#fff79

[onceuponanaromantic]

Black Wind Breaking

(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial​‘s prompt: FFF79: On my Way Home. TW: Major Character Death. Set in yet another urban magic verse that I’ve just come up with where people can control the elements (i.e. fire, water, wood, earth, air) but at the cost of slowly becoming the element and losing their humanity. Enjoy!)

 She’s on her knees before she knows it, fingers moving to pull open the black coat and pull open the armour. She felt the wind pulling and tearing urging her to tear and fly, but she had to remain human.

             Of all the times, she couldn’t lose her humanity now.

             “Hey.” Her sister said, voice breaking on that single word.

             “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” She’s muttering without even knowing it, trying to stem the bleeding, trying to ignore the warm damp fabric beneath her fingers, the (damning) bubbles she could feel.

             “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” She was pressing on the wound, turning to the broken mask still obscuring her sister’s face. Her sister coughed and laughed; breath still warm (good) as she reached up gently to pull the mask off her face to assess the damage. There’s a long line of blood dripping from her sister’s mouth, and a littering mass of bruises and cuts all over her face.

             “Just stay alive.” She’s not injured but her voice shook with anger and pain. “Why did you do it? It was supposed to be me.”

             Her sister laughed weakly, before coughing up another glob of blood. She quickly raised her sister’s body, trying to adjust it.

             She couldn’t die. She was Cuprum. She just couldn’t.

             “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you more.”

           “So you stole my armour and pretended to be me?”

             Her sister looked up at her, nearly coughing with the effort. “You weren’t- you weren’t doing anything.”

             “You silly- foolish-“

           “I couldn’t let you die. But you weren’t going to and-“She breaks off, a shiver wracking her body. “And they needed to see the human. Not the wind.”

             She tried to support her sister, pulling her head into the crook of her elbow, but she kept slipping out. Her sister’s eyes closed for a heartbeat and then another. She felt water on her face and looked up to the sky, expecting rain.

             But the sky was clear. The storm had moved on.

             She should have noticed earlier when the wind stopped tugging on her to fly and destroy. But she had been too focused on her sister.

             “Don’t be angry with me.”

             She looked down at her sister, who had opened her eyes again, face pale beneath the discolouration. “What?”

           “Don’t be angry with me for- “She broke off here to cough again. “Everything.”

           “I’m not angry with you, Pera. Just. I’ve called Alumen already so just stay alive till then.”

           Her sister smiled up at her. “Okay.”

           “You just stay alive so we can get on your ass about risking your life for something so stupid.”

           “It wasn’t stupid! They, the others, needed to see someone stand up to the Great Ones. They needed to see someone try. And you wouldn’t do it and I knew that the Great Ones were still scared of what you could do so. I did it. And I’m sorry that I had to steal your armour to do it but it worked. And now people will talk and- and maybe someday we’ll be able to go home.”

             “Pera.” Her baby sister’s name was a whisper on her lips. Her baby sister who had been so brave and who had risked her life for the possibility that they might get to go home someday.

             “They took Pemei, Ferrum. I just. I want to go home.”

             The second part was said so softly and hoarsely that she had to strain to hear it.

             And then, her sister’s eyes closed, and her breath was a stutter. She pulled her sister’s wrist to her, pressing hard to the pulse point until she could detect the weak pulse present.    

             “No.” She pulled her sister’s body up, increasing the pressure on the wound. “No no no no no. Pera, wake up. Pera. Cuprum!”

           Her sister opened her eyes sluggishly, gaze unfocused as if she was staring at something in the distance. “I’m sorry, Fe.”

           At that moment, she hated that she wasn’t Water or Earth so she could force the blood to keep moving, or even capable of fine enough control over Air so she could keep the oxygen flowing to her sister’s brain or heart reliably until someone came. All she could do was hold her sister close and try to keep her warm and comfortable and in a position where she could breathe a little easier.

             “I love you.” Her baby sister said, eyes still closed, voice a whisper. Then with one last bubble of blood popping from her mouth, she stopped.

             When Alumen found her, a few minutes later or possibly an eternity, she had to be pulled away from her sister’s body. It was a sight, or would be for anyone else, to see the human form of Black Wind kneeling, wrapped around a small body wearing her ill-fitting armour, the cracked halves of the mask on the ground near them.

             Alumen just pulled her away so they could take the small body and see if she could be saved.

[tamalesnsuch]

Checking In

Flash fic Friday prompt 79: Coming Home

@flashfictionfridayofficial​

 ***

The boarding house hunched on the edge of the pier as if trying not to be noticed. Doors upon doors creaked and sighed with weariness as people came and went. It was an excitable green once; granny smith apple with a fresh veneer of wax. Now it was the cloying green found on the backs of bread long forgotten in a cupboard. The doors, however, remained a rusty smear upon its face. Its owner had decreed it be painted regularly, for appearances, she had said. Never mind the sagging roof and crumbling foundation that was slowly losing its battle of stubbornness with the tide after every year. The house, as its owner, endured.

She’d have it no other way.

The verandah door creaked with indignation as she entered. The house was frozen in time. Pots and pans stood at attention above the stove. Jars of spices and dried goods lined the shelves as the idle thoughts of a writer, recipe cards tucked here, a measuring cup there, stirring spoon over there. Gran was stationed at the stove, day duster billowing behind her as regal as any queen’s cape had a right to be. Through all the revisions and emissions of her life this one figure alone in the kitchen tethered her back to herself. She was home.

“Check-in at the desk. I’ll be there in a moment,” Gran said through a billow of steam from a pot.

Her bags plonked to the ground. “Hi Gran,” she said, finally feeling like herself again, and time stood still as it always seems to do at her Grandmother’s house.

[miriamandvictoria]

A cactus in a coffee can (And a plane to New Mexico)

Another week, another @flashfictionfridayofficial​ short story. This time, I’ve really taken the theme to heart - returning to the roots, the very inspiration for this large story that I write these shorts about. Originally this whole story came from the song “Cactus in a coffee can”, and I’ve sort of made a sequel to it which connects it with my story that was inspired by it. I highly recommend listening to the song in connection to the story if you can. 

"Where are you going, sweetheart?"

The woman in the window seat turns to look at me with big eyes, clearly taken by surprise. Her mouth moves to speak, but nothing ever comes out. She remains silent.

Gently, I put a hand on her knee and squeeze it tight.   Even with the tremor in my own hand, I could feel she was shaking.

"I'm going to see my grandchildren." I start with my own story, thinking perhaps it would make it easier for her. "It's been some time now, since my daughter moved out here. I'm not too good with travel."

The woman - probably in her fifties, but her behaviour so much younger, smile. "My mum feels like you. I live in the UK, these days, and my sister lives some way away. She always complains that she misses us." She explains, her wall slowly starting to crumble.

I nodded. "So that's where you're going? To your mum." I ask, smirking a little. It's a bit like twenty questions, trying to understand this stranger in the window seat.

The woman shakes her head. "My name is Victoria. Or Vicky." She said, offering me a hand.

I took it gratefully. "Elaina." I said. Then, I hesitated. Sometimes, I had a hard time knowing if what I wanted to say was advisable, or not. This time, I figured I'd go with it. "I can tell you're upset. And I know that we don't know each other...but I'm a good listener."

Vicky looks even more shocked than she had when I first spoke. Then, tears started to rise in her eyes. 

"I'm going home" She says, and I've never heard anything so sad in my life.

"Not excited, are you?" I ask carefully. I want to hold her, but she looks like a porcelain doll and I feel afraid to break her. 

"It's not...not my mum. That raised me. It's my biological mum." She looks put the window, tears streaming down her cheeks. "She's buried in Santa Fe." She explains. 

The confession is surprising and now I'm the one who is shocked,  because oh, that's a story I know.

I move my hand from her knee to her back, rubbing gentle circles as I start to speak.

"My mum's first love was crack, she made a living laying on her back. And she gave me away, the day that I was born." I whispered softly, making sure it only was the two of us that would hear. "I spent ten years tracking her down. It never seemed fair, that when I finally found her, she was almost gone."

Vicky turns back around, and this glassy crying eyes stare at her in shock and, maybe, relief. Relief, that I understood exactly what she felt without her having to say the word.

That she was not the only abandoned child out there.

"There's four of us, all girls. She abandoned the oldest three...our youngest sister spent years tracking us down. First my little sisters, before, finally, me." Seemingly having decided I was to be trusted, Vicky starts to talk. She starts to tell the tale that brought her to tears at the kindness of a stranger.

I really wished it was something that surprised me. That it was a story that I hadn't heard, in some form, before.

"Did you...ever get to see her? Your mother. While she was alive." I ask carefully, knowing the upheaval I might just be unleashing.

Vicky shakes her head, still seemingly shocked by the way I seem to know it all before she's told me. "She never gave away her secret. My sisters didn't know...I was. Until after she passed. And they found  her diary, where she talked about me."

I nod my head and smile. From experience, I know very well that words means little. A listening ear was worth more than all the comforting words strangers would hurled at you.

"They're meeting me, at the airport. They went down before me." She explained. "I said I wanted to visit the grave...they said they'd come along. That we'd do it together." 

She turns back towards me, smiling a watery smile. Her hand grabs my free hand, and squeezes it.

"Thank you" She says,  her dark eyes meeting mine, and I could tell she really meant it. 

Unexpectedly, I had touched her. I had helped and given her hope to think that she was not alone. 

"You are welcome." I saw, getting my hand free so I could open my purse and take out one of my cards. "I got an organisation. We're sort of a family...of abandoned kids. We do Skype meetings and talk and...share." 

I watch her eyes staring at my hands as she shoves the card into hers, closing those fingers around it.

"Welcome home" 

[starklyscifi]

Home for the Holidays

White knuckling the steering wheel won’t make you a better driver. Thomas Thaddeus Maynard wanted someone to ask him how he knew. He also wanted someone to hit him upside the head with a brick. Preferably sooner rather than later.

Just Thad, thanks, has been driving for an eternal winter, the same poorly lit whiteout occupying his windshield. There was a word for this, right? Snow something?

More brake lights broke up the monotony ahead. Which, of course, meant another round of ice-does-interesting-things-to-brakes. And an undignified squawk—not that they’d ever admit to that—from the backseat.

“Oh, shut it, I don’t want to spend Christmas with her either.”

Snow blindness. That’s what it was.

Miserable New Englanders with their miserable snow. No wonder they were so irritated all the time. Or haughty—having to constantly justify their existing in such a horrible place to themselves. He felt a twinge of guilt as Silent Night carried over the radio. Holiday season, family, and all that.

He blew out a breath and adjust his grip on the steering wheel as another complaint carried from the back seat.

“Lay off, I’m doing my best.”

But he wasn’t, was he? That was the dirty little secret all the self-help, self-care crowd overlooked. Sometimes, he wasn’t doing his best.

Sometimes, he was just being bitter and annoyed and a lazy bastard. Especially in the winter driving department, as the car slide a little out of his lane on a sharp curve, eliciting a litany of horns.

“I’m trying!”

The backseat occupant had their own commentary to add, of course. Thad decided to try surly and glaring this time—it was working for all the other drivers around him.

It didn’t work for him. He still had to bear the abuse from the backseat for the next twenty-three excruciating minutes while he crawled along I-95. Finally, the sweet, sweet exit sign loomed ahead.

Thad hated exit ramps. Or, he hated exit ramps now. Turns out, they were even slipperier than the interstate. He may have bruised his fist while banging on the steering wheel at the first stoplight.

“You,” he said, turning around and pointing, “Are not to tell her any of this, do you understand?”

All he got back was slow blinking. The little traitor wasn’t going to promise anything.

And it’s not like his widowed mother could have picked a nice, plowed street to live on. Oh no, she’d landed—back in August, when it had been warm and bearable—on a quaint little dirt road outside of town.

Thad really thought his life was going to end frozen in a snowbank before he got to the end of that road. Which really boiled his blood, messing with his nice retirement plans.

He was never leaving Florida again.

The lights were on in the old farmhouse, and he could see a figure hovering at the window. Not his fault it took him five minutes to see the edge of the driveway and turn in.

She was standing in the doorway, framed by the Christmas lights, as he stamped up the stairs.

“Mother,” he said, dropping the infernal carrying case on the porch. “I’ve brought your cat.”

“Oh you poor thing,” she said, dropping to her knees to coo and let the cat out of the carry case.

He swore it smirked, smirked, at him as it sauntered into house, tail twitching. Seemed like he might as well stay out on the porch.

“Well? Come inside, you’re letting all the heat out.”

He stamped the snow off his shoes. This was not what Bing Crosby had in mind.

@flashfictionfridayofficial​