Fleeting Heart
"O, call back yesterday, bid time return!"
-William Shakespeare
The witch sat at her window, completely oblivious to the summer freshness outside, her shoulders heavy with age and wear. Sadness forever had cloaked her spirit and mind. Her fifty years felt as two hundred, everything in her having been shattered, nearly twenty five years ago. On the chamber door, came a short knock.
"Enter," the witch croaked, and it swung open.
In came a young woman bearing a tray of supper foods and handbowl of water. Immediately she headed for a table near her elder. The weathered witch watched her tactfully lay out the trestle boards, and wet a cloth. Tenderly the young woman picked up the other one's hands, and washed them delicately; like the hand of a child so to prepare her for the meal.
Her assured quickness and careful manner unsettled the older witch, causing her to look away. The younger one was her daughter. She was the nigh spitting image of her mother in looks and personality at that age, at least; before she'd changed. Wynne was the only child she'd bore, and the only person that did not vex her so with unfamiliarity and strangeness. She was the only one to be allowed into these chambers to care for her.
Being twenty years old, she was already behind on starting her own life and family because of it, but, then had always been held back. Her father had left when she was still in swaddling clothes, her mother's solemness having finally gotten to him. Long ago she'd tried to get help from certain potions to help her mother's distress, by discreetly putting them in her food. Extremely intuitive, the woman had refused to take it, effectively realizing it had been tampered with. A month ago, she'd finally persuaded her mother to let her leave on her twenty first birthday for a job North as a teacher. It had taken much arguing and loud voices before the bonds were broken, for her mother raged that her daughter should even go near there. It was a place of learning that had grown from the woman and her friends, who'd all shared innocent hope, but had been scattered by deceit and changes of heart. It struggled with only the help of one, who could no better the school since he was as broken as the others.
Quietly the hands and cloth were laid down, both briefly glancing at another as she then got up to leave. Her mother tried not to watch her daughter go, the ebony knot of hair swinging lightly at her backside as she gently closed the door again. A waft of air came through the open window, gently rustling the tapestry on the wall, and calling her attention to it. Her personal crest was emblazoned in bronze against the blue. The air drifted near her, lifting the rich heavy scent of the food to her nostrils, causing them to flare. Angrily she turned to the dishes, enraged that it interrupted her thoughts, impulsively commanding it with her hand to fly onto the floor. It clattered noisily, scattering the fish, bread and soup everywhere. Her hands flew to her face, and as she often did, began sobbing.
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A year later, autumn once more loomed over head, the leaves of trees starting to turn golden, and fall with the wind to the ground. Under one such tree was Wynne, kneeling beside a newly carved stone, not caring whether grass stained her clothes. The last of the season's wildflowers in her hand were gently lain next to it.
Tears darkened her deep blue eyes as she whispered her goodbyes and sorrow to the ground. Her hand traced the letters upon the stone, as if trying to disprove them, and make them disappear. Etched in it was her mother's name, a woman who'd finally fallen with her heart, and left before her daughter could.
Roweena Ravenclaw
969-1020 AD