Disclaimer: surprise, surprise, I still don't own any of them…
Apart from the 1st person POV this one here has nothing to do with lily moonlight's story of the same title; still I recommend that you read her piece as well because it is really great!
Feel free to let me know what you think of this. As usual, all comments are welcome.
Watching – Where we are
I sit on a couch, next to my mother. It's not as comfortable as the couch we have at home but I have a feeling it is one of the most comfortable places in this building. I look at the woman opposite us. She has expressed her sympathy, trying to fill hollow words with meaning, expressing it more through the tone of her voice.
My mother has her hand on mine but somehow I think she doesn't really feel the touch. In her grief she has lost her sense of my presence. She's choking on her tears. I try to reach her but she doesn't react.
I look at the other woman, study her face. I tangle my glance in her curls, try to follow their curves. The directions they take are as unpredictable as life, never quite the same as just a moment before. I see inside of her. She tries to build a wall against the grief she sees before her. She tries to be as objective as her job requires, having to ask unpleasant questions, having to be always suspicious.
I look down at the leather of the couch; follow the lines running through it. Irregularities of a living being. Cracks and scratches added by other living beings. People have sat here before us; people will sit here after us. I'm wondering again, who they have been, who they will be.
I remember sneaking out of our house in the middle of the night, following our cat as it crawled through hedges and played with the moonlight. I remember the smell of darkness and silence, the sound of rotting leaves under my bare feet. I remember a dead bird, feathers still attached to the hollow bones of its wings, fragments of skin sunken between its ribs, a cavity gaping underneath, where its heart had been.
I look at a little gathering of dust hiding just by the leg of the coffee-table. Ashes to ashes. I zoom into it, imagine electrons whizzing around a nucleus. Atoms are always alive, even inside a dead body, I think. They are as alive in this small pile of dust as they are inside of me, inside of my mother and inside of the woman opposite us.
I look at different dust, one dancing through the air. Catching sunlight, losing it again, catching, and losing... days and nights. I remember the time when we were still all together. I have always known that life can not last forever, well, almost always.
I think I was four when a girl from the neighborhood tied a ribbon around my wrist while I made a wish. She said that if I wore the ribbon until it fell off the wish would come true. I had wished to live forever.
That night I had a dream, or maybe something else. Just silvery grey everywhere, myself somewhere in there, floating. No words were spoken, but I knew, it just sunk into my soul. The same night I stood in our shed, begging my father in tears to cut the ribbon. I knew it couldn't be.
Still, I wish life could last a little bit longer. A hard sob rips my attention back to my mother. I see lines on her face that weren't there a week ago, gapping, creating a distance between us. Grief distorting her face almost beyond recognition. I have to look away again. I try to catch the green eyes of the woman talking to my mother, or trying to talk, rather.
She talks of the wounds they have found on the body, explains what they indicate. She asks my mother for any indications of problems beforehand, anything that could point to the who or the why, but the only answer she gets is that it can not be.
I send her a thought. I think she looks at me for a moment, but maybe she only had to look away from my mother, just like me. She looks away from both of us. I see how her eyes change focus. I know she's not looking out of the window although her eyes are aiming in that direction. Maybe she watches the dust, just like me.
Another cry of pain escapes my mother. We both look at her. She says it again, that it can not be, it is the only thing she knows. The woman nods, she will not probe any further. She will get back to her job; analyze the facts that are not influenced by feelings. She's determined to find out what happened.
She gets up, signaling that she has no more questions to ask, that she wishes to be the one to provide the answers next time. My mother struggles to her feet, she can not stop shaking. The woman's hand reaches for my mother's arm, another touch not felt. At the door we part. I look at her, hesitate for a moment.