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rainbowfic2024-01-06 10:58 am
freevistas) wrote in rainbowfic2024-01-06 10:58 am
Entry tags:
Teary-eyed #6: Jewelry down the sink
Story: Without Homeland
Colors: Teary-eyed #6: Jewelry down the sink
Word Count: 579
Rating/Warning: T (cw: natural disaster, death)
Notes: Without Homeland takes places in New London, Connecticut in the 1910s and 1920s. More information and fics can be found at my journal. These fics are short vignettes and character studies and aren't necessarily meant to be read chronologically.
Alba just shrugged when Mairead put her hand on her shoulder and asked if she was alright. Mairead had apologized too, of course–after all, she’d been the one to suggest that Alba take off the ring when she was doing chores, especially washing dishes. “It’s so delicate,” she’d said, lifting Alba’s hand to inspect the thin gold band. “Don’t want to ruin it, do you?”
Alba could tell that her dismissive shrugs and half-hearted smiles at Mairead’s apologies and consolations only convinced her friend of what she already believed: that Alba came from money. Or at least more money than Mairead came from. Money that had kept Alba from learning the importance of leaving her rings by her bedside before plunging her hands into hot, soapy water. Money that had meant that a lost ring could always be replaced with a nicer one.
“It’s nothing,” Alba had said, hanging up her apron when the last of the dishes had been washed; with her back to Mairead, she couldn’t see the way her friend’s mouth tightened at those words.
But lying in her bed in the attic apartment that night, Alba traced the spot on her finger where the woman on the Florida had slipped the ring all those years ago. Alba still couldn’t bring herself to think of the earthquake, though it came to her in nightmares: the flames from the exploding gas tanks glowing through the thick clouds of dust; the strange, sickening hissing sounds coming from the dangling electrical wires; the procession of naked survivors clutching pictures of saints as they marched through the downpour to the square at the southern end of the harbor.
She couldn’t bring herself to think of any of that, but she still remembered the Florida perfectly: the nights on that cramped, dark ship that carried hundreds of the survivors to New York. She remembered the inescapable smell of sweat and excrement. The incessant wails of the implacable. The fog: walls of it in every direction, so dense and relentless it seemed that they weren’t on the Atlantic at all, that they were nowhere, that they’d fallen through space and time, that perhaps they hadn’t survived the earthquake at all, that this was death.
And for some of them, it was. Three of them died when the Florida collided with that luxury liner hidden in the fog. It was in the chaos that followed the crash that the woman slipped the ring on Alba’s finger. She’d been quietly fading for days; she didn’t think she would last much longer.
Her husband had given her the ring, the woman had explained, along with the tickets to the Aida performance the night of the earthquake. Anniversary presents. Alba had been at that show, too–had snuck out of the house that night to see it, not knowing that she wouldn’t have a house to return to when it was over.
Alba didn’t see the woman again after the surviving passengers were transferred to another ship following the collision. But she’d never taken off her ring.
“It was the last thing I had from home,” she whispered when Mairead, having heard Alba’s muffled sobs, slipped into her bed later that night.
Mairead nodded against Alba’s back, clasping her friend’s hand until Alba felt something between their palms.
“My fingers’ve plumped up a bit since I was a girl,” she said as Alba examined the ring in the moonlight. “But I figure it should fit you alright.”
Colors: Teary-eyed #6: Jewelry down the sink
Word Count: 579
Rating/Warning: T (cw: natural disaster, death)
Notes: Without Homeland takes places in New London, Connecticut in the 1910s and 1920s. More information and fics can be found at my journal. These fics are short vignettes and character studies and aren't necessarily meant to be read chronologically.
Alba just shrugged when Mairead put her hand on her shoulder and asked if she was alright. Mairead had apologized too, of course–after all, she’d been the one to suggest that Alba take off the ring when she was doing chores, especially washing dishes. “It’s so delicate,” she’d said, lifting Alba’s hand to inspect the thin gold band. “Don’t want to ruin it, do you?”
Alba could tell that her dismissive shrugs and half-hearted smiles at Mairead’s apologies and consolations only convinced her friend of what she already believed: that Alba came from money. Or at least more money than Mairead came from. Money that had kept Alba from learning the importance of leaving her rings by her bedside before plunging her hands into hot, soapy water. Money that had meant that a lost ring could always be replaced with a nicer one.
“It’s nothing,” Alba had said, hanging up her apron when the last of the dishes had been washed; with her back to Mairead, she couldn’t see the way her friend’s mouth tightened at those words.
But lying in her bed in the attic apartment that night, Alba traced the spot on her finger where the woman on the Florida had slipped the ring all those years ago. Alba still couldn’t bring herself to think of the earthquake, though it came to her in nightmares: the flames from the exploding gas tanks glowing through the thick clouds of dust; the strange, sickening hissing sounds coming from the dangling electrical wires; the procession of naked survivors clutching pictures of saints as they marched through the downpour to the square at the southern end of the harbor.
She couldn’t bring herself to think of any of that, but she still remembered the Florida perfectly: the nights on that cramped, dark ship that carried hundreds of the survivors to New York. She remembered the inescapable smell of sweat and excrement. The incessant wails of the implacable. The fog: walls of it in every direction, so dense and relentless it seemed that they weren’t on the Atlantic at all, that they were nowhere, that they’d fallen through space and time, that perhaps they hadn’t survived the earthquake at all, that this was death.
And for some of them, it was. Three of them died when the Florida collided with that luxury liner hidden in the fog. It was in the chaos that followed the crash that the woman slipped the ring on Alba’s finger. She’d been quietly fading for days; she didn’t think she would last much longer.
Her husband had given her the ring, the woman had explained, along with the tickets to the Aida performance the night of the earthquake. Anniversary presents. Alba had been at that show, too–had snuck out of the house that night to see it, not knowing that she wouldn’t have a house to return to when it was over.
Alba didn’t see the woman again after the surviving passengers were transferred to another ship following the collision. But she’d never taken off her ring.
“It was the last thing I had from home,” she whispered when Mairead, having heard Alba’s muffled sobs, slipped into her bed later that night.
Mairead nodded against Alba’s back, clasping her friend’s hand until Alba felt something between their palms.
“My fingers’ve plumped up a bit since I was a girl,” she said as Alba examined the ring in the moonlight. “But I figure it should fit you alright.”
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The accounts of witnesses/survivors of that earthquake are really intense and sad...