Into the Woods - Mother Isn't Here Now, 250 wds.
Title: Mother Isn't Here Now
Fandom: Into the Woods
Characters: Cinderella
Prompt: #030. Death
Word Count: 250
Rating: G
Author's Notes: An elaboration of this photofic request.
They put her mother in the earth, in a hole as wide as a lifetime and as deep as pain, and covered her up with a pine box and a year of dirt. Ella stood at the graveside long after the other mourners had gone, long after her father, even, had vanished to the bottle that would never fill up the hole in his heart.
"What did I do wrong?" she whispered, not expecting, not entirely even hoping for, the answer that could not come. "Mother..."
There was no reply - of course there was no reply. "Mother isn't here now," Ella told herself sternly, and tried to leave, tried to go back to the house (no longer lit up by Mother's parties, and Mother's smiles, and Mother's songs, and Mother's--), tried to move away and move on.
She found that she couldn't. For years after, long after the grave-faced little Ella became the dirty-faced Cinderella, big and clumsy and so different from her former, elegant, delicate self, she would still creep out to her mother's grave whenever she could, to weep over the tree she'd planted there, to pretend that she could still hear her mother speaking to her, advising her, guiding her--
--they would be lonely years, in the company of silent birds and unspeaking mice, in the company of the dirt that hid her mother and the dirt that hid her own beauty, in the company of death.
Fandom: Into the Woods
Characters: Cinderella
Prompt: #030. Death
Word Count: 250
Rating: G
Author's Notes: An elaboration of this photofic request.
They put her mother in the earth, in a hole as wide as a lifetime and as deep as pain, and covered her up with a pine box and a year of dirt. Ella stood at the graveside long after the other mourners had gone, long after her father, even, had vanished to the bottle that would never fill up the hole in his heart.
"What did I do wrong?" she whispered, not expecting, not entirely even hoping for, the answer that could not come. "Mother..."
There was no reply - of course there was no reply. "Mother isn't here now," Ella told herself sternly, and tried to leave, tried to go back to the house (no longer lit up by Mother's parties, and Mother's smiles, and Mother's songs, and Mother's--), tried to move away and move on.
She found that she couldn't. For years after, long after the grave-faced little Ella became the dirty-faced Cinderella, big and clumsy and so different from her former, elegant, delicate self, she would still creep out to her mother's grave whenever she could, to weep over the tree she'd planted there, to pretend that she could still hear her mother speaking to her, advising her, guiding her--
--they would be lonely years, in the company of silent birds and unspeaking mice, in the company of the dirt that hid her mother and the dirt that hid her own beauty, in the company of death.