Word Count: 153.

Once we were close, my mother and I. Then she died, killed by an accident. She left me torn with grief, and I had to grow a mask too young. Or else people shied away from me. It was not right to see a broken soul in one so young.

Over time, scars covered what should have been joy in me, and I retreated farther into my turtle-like shell. My peers mocked, lacking understanding.

One day, I spied him across the Great Hall, and it was like a floodlight at midnight: overwhelming, but welcome. He was as fair and wounded as I, and he filled the hole my mother left in me.

Through the dark days of war we were each other solace from a cosmos of pain. In the climax of destruction, we died arm-in-arm.

Globetrotter Drabble Competition II, Ponte Rialto Bridge, Venice: Write about someone replacing someone/something, or a mother/daughter relationship.