2. When September Ends – Green Day


"Momma, why don't I have a daddy?"

Dala Strife has meaty hands, too square to ever be counted as feminine. They're hands that are good for milking cows, churning butter and pounding dough to make the lightest, airiest bread in the mountains. When she takes her wares to market people buy them eagerly, though they won't look her in the eye, and she's always conscious of how rough and red her hands are compared to the other women's – women who don't have to do anything but sew and crochet and please their husbands when they come home at night.

She lays her hands in her lap and regards her son. "You do have a daddy."

"Oh." Five year old Cloud frowns. "So why isn't he here?"

"He is here. In your heart."

"Huh?"

She taps the centre of his chest with a finger. "Those precious to us, who we don't see anymore, stay in our hearts. When we think about them, we call our most precious memories and thoughts from our hearts into our minds, and we put them back afterwards because that's the safest and securest place for them to be. It's like we keep an actual part of them with us. So your daddy is in here."

"Oh. So I do have one?"

"Yes."

"That's okay then." With that, he hops off the kitchen chair and goes out to play – on his own, as usual. Cloud doesn't care much about things as long as he understands them, and Dala has become good at giving satisfactory answers that don't actually answer his questions.

She regards her left middle finger and the complete lack of indentations from a wedding ring. Nibelheim is such a backwards place, where a woman can be both mother and father, and punch as well as a man to defend her children, but still be looked down on for not having a man of her own.

Sometimes Dala hates her telltale hands.