Wild Roses fic prompt 091 "Birthday"
Title: forgotten
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Arianhrod
Prompt: 091 "Birthday"
Word Count: 246
Rating: no young children
Notes: Again, not the prompt I meant to write. After the first war.
The records had survived the war her daughter hadn't, and it didn't take long to find the day--an older heartbreak flipped past as a marker, the newer lingered over with gentle fingers, trying not to dig her nails into the paper as she saw that her daughter's birthday was days past, now.
She'd remembered spring, the sounds of ice breaking to release new-green floods overlaid with the sounds of a baby yelling. She'd remembered hating that the days were getting longer, and that her daughter always awakened at sunrise, whether or not the light was really there to be seen.
She'd lost the day. Much like her laughing, dark skinned daughter, and the man Madeleine'd got her colouring from. He was long gone--a casualty of a war now overshadowed in its scope--and she'd remembered him mostly through his child. Their child, for all that most of what her daughter'd got from her was the shade and curl of her hair. Her height had been her father's, the shade of her skin, and most painfully, her wicked chuckle.
Gone forever, now. Both husband, and daughter.
And she'd missed the day.
Arianhrod blinked hard, willing herself not to cry, and closed the record book as gently as she could. She rested her hand on the spine for a moment after she replaced it on the shelf, then walked away. She'd light a candle, later, not the library now for her own stupidity in not looking earlier.
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Arianhrod
Prompt: 091 "Birthday"
Word Count: 246
Rating: no young children
Notes: Again, not the prompt I meant to write. After the first war.
The records had survived the war her daughter hadn't, and it didn't take long to find the day--an older heartbreak flipped past as a marker, the newer lingered over with gentle fingers, trying not to dig her nails into the paper as she saw that her daughter's birthday was days past, now.
She'd remembered spring, the sounds of ice breaking to release new-green floods overlaid with the sounds of a baby yelling. She'd remembered hating that the days were getting longer, and that her daughter always awakened at sunrise, whether or not the light was really there to be seen.
She'd lost the day. Much like her laughing, dark skinned daughter, and the man Madeleine'd got her colouring from. He was long gone--a casualty of a war now overshadowed in its scope--and she'd remembered him mostly through his child. Their child, for all that most of what her daughter'd got from her was the shade and curl of her hair. Her height had been her father's, the shade of her skin, and most painfully, her wicked chuckle.
Gone forever, now. Both husband, and daughter.
And she'd missed the day.
Arianhrod blinked hard, willing herself not to cry, and closed the record book as gently as she could. She rested her hand on the spine for a moment after she replaced it on the shelf, then walked away. She'd light a candle, later, not the library now for her own stupidity in not looking earlier.