Accident
The gas lamp's light flickered weakly as Lucille her head resting on her arm, played a repetitive note on her piano. Thomas had not come home. She stared into the distance, a thousand thoughts flashing through her mind. All of them were horrid as the blizzard raged outside. What if Thomas...and Edith had gotten caught in the storm ? What if one of the cart wheels had shattered causing Styx to throw the cart over and crush Thomas ? What if he were freezing to death and there was nothing she could do ? It was not like when he was eight and she ten. Not like when Father had abandoned Thomas in the snow to hypothermia in order to take his prize stag home. It'd been almost spring then and the snows had started melting leaving her free to find him. Now, however, the snows had only begun and she was trapped until the storm stopped.
What if Styx had panicked in the storm and Thomas in trying to calm the idiotic horse had gotten kicked in the chest ? The piano note became discordant when she heard clear as day the cracking of ribs and shuddered. Equally vividly she imagined Thomas lying in the snow, his eyes squeezed shut and his every breath laboured. How his lips would turn blue, his skin flushing as it tried desperately to warm him before he eventually stopped shivering...stopped breathing.
Panic gripped her and she rose abruptly, rushing to her room in the nu-, attic, it was the attic now. Impulsively, she walked to her chest of drawers and plucked from its top the stuffed moth that Thomas had made her as a thank you present twenty-three years ago. Just as he had so proudly shown her, she pulled the rightmost string, it caused the left-wing to flap. A smile crossed her lips along with a laugh that turned into a sob when she realized that the moth might be the only thing left of him come morning. Thomas had to come home. She crawled into her bed, clutching the moth to her chest as she tried to stymie her shaking; it didn't work. He had to come home. He couldn't die, he couldn't leave her. Never apart, never.