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31_days2012-06-04 01:12 am
treeflamingo.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2012-06-04 01:12 am
[June 3] [Original] The Sprites
Title: The Sprites
Day/Theme: June 3 - they met once more
Series: Original, one-off
Rating: G
Wordcount: 775
A/N: The first thing I thought of when I read this prompt was a romantic drabble about the chance reuniting of two old lovers; and then I realize that I could imagine about a billion different pairings into that scenario and got bored. Then I tried for the most obscure application of the prompt I could think of, and somehow came up with a story about rivers... which seemed equally boring. Then I stumbled upon this idea, and went with it...
The pebbles in the creek bed looked like puddles of mercury, and the early cicadas grew audacious in the warm air, and Hercules bent his knee against the distant granite spire, and the water tinkled furtively through the darkness, just exactly as it had that night forty years before.
Rose smoothed her hands down her trousers, then bunched them up at her thighs, trying to remember what it felt like to hold calico in small fists.
Exactly the same. It was all exactly the same. The only thing that had changed was herself.
Her hair was streaking gray now, but then it hadn’t yet started to fade to brown. She’d had dimples in her cheeks instead of lines, and no thoughts that outlasted the summer. She’d stood pigeon-toed then, a thing which yoga had finally fixed in her late thirties.
It wasn’t the first time she’d come back to the creek; she’d waited ten years for the first return, but then she made pilgrimages once a year for as many years as she could manage. But it was the first time she’d come back in May.
The whole town had ground to a halt that next day, forty years ago, when Dahlia wasn’t found in her bed in the morning, and it stayed stalled for days while Dahlia proved to be nowhere she could possibly have been. Rose had stayed in her room most of that time, and spoken very little. Nobody thought anything of it; any eight-year-old girl would be like that, frightened and silent, if her best friend had disappeared from her room in the night, just on the other side of town. There wasn’t a person in town who hadn’t wanted to do just that - to hide, to ignore - but instead they rallied, like a good New England village. The menfolk searched, and the women gossipped and visited and reassured, and the children redoubled the rowdiness as if to distract.
Rose had felt like a convict, but she couldn’t have told even if they’d asked her: that they’d snuck out of their bedrooms by appointment, that they’d met at the back of the Dubois’ old barn, that they’d crept like Indians into the woods, to their creek, that they’d met them there, that they’d been given the same invitation, that Rose had chosen to stay, and that Dahlia had chosen to go.
Sometimes Rose believed it wasn’t true, for convenience’ sake. It was easier to accept, in the world that had grown up around her, that a child had been abducted from her room in the night.
But it was true, and Rose could never avoid it for long.
Rose was watching Hercules, trying to imagine his face, the way they two had done as girls -
- and suddenly they were there.
Rose froze, and all the wind and warmth and sound disappeared from the woods. Just exactly like they had forty years before.
The little troop had grown by a few faces - three more little girls, a smattering of dogs and foxes and birds - but the rest, the nine sets of hoary eyes set into soft, callow faces, the falcon, the spaniel, the collie, the wolves, the sparrows and robins and blue jays, and the little army of cats - were wholly unchanged, matched perfectly to the image etched into her memory.
She spread her hands against her thighs, to check their sizes, to make sure she wasn’t eight.
The delicate creature with the ringlets, the same who had stood at the front that night, stood at the front again now, but Dahlia stepped forward and past her.
She was so achingly small. Rose wanted to pick her up, to let her wind arms and legs around her, to stroke her little head, the way she had her own daughters, when they were eight.
But Dahlia was a grown soul, and her eyes implied wisdom and sorrow that surpassed her natural years, or Rose’s paltry tragedies.
At last Dahlia smiled; the sounds of the forest returned, and Rose couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t been there the whole time. Dahlia’s cheeks puffed up into apples, like they always had, but her lips didn’t part to show her snaggle tooth. It was not a happy smile, but an old one.
“You made the wrong choice, Rose,” she said, in the little voice that had played in, and haunted, Rose’s dreams for forty years.
And Rose said nothing, because, just like that night forty years ago, and the next morning, and every night and morning since, and in every dream, she was not sure that it wasn’t true.
Day/Theme: June 3 - they met once more
Series: Original, one-off
Rating: G
Wordcount: 775
A/N: The first thing I thought of when I read this prompt was a romantic drabble about the chance reuniting of two old lovers; and then I realize that I could imagine about a billion different pairings into that scenario and got bored. Then I tried for the most obscure application of the prompt I could think of, and somehow came up with a story about rivers... which seemed equally boring. Then I stumbled upon this idea, and went with it...
The pebbles in the creek bed looked like puddles of mercury, and the early cicadas grew audacious in the warm air, and Hercules bent his knee against the distant granite spire, and the water tinkled furtively through the darkness, just exactly as it had that night forty years before.
Rose smoothed her hands down her trousers, then bunched them up at her thighs, trying to remember what it felt like to hold calico in small fists.
Exactly the same. It was all exactly the same. The only thing that had changed was herself.
Her hair was streaking gray now, but then it hadn’t yet started to fade to brown. She’d had dimples in her cheeks instead of lines, and no thoughts that outlasted the summer. She’d stood pigeon-toed then, a thing which yoga had finally fixed in her late thirties.
It wasn’t the first time she’d come back to the creek; she’d waited ten years for the first return, but then she made pilgrimages once a year for as many years as she could manage. But it was the first time she’d come back in May.
The whole town had ground to a halt that next day, forty years ago, when Dahlia wasn’t found in her bed in the morning, and it stayed stalled for days while Dahlia proved to be nowhere she could possibly have been. Rose had stayed in her room most of that time, and spoken very little. Nobody thought anything of it; any eight-year-old girl would be like that, frightened and silent, if her best friend had disappeared from her room in the night, just on the other side of town. There wasn’t a person in town who hadn’t wanted to do just that - to hide, to ignore - but instead they rallied, like a good New England village. The menfolk searched, and the women gossipped and visited and reassured, and the children redoubled the rowdiness as if to distract.
Rose had felt like a convict, but she couldn’t have told even if they’d asked her: that they’d snuck out of their bedrooms by appointment, that they’d met at the back of the Dubois’ old barn, that they’d crept like Indians into the woods, to their creek, that they’d met them there, that they’d been given the same invitation, that Rose had chosen to stay, and that Dahlia had chosen to go.
Sometimes Rose believed it wasn’t true, for convenience’ sake. It was easier to accept, in the world that had grown up around her, that a child had been abducted from her room in the night.
But it was true, and Rose could never avoid it for long.
Rose was watching Hercules, trying to imagine his face, the way they two had done as girls -
- and suddenly they were there.
Rose froze, and all the wind and warmth and sound disappeared from the woods. Just exactly like they had forty years before.
The little troop had grown by a few faces - three more little girls, a smattering of dogs and foxes and birds - but the rest, the nine sets of hoary eyes set into soft, callow faces, the falcon, the spaniel, the collie, the wolves, the sparrows and robins and blue jays, and the little army of cats - were wholly unchanged, matched perfectly to the image etched into her memory.
She spread her hands against her thighs, to check their sizes, to make sure she wasn’t eight.
The delicate creature with the ringlets, the same who had stood at the front that night, stood at the front again now, but Dahlia stepped forward and past her.
She was so achingly small. Rose wanted to pick her up, to let her wind arms and legs around her, to stroke her little head, the way she had her own daughters, when they were eight.
But Dahlia was a grown soul, and her eyes implied wisdom and sorrow that surpassed her natural years, or Rose’s paltry tragedies.
At last Dahlia smiled; the sounds of the forest returned, and Rose couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t been there the whole time. Dahlia’s cheeks puffed up into apples, like they always had, but her lips didn’t part to show her snaggle tooth. It was not a happy smile, but an old one.
“You made the wrong choice, Rose,” she said, in the little voice that had played in, and haunted, Rose’s dreams for forty years.
And Rose said nothing, because, just like that night forty years ago, and the next morning, and every night and morning since, and in every dream, she was not sure that it wasn’t true.