Title:
Placing Pieces
Characters: Nanami
Rating:
G
Notes: Written because of a thought I had while watching
the episode where we flashback to Touga's birthday party. Nanami and
her mother. 241 words.
Her mother smells like powder, like fragrant perfume and flowery soap. In the morning, her hands are soft and delicate, running through her hair, applying the smooth stick of lipstick to perfectly shaped lips. Her mother's clothes are pressed and clean, pale colors and slippery, silky fabrics. Her mother's voice is never loud or gently whispered, but cool and precise.
When mother smiles or laughs or plays, it is with her brother. Mother is different when it is only with her, her daughter. When her arms open and hold her she is stiff as a porcelain-jointed doll, her words recorded and repeated every day, at waking, and every night as she tucks her in the large bed with oak posts and blankets that she can swim in. She runs manicured fingers through her hair and smiles at her, only once, and the light clicks off with the feeling of an interrupted dream. Ungiven kisses hover in the air.
She decides one day to be clean also, to be soft and smooth, cool as marble-stone. She decides she will be like her mother in every way, blonde hair up and tamed, laced and ribboned and elegant. When she is beautiful, a mirror replica, her mother will hold her like she holds her brother. Nanami repeats her recited words of love as she sits in front of her mother's dressing room table, lipstick in her hands, and pieces together their unfinished family puzzle.