, the rickety, steep, unlit stairs that used to hold so much mystery for her. She climbed them without a problem now, but she grinned at all the times she'd run away from them, worried about falling through one of them into the home of a ghastly troll.
She reached the top of the stairs quickly, and stopped. Gazing at her with its sad look was the door to another memory, a sadder memory. Sad is always there, covered up with happy, she thought, just like the dust all over my memories downstairs. The corners of her mouth turned up in a rueful smile, her mind already in the room whose door her eyes still focused on. She shook her head, quietly accepting the sadness before the full blast would hit her when she opened the door.
And so it did.