the beginning of an end

by NiNA_eN

Why the girl grew up and how the man still could not let go. –Riza Hawkeye, her father.


She is five when her mother dies

- and she screams the whole world down and drowns it in her tears.

Her father smashes all their photographs; takes her clothes, her perfume bottle, her jewellery box and burns it all down. As he watches the fire, his jaw slackens, mouth gapes, eyes wide and blindly following the scent of flowers and burning wood, and the curled ragged edges of a sunshine smile fading into the sky.

He locks himself in his study and doesn't come out for her funeral a week later.


Purely authorial liberties taken with what little is actually known of her past.