The Scent of Home
A/N: I attribute the series Sweep to reawakening my spirituality. A few years ago, I was learning more and more about Wicca and considering it as a possible religious choice. I was randomly looking at books in the teen section, and I just pulled the first book of Sweep off the shelf. I didn't even read the back of the book. Imagine my surprise… :)
Summary: A contemplative piece, exploring the characters in Night's Child, and how the scent of those they love the most affects them.
Disclaimer: If I owned the characters of Sweep, a certain blonde-haired boy would be at my beck and call…too bad...
Chapter One: Colm
To Moira, he always smelled like wood.
She remembered when she was very young, a great storm had raged through their tiny town of Cobh. She was only seven and shook with fear, pressed up hard against her mother. Morgan's face had been white and shone with sweat; a fine, slick substance that dripped down into Moira's hair. She kept muttering protection spells as Colm raced around their house, gathering the pets, shoving a scared, hissing Dagda towards his wife and child, searching for candles. Black rain pelted outside and although Moira had just begun to discover her magick, she felt as if this was the Goddess herself, hell-bent on destroying all life. Morgan could sense that the storm wasn't magickal, but that didn't quell her fear, and although all she could feel was nature's will and not wrath, she couldn't help cower, as if a black wave was upon them. A screaming wind streamed through Moira's mind, and her voice joined it. A loud CRACK reverberated through them all, and Moira felt as if she had been ripped in two.
But just like that, the storm was over. The clouds parted and the wind slowed, along with Moira's heartbeat. Shallows rays of sunlight fell into their home, and Dagda tentatively pawed at one, unsure, perhaps believing it would turn into a shadow and swallow him whole. The family made their way outside to survey the damage and as she peered from her mother's arms, Moira felt a shudder ripple through them all.
A huge, beautiful oak tree, one that Moira played in, was broken, collapsed on the ground. Half of it, the base, was standing straight and erect, jutting from the ground and pointing its splinters to the sky. The other half seemed to melt into the earth, destroyed. The very top of tree, the branches that Moira had time and again tried to reach while climbing, lay only a few feet away from her. She choked back a sob; she may have been young, but she was old enough to know and feel loss.
"Thank the Goddess it did not hit the house," Morgan said, her tone low and sad. She surveyed the fallen tree with grief, but also relief that the Goddess had taken this life and not theirs.
"Aye." Colm replied gravely. After coming to the conclusion that the tree was beyond saving, he went to fetch his axe.
Morgan left Moira with Colm so as to survey the damage to the rest of the town and to check on the other coven members. Moira sat on the steps, still wary of the pink sky and watched her father. He was working hard, chopping and breaking the wood so that it could be used to feed the appetites of the many fires they enjoyed during the winter. Moira knew it was all part of the cycle. The Goddess had taken away something, taken away its life, but now her family could gain from it. Life from death. When he had done all that he could do, he took in a deep breath and set the axe on the ground. The sweat had served as a glue, and particles of wood and dust were plastered to his skin. Moira felt a giddy rush of love for her parent, one that sometimes only small children are capable of, and she ran to him. He scooped her up into his arms and she burrowed her face in his neck, smelling his sweat and warmth, smelling the earth, smelling wood. This was her father. Her da.
He had always been fascinated with wood. As Moira grew up, he would make her and Morgan things. Before Moira had been born, he had shaped a beautiful cradle out of maple and fixed it into a simple, yet elegant design. Katrina, his mother, had been the one to spell it, carve into it the necessary runes of protection, growth, and health. But while Morgan was in the hospital, still heavy with the grief and anguish of losing Hunter and unaware of the child she was carrying, Colm steadily and slowly created the things his family would need.
Moira remembered he would always be covered in something; dust, dirt, wood shavings. Morgan would tease him and brush the loose scraps from his broad shoulders, sometimes pretending there were more, exaggerating and stood amused as Colm rolled his eyes and smiled.
Moira's greatest joy had been the small figurines he had carved for her. Whenever her father was bored he would whittle tiny animals out of leftover wood, almost without any effort at all. Sometimes they would be real animals, deer that lived in the woods, one of their cats, or other animals that Moira had only seen in zoos. Other times, he would carve imaginary and magickal animals; unicorns, dragons, centaurs. Animals that he made up in his own mind.
As Moira grew older, she found these gifts embarrassing and childish, and soon her father ceased to create them for her. After he had died, she dug through all of her old things and found them all. The unicorns horn had been rubbed so many times it had softened into a short nub. The giraffe didn't have any legs. The fairie had broken in two. But Moira gathered all of these precious items into her arms and cried. They now resided under her bed, and whenever she missed her da, those funny little animals comforted her.
Following his death, no one went in the work shed. Sometimes, Morgan would burst in, grabbing a saw or hammer off the bench and then bolted out, the fresh death of Colm too much to bear. When Moira finally worked up the courage to enter, she almost fainted. The entire room, the tools, the bench, the table and chairs, the…air; it all smelled like her father. If she had closed her eyes and brain, and opened her heart, she would have sworn he was standing right next to her. When school got to be too much, or if she had just gotten into a fight with her ma, or if Ian Delaney ignored her again, she would run into this place and sit, looking at the unfinished projects her father would never be able to complete. And although her heart broke a little every time she crossed that threshold, it healed a little more when she left.
To Moira, he smelled like wood.
To Moira, he smelled like Earth.
A/N Well, thanks for reading! Stay tuned for updates, there's a lot more where this came from. I have no idea if this was any good, and I want to improve anything for the next chapters so PLEASE Review! Chapter 2 will be Morgan!