Another random idea I had to get out there. Enjoy!
I'm trying a new writing style. So, its going to be a bit slow/choppy more then likely. Also, please, please, review! I want to know if this style works for me or not.
Blue eyes stared out a rain-stained window. As the long, black van drove away, she felt tears come to her eyes, helping the stormy mist shield the van from view. It disappeared as a ghost into the early day fog.
Ellowyn hoped she would never see the van again. This was the second time it had pulled into her driveway; the second time it had come to take someone she knew away. First, it was her Grandmother, one winter when Ellowyn was just a young child. Now, her very own father.
This was different. As a child, she would always sit outside on the porch, or take walks in the garden, wondering when her grandmother would come to visit again. It wasn't until she was older that she realized she would never see her again. But this time? This time she knew. She knew what the van meant.
She fell to her knees. Beside her, a music box sung Brahms' "Lullaby." Ellowyn sat in silence and listened. She could remember the days as a child, sitting beside her father as he and her grandmother played the piece. She remembered how her grandmother's fingers would dance across the piano keys without trouble; how the sound of her father's clarinet would ring through the halls of the house long after he stopped playing. She remembered them playing "Willows of Winter" over the speakers when the weather was too bad outside.
Music had always been a large, lovely part of her life. When she was sick, her father would sit by her bedside and sing until one of them fell asleep. When she was happy, she would dance to one of her father's marches. Even when her grandmother died, the tears were drowned out by beautiful sonatas and concertos.
But now, as she sat listening to the lullaby, she couldn't bear the sound. It haunted her. The memories of her past floated around her, caressed in a black fog. The notes were sour to her ears. The melodies once held dear to her now made her sick. She longed to shut the music box and leave it on the mantel, never to be touched.
She knew she couldn't do it.
She couldn't resist restarting the fragile mechanism. She couldn't stand to end the music, despite the bitter saltiness it left in her mouth. As long as it played, she felt her tears would be dry.
She sat there for hours. She sat until the batteries in the box ran dry. As the last, dreadful, dying note left the box, her mother stole into the room and lifted Ellowyn into her arms. She held her close, whispering soothing words into her ear. Ellowyn listened, her cheeks wet with fresh tears. Her mother stroked her back.
"You'll see him again, Elli. He'll be back."
Ellowyn knew her mother was lying. Although momentarily soothing, Ellowyn knew he would never come back. Her father was gone. He was lost with the last of the summer clouds. Like her grandmother, winter had stolen him away. The first snowflakes fell to the ground outside the frosty windows. The tracks of the van, which before had filled with water, now filled with little flecks of white. Ellowyn let the flakes drift her to sleep as her mother lay her on her soft bed. Like old times, her mother sat by her bedside and began to hum. Her mother's rough, toneless voice was nothing to sooth her, and she fell asleep with wet tears in her eyes.
I know this is short. It's a prologue. Sorry. Next chapter will be longer, promise.