rainbowfic | Quill Grey

Name: Mallory
Story: None
Colors: Quill Grey: The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. - Norbet Platt
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: non-graphic death of parents
Word count; 1077
Notes: I'm so sick and so tired. I have no idea where this came from other than I was trying to write for something else entirely and this came about instead.

My mother was a creature of light, of love and passion and glorious music. She sang and it was like a Disney movie, birds would sing with her, the world would stop to hear her song.

But nothing like that lasts? Candles burn bright but they don’t burn long.

My mother died and no one knows why. They say it was a heart attack but it’s hard to believe them. THem being my father, my family, the world at large.

He looks so lost now, my dad. He looks like he no longer knows what to do with himself, which is probably true. No one knows what to do without her light. Not me, not my father. My sister pretends to know but she’s just fighting against the dark, screaming into the night before it envelopes her.

We’re all a little lost.

But here’s the thing, the secret I’m not telling you. We can’t be lost, we don’t get that luxury. There’s work to be done and we don’t get the time to mourn, we have to keep this city on it’s feet.

~

My mother said the city noises could be turned into an orchestra if you tried hard enough. I always smiled, nodding and going along with it because it’s just what you do when you’re mom’s got her head int he clouds. But she could do it, turn the world into a show, into a concert that we were being treated to.

I never knew how, not exactly. I knew what she was but that didn't mean I understood it. Every part of her was musical, every movement a part of a bigger song, but she never let us see the sheet music so we could follow along.

Did you know that, after we die, our hearts still keep beating? My mother’s heart still beat. My father keeps it in a jar on the bed. It soothes him to sleep at night, or mocks him, I’m really not sure which. It could be both.

The city seems quieter without her now and I don’t know what to do about it. I scream and I want to throw trashcans against the walls and pitch a fit and do whatever I can to cause a fuss but I don’t.

She would see that as rude.

My mother taught us good manners, I know how to behave. Even when I’m mourning.

~

I do my job even when she’s gone, be the scrappy child you see out of the corner of your eye. I steal and snatch and scamper away. No one knows I’m there, no one believes they've seen me.

They’ll go home, mention the little boy or girl they saw rooting through the trash, say how sad it was, but they’ll not have helped me. they won’t give me a dollar or a meal. They’ll move on, be grateful it’s not their child and I’ll move on.

The trash comes with me, the unwanted things that fall away from the world finding their new home in my little sack. I don’t mind, I like collecting lost things.

But I don’t have my mother to come home to anymore, I don’t have her pretty voice telling me to clean up. Id on’t have her running her fingers through my hair or telling me that I did a good job today.

My sister tries says “You've done good,” but there’s something missing. She’s still fighting the darkness and it’s clear in her eyes that it’s going to overwhelm her soon.

I tell her it’s all right, that I understand even though I don’t. I don’t understand how someone can be so lost that nothing can find them.

Because I always find the lost things.

Almost anyway.

~

My father listens to my mother’s beating heart and hums along with it. He makes up songs to go along with it’s steady thump and I wonder if he’s going mad. Not scream out loud, throw yourself against a wall mad, but a softer, quieter madness that will leave him singing songs to the empty air in an attempt to win back my mother.

As if she can be won, as if his hope alone can bring her back.

But we are what we are and that’s not the strangest thing that’s happened to one of us, so maybe there’s something to his actions.

I don’t know. I just fear that I’m going to lose him too.

And then the sun will crawl into the sky instead of rise while we put his heart with hers.

~

I don’t know why I keep doing this. I want to believe that I’ll find something, peace or solace or anything at all but I have no idea if I will.

Because my mother is dead. She’s dead and no matter how many times I write it, my heart still wants to stop beating, even though it never will. My hands shake and it’s hard to keep holding this pen.

My mother. Is dead.

~

People think that they’re the only ones who know grief, that their brief lives give them the right to claim grieving as their thing. It’s not true, other things grieve. Other things mourn.

We mourn.

My father keeps singing, praying to the sky that she’ll come back but only birds answer him. I try and tell him that maybe it’s her and he smacks me across the face, sends me into the couch and I only stare at him.

He cries and it’s not as if I’ve never seen my father cry before but his tears burn through the wood of the table he’s in front of and I know we’ll lose him soon.

~

My sister dances, her feet stomping hard on the ground as she twirls, her hands up in the air She’s not dancing out of joy but out of mourning. Out of a way to honor our parents while I just sit with their hearts held close and my breath hitched.

~

So now I am writing again, writing as the world unfolds before me because I don’t know what else to do. My sister is blissfully mad, I think, and I...I am quiet. Peaceful I guess but it’s a lie.

I’m not at peace, there’s nothing serene about the ache in my chest.

There's no solace in these words, no comfort, no reassurance. There’s nothing but pen on ink and tears staining the pages.

There’s nothing but mourning..