Rain Cello
by Leaflette
A series of drabbles/vignettes chronicling the life of Arashi Kishuu. Some may be very short...but they're drabbles. Please review!
One.
Her mother holds her in her arms, and already she is so beautiful. A tiny crown of ebony hair, skin that is pale like the inside of a pearl, but she does not open her eyes. Instead, the baby holds her mother's finger, gripping it with a tightness one could call desperation if it was not foolish to say so. She is so small, amazingly small, ridiculously small. The mother is almost giddy with happiness--this is what she was waiting for. A look at this tiny girl soothes all the scars of her heart. She feels like the cliched heroine of a romance novel, and perhaps she is.
The hospital bed holds a world of love---when did she learn to love so unconditionally? She does not even know this little one's name, yet it seems as though she would walk through fire and blood for her sake. Her hands have changed. Her mind has changed. Her heart has changed in these moments of looking upon this child, her child, no doubt. Her child. It is a wonderful thing to repeat over and over again in her mind.
She often dreamed of this moment when she was a girl herself. Holding her beautiful baby for the first time. The kindness of the nurses. The quick forgetfulness of the grevious labor pains. The quaint hospital. Her loving husband clutching her hand, his eyes soft with love for their child. None of this was true, of course, except that she was in fact holding her baby.
"Shhh," whispers her mother needlessly, holding her to her breast, "shhh."
She is so quiet that it is almost alarming—any other baby would be screeching charmingly for something to relieve the ache in its stomach by now, but not this little creature. Her eyes are still closed, her little eyelashes acting as many tiny locks to which none hold the key just yet. But the mother is patient.
The baby keeps all of her tears inside. When her eyes finally open, her mother can only hold her close and look away out the window. Gray eyes, like the sky. Trapped behind her irises is a world of lightning and thunder that will be hidden for a long, long time. Sky showers will never emerge. Zigzags of hot, angry lightning cower behind the safety of the pupil.
Her mother names her Arashi for the rain behind her eyes.