Phone Call
Mira Starr was once a beautiful woman, but no longer. After the loss of her daughter, she became haggard, sickly and pale. Without her child's constant laughter and light-hearted jokes echoing through the house, Mira just wasn't the same woman she had been. She withered away, sinking ever deeper into misery and depression. No amount of medication could cure or curb the descent. All her son and husband could do was grieve with her and watch helplessly as she continued to decline into sickness and despair.
Sirius and Rigel went out late one night for a run to the grocery store to get milk. Mira was left home alone to mourn and bewail her daughter's fate. Oh, it wasn't to say that she didn't love her son, far from it. But the horror of seeing that winged monster take her little girl, seeing the fear in eyes that always sparkled with laughter and mischief, hearing from her friends that this monster was…carnivorous and the likelihood of Antares living to see the dawn was just too much for her. She was holding Antares's favourite shirt, sitting on her bed and crying as usual when the phone rang. She ignored it, forgetting that she was alone and there was no one else to get the phone instead. Finally she remembered and angrily snatched the phone from the receiver.
"What is it?" she snapped, irate that someone would dare disturb her solitude.
Mira Starr was once a beautiful woman. And that beauty returned in an instant with the utterance of one single, simple word:
"Mommy?"