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A peal of lightning crackled venomously beyond the latticed windowpanes, illuminating the cavernous room with a sickly white glow. Diminished by the shadow-kept ceilings and empty corners, a solitary figure thrashed sporadically in the center of a large bed, her legs wrapped and knotted in the silk sheets, her brow beaded with sweat as she fought to reclaim a peaceful slumber.
A wave of rumbling thunder crashed in the sky above the lonesome manor—the lone figure jerked upright, her eyes clouded with sleep, a single hand anxiously massaging her disheveled hair. Hastily kicking the slippery sheets from her legs, she blinked her eyes and strained against the perpetual darkness. A steady onslaught of rain was pounding relentlessly against the windows, casting the entire world in a drab cloak of black and lightning-spun grey.
It’s only a storm, her tired mind reasoned, urging her to settle back into the soft embrace of silk and down feathers.
Just as her foggy eyes began to close of their own accord, her body gracefully giving in to sleep—she was jolted into complete awareness as a quavering cry pierced the mantra of the storm outside, followed quickly by the resounding crack of a house-elf Apparating.
The grey, knobbly figure paused, its large eyes widening as it caught sight of the woman sitting alertly in the middle of the bed.
“Excuse me, Mistress. Pibsy is most sorry for awakening you, Mistress,” the obviously distressed house-elf whimpered, bowing low and casting its luminous eyes towards the floor. “Pibsy is just going to check on the young master.”
“Stop blathering!” she hissed, unreasonably irritated by the way the trembling creature cowered against the floor. “Do you not think I can take care of my own son?”
“No, no, Mistress. Pibsy is—”
“I will see to him.”
“Yes, of course, Mistress. I is sorry, Mistress. Pibsy will be going back to her cupboard now—” the pitiful creature stepped forward meekly and set its tremulous chin “—unless Mistress is wanting to punish Pibsy for—”
“That will not be necessary,” the woman sighed, her gaze softening even as her temple throbbed to the echoing sobs of her young son. “I will see to Scorpius. You may leave.”
Sniffling once more before bobbing its head in acknowledgement, the house-elf disappeared, leaving the Mistress of the Manor alone to deal with the quickly escalating cries of a terrified four year old.
Slipping easily from the large bed, she crossed the lushly carpeted floor in swift strides and entered the room adjoined to her own by a small hallway. Her heart leapt wildly in her chest as she came upon the sight of her beautiful little boy sitting wide-eyed in his bed, his stuffed dragon clutched tightly against his chest and his little fingers reaching for her. Her bare feet sinking deeply into the carpet, she crossed the distance between them instantly and scooped him into her arms, her fingers stroking each silky, white-blond hair on his head, her lips kissing away every imagined fear and nightmare. She whispered consolingly against him as she tried to chase the shadows from his mind. She would take them all into herself if she could.
When her heart began to settle in her chest, and her eyes no longer brimmed with the hurt her son’s terror had caused her, she pulled away from him and looked calmly into his eyes.
Stormy grey eyes looked pleadingly up at her, still caught between the edge of slumber and wakefulness.
“The thunder was frightening, Mummy,” he mumbled, his lower lip trembling as another dagger of lightning pierced the sky, followed quickly by a torrent of thunder.
“I know, love. It woke me as well,” she assured, stroking his head gently as he leaned against her, “but everything is alright now.”
“I’m glad you came, Mummy. The storm feels like it’s going to break right through the window when you’re not here.”
“I’ll always be here for you, you mischievous little imp. How could I ever leave you for a single moment? Besides,” she whispered, “I was a little scared too.”
“You weren’t really scared, were you, Mummy?” he inquired, leaning away from her so he could study her face.
“Oh, yes!” she said, seriously. “I was quite frightened when the storm woke me, but then I said to myself, ‘what a silly mummy! It’s just a bit of rain and wind!’, and then I felt much better.”
“Lots better?”
“Lots.”
Satisfied, he nestled against her chest and yawned, his fingers playing against the soft silk of her night robes.
“Is Father back, Mum? Could he camp next to my bed again—just for the storm?”
“I’m sorry, love. Daddy’s had to work a bit late tonight, but I’m here. I’ll stay with you. There’s nothing to fret about, remember? It’s only a bit of wind and rain.”
“Camping’s not for girls, Mummy,” he murmured sleepily, yawning against her chest. “I’ll just wait up for Father.”
“How silly of me!” she chuckled, a slow warmth spreading through her as his body relaxed against her own, his dark lashes fluttering gently against sleep. “We’ll just wait for your father, then.”
“Will he be back soon?”
“Very soon, love,” she whispered, hoping her child would not hear the tremor in her voice or the fear that crept into her throat as she spoke. “He’ll be back very soon.”
“Can you sing me a song—just until Father gets back?”
“I’d do anything for you, my little dragon.”
“That one, Mummy.” He yawned, his lips barely moving as he spoke. “Please?”
“Of course, love.”
A last struggling vein of lightening crossed the sky in the distance, and thunder rolled over the far off hills. The spacious nursery pulsed with the last reverberations of the storm. It seemed as if the shadows themselves had been shaken from the ceiling and rested closely about her feet. Leaning down, she placed the lightest kiss on her son’s cheek and began to sing.
“Hush, little dragon, don’t you cry—
Mummy’s going to sing you a lullaby.
The fire’s warm and glowing, and the kettle’s on the stove—
Daddy’s wand is on the mantle, and we’re safe at home.
The birdies in the treetops are all tucked into their nests—
The moon is in the east, and the sun sleeps in the west.
The wind is blowing gently cross the roof above your bed—
And your mummy’s here beside you while you rest your weary head.”
As she carefully eased the slumbering child back into his bed and looked on his hair shimmering in the dim light, his rosy lips, his dark lashes settled on alabaster cheeks, she realized that he was far less of a child than he ought to be. Relief coursed through her that he had been too tired to notice the fear in her voice as she spoke or the shiver in her hands as she held him. How did one explain to her own child that she was afraid their father would never come home, but at the same time, equally as frightened that he would?
Basking for a moment in the sudden stillness of the night, she paces across the luxurious carpet and through the shadows back into the bedroom. A cold lonesomeness engulfs her as she slips between the icy sheets, her heart beating a hairsbreadth away from an empty pillow.
She cannot stop the tears from spilling, no matter what lies she whispers into the opulent silk. They seep greedily from inside of her and devour her hope, the only thing she has left. In the new quiet of the night, she is acutely aware of the noise that silence makes. It bears down on every part of her body with a perpetual echo, digging deep inside her skin until she feels red and raw all over.
The slow whisper of the front door sliding over the runner in the foyer is like a scream in the night. Despite the strength her tears have cost her and the aching of her body, she sits upright in the bed, her eyes boring into the door that leads out of their suite.
The manor holds its breath for a single moment before the door swings slowly shut— it lets out a sigh of content.
The master of the house is home.
She recognizes the echoes of his boots as he makes his way down the hall and toward his study. Each one is familiar because at some point it has tread over her heart. Her breath stands still as his footsteps pause outside the door to his study—one second, two seconds, three. She hears the door click open, and his footsteps disappear as they are swallowed by the lavish carpets she has grown to hate.
This house is a living tomb—her only companion a doomed child and a husband long engulfed by dust and ashes.
She hears the clinking of his glass against the decanter, the sullen tap as he sets it on his polished desk. The clatter of his wand dropping beside it stirs her; she cannot help but slip noiselessly from the bed. For a moment, the old fear tingles at her fingertips and crawls through her veins. She pauses at the doorway, her hand resting on the richly appointed molding.
Barring herself against the cold that seems to permeate the corridors of the lonesome manor, she edges through the open door and into the darkness. Her feet make no noise as she climbs down the staircase and walks past the foyer. She can see his cloak, gleaming and spotless, hanging from the cloak hook. A furrow creases her brow. Is it possible he did not return from where she thought him?
In a matter of moments she is standing outside the entrance to his study, her sharp eyes scrutinizing the landscape beyond the crack of the door. The edge of his desk is gleaming, free of any clutter or papers. Beyond the windows draped in dark greys, the pale light of the moon shines. She feels as if she is wrapped within a spider’s cocoon and only just able to see the faintest glimmer of the world outside.
A slow creak moans from behind the door— her breath stills. She hears the whisper of his trousers as he eases himself into his chair and rests one leg on another to remove his boots. Her heart races as the tips of his pale fingers breach her line of sight. There is a single muffled thud, and then another, as he leans the boots against his desk and rises from his chair. A quick glimmer of his black shirt, curiously unsoiled, is visible as he turns.
Her body tensed, she turns her gaze back towards the boots resting against the lustrous mahogany desk, and blood swells in her mouth as she bites her tongue to keep from alerting him to her presence.
The sleek leather is splattered with flecks of dried blood and dirt, the tracks along the bottom clogged with something grisly and far more tenacious then mud. From the heel of one boot trails a long clump of hair.
She cannot help the bile that rises in her throat, the sweat that breaks upon her forehead as she steps quickly backward.
Just as her fingers fall from their place on the molding, the door is wrenched open, and suddenly she is filled with him.
Her lungs are assaulted with the crisp smell of him, only faintly tinged with the reek of something acrid. Eyes as piercing as a tongue of flame scour every hidden spot within her. In a single moment she is robbed of not only her breath, but her identity. In this world of his, she has ceased to exist as she once did and remains only as a cracked shell of what she has had to become to survive.
She can feel the tremors beginning to return as he gazes at her, his eyes always hiding something behind their misty depths.
When he had first slipped his ring around her finger, he had promised that there would be no secrets lurking between them, no doors curiously locked or clandestine meetings, but soon enough, the ring became a noose, and as their relationship grew and changed, as their feelings and selves became twisted, she realized that locks had never been necessary. Every door, no matter what it led to, remained unlocked, but the secrets blossomed in places that needed no bolts or keys. There had been a time when his eyes were always open to her, wide with honesty and love, but now the only truth they offered up was what she hid from every day.
She clenched her fists tightly to hide the tremors that crept along her spine, and forced herself to crawl inside the shell she had become. She would not allow him the pleasure of seeing her broken and terrified. Rather than that, she would face him in the guise of another, someone stronger than she had been—someone undaunted by the nightly jaunts, the bloodied wand, and the loneliness of it all.
When she spoke it was with a stranger’s tongue, and when she looked at him, the eyes she watched from were not her own.
The words sounded hollow and uncaring, but withering under his scrutiny, they were the only barrier she could muster, and she was prepared to match his callousness with an indifference of her own.
“You can Scourgify your bloody cloak, but not your boots?” she hissed, her voice low and her eyes flickering towards the desk behind him.
Immediately his expression hardened, and whatever had been lurking behind the mists of his eyes disappeared, shut up tightly behind a panel of flat grey.
“Worried about the carpets, love?”
She could not help the involuntary flinch at the tone of his voice, the cut beneath his words. Here was a man who had been so thoroughly twisted and mutated, that were he to be confronted with the person he once was, he would murder him for fear of something so different than himself.
Stamping down the tight knot of sorrow that was slowly building in her throat, she met her husband’s eyes once more. Even though she knew what it was her eyes would meet, it still stung to see the hatred he bore for her. Afraid that her carefully constructed shell would break and show him how lost she truly was if she spoke another word, she turned and strode swiftly down the hallway, only allowing herself the indulgence of tears once she had shut the bedroom door securely behind her.
Stumbling past the gracefully carved furniture looming in the shadows, she made her way into her son’s nursery, collapsing despairingly against his bed, her nimble fingers gently tracing the curve of his cheek, the soft hollow of his neck.
Her lips were cold and dry against the tiny hand that had fallen loose of the blankets, his green stuffed dragon hanging limply from his fingertips. If she placed her hand gently against his chest, she could feel his heart thrumming quietly within him, and the panic that had been slowly building in her dissipated.
She was unable to quell the consuming fear that as her child grew, he would grow twisted and dark, and one morning she would wake to find him like clockwork—like his father—that if she pressed her hand to his chest, instead of a heartbeat she would find nothing but ice.
The little boy shifted contentedly in his sleep, and the dragon he had been clinging to thumped softly against the carpet. A slight whimper escaped his lips, and his fingers twitched as his dream-fogged mind searched for something it knew was missing.
Fighting the urge to wake him and sob into his fragile little hands, she pulled the blankets up tightly around him and tucked the dragon in safely by his chest.
“Rest well, my little dragon,” she whispered, placing a trembling kiss on his forehead before stealing across the darkened room and entering her own.
The enormous suite, no longer lit by the crackling spears of lightening, settled into a sullen gloom, its towering ceilings and many grottos draped in shadows that never seemed to depart— only grow. Beyond the windows she could see the black horizon, no hint of early morning light feathering over the lonely hills and warming the land— she wondered if it would ever come.
She slipped instinctively between the silk sheets of the bed, her mind caught between the nightmares of waking and sleeping, and as she waited, for what, she knew not, the silence of the house was measured by the echo of his boots as he paced the foyer— and the whisper of the front door as he disappeared into the night.
A wave of rumbling thunder crashed in the sky above the lonesome manor—the lone figure jerked upright, her eyes clouded with sleep, a single hand anxiously massaging her disheveled hair. Hastily kicking the slippery sheets from her legs, she blinked her eyes and strained against the perpetual darkness. A steady onslaught of rain was pounding relentlessly against the windows, casting the entire world in a drab cloak of black and lightning-spun grey.
It’s only a storm, her tired mind reasoned, urging her to settle back into the soft embrace of silk and down feathers.
Just as her foggy eyes began to close of their own accord, her body gracefully giving in to sleep—she was jolted into complete awareness as a quavering cry pierced the mantra of the storm outside, followed quickly by the resounding crack of a house-elf Apparating.
The grey, knobbly figure paused, its large eyes widening as it caught sight of the woman sitting alertly in the middle of the bed.
“Excuse me, Mistress. Pibsy is most sorry for awakening you, Mistress,” the obviously distressed house-elf whimpered, bowing low and casting its luminous eyes towards the floor. “Pibsy is just going to check on the young master.”
“Stop blathering!” she hissed, unreasonably irritated by the way the trembling creature cowered against the floor. “Do you not think I can take care of my own son?”
“No, no, Mistress. Pibsy is—”
“I will see to him.”
“Yes, of course, Mistress. I is sorry, Mistress. Pibsy will be going back to her cupboard now—” the pitiful creature stepped forward meekly and set its tremulous chin “—unless Mistress is wanting to punish Pibsy for—”
“That will not be necessary,” the woman sighed, her gaze softening even as her temple throbbed to the echoing sobs of her young son. “I will see to Scorpius. You may leave.”
Sniffling once more before bobbing its head in acknowledgement, the house-elf disappeared, leaving the Mistress of the Manor alone to deal with the quickly escalating cries of a terrified four year old.
Slipping easily from the large bed, she crossed the lushly carpeted floor in swift strides and entered the room adjoined to her own by a small hallway. Her heart leapt wildly in her chest as she came upon the sight of her beautiful little boy sitting wide-eyed in his bed, his stuffed dragon clutched tightly against his chest and his little fingers reaching for her. Her bare feet sinking deeply into the carpet, she crossed the distance between them instantly and scooped him into her arms, her fingers stroking each silky, white-blond hair on his head, her lips kissing away every imagined fear and nightmare. She whispered consolingly against him as she tried to chase the shadows from his mind. She would take them all into herself if she could.
When her heart began to settle in her chest, and her eyes no longer brimmed with the hurt her son’s terror had caused her, she pulled away from him and looked calmly into his eyes.
Stormy grey eyes looked pleadingly up at her, still caught between the edge of slumber and wakefulness.
“The thunder was frightening, Mummy,” he mumbled, his lower lip trembling as another dagger of lightning pierced the sky, followed quickly by a torrent of thunder.
“I know, love. It woke me as well,” she assured, stroking his head gently as he leaned against her, “but everything is alright now.”
“I’m glad you came, Mummy. The storm feels like it’s going to break right through the window when you’re not here.”
“I’ll always be here for you, you mischievous little imp. How could I ever leave you for a single moment? Besides,” she whispered, “I was a little scared too.”
“You weren’t really scared, were you, Mummy?” he inquired, leaning away from her so he could study her face.
“Oh, yes!” she said, seriously. “I was quite frightened when the storm woke me, but then I said to myself, ‘what a silly mummy! It’s just a bit of rain and wind!’, and then I felt much better.”
“Lots better?”
“Lots.”
Satisfied, he nestled against her chest and yawned, his fingers playing against the soft silk of her night robes.
“Is Father back, Mum? Could he camp next to my bed again—just for the storm?”
“I’m sorry, love. Daddy’s had to work a bit late tonight, but I’m here. I’ll stay with you. There’s nothing to fret about, remember? It’s only a bit of wind and rain.”
“Camping’s not for girls, Mummy,” he murmured sleepily, yawning against her chest. “I’ll just wait up for Father.”
“How silly of me!” she chuckled, a slow warmth spreading through her as his body relaxed against her own, his dark lashes fluttering gently against sleep. “We’ll just wait for your father, then.”
“Will he be back soon?”
“Very soon, love,” she whispered, hoping her child would not hear the tremor in her voice or the fear that crept into her throat as she spoke. “He’ll be back very soon.”
“Can you sing me a song—just until Father gets back?”
“I’d do anything for you, my little dragon.”
“That one, Mummy.” He yawned, his lips barely moving as he spoke. “Please?”
“Of course, love.”
A last struggling vein of lightening crossed the sky in the distance, and thunder rolled over the far off hills. The spacious nursery pulsed with the last reverberations of the storm. It seemed as if the shadows themselves had been shaken from the ceiling and rested closely about her feet. Leaning down, she placed the lightest kiss on her son’s cheek and began to sing.
Mummy’s going to sing you a lullaby.
The fire’s warm and glowing, and the kettle’s on the stove—
Daddy’s wand is on the mantle, and we’re safe at home.
The birdies in the treetops are all tucked into their nests—
The moon is in the east, and the sun sleeps in the west.
The wind is blowing gently cross the roof above your bed—
And your mummy’s here beside you while you rest your weary head.”
As she carefully eased the slumbering child back into his bed and looked on his hair shimmering in the dim light, his rosy lips, his dark lashes settled on alabaster cheeks, she realized that he was far less of a child than he ought to be. Relief coursed through her that he had been too tired to notice the fear in her voice as she spoke or the shiver in her hands as she held him. How did one explain to her own child that she was afraid their father would never come home, but at the same time, equally as frightened that he would?
Basking for a moment in the sudden stillness of the night, she paces across the luxurious carpet and through the shadows back into the bedroom. A cold lonesomeness engulfs her as she slips between the icy sheets, her heart beating a hairsbreadth away from an empty pillow.
She cannot stop the tears from spilling, no matter what lies she whispers into the opulent silk. They seep greedily from inside of her and devour her hope, the only thing she has left. In the new quiet of the night, she is acutely aware of the noise that silence makes. It bears down on every part of her body with a perpetual echo, digging deep inside her skin until she feels red and raw all over.
The slow whisper of the front door sliding over the runner in the foyer is like a scream in the night. Despite the strength her tears have cost her and the aching of her body, she sits upright in the bed, her eyes boring into the door that leads out of their suite.
The manor holds its breath for a single moment before the door swings slowly shut— it lets out a sigh of content.
The master of the house is home.
She recognizes the echoes of his boots as he makes his way down the hall and toward his study. Each one is familiar because at some point it has tread over her heart. Her breath stands still as his footsteps pause outside the door to his study—one second, two seconds, three. She hears the door click open, and his footsteps disappear as they are swallowed by the lavish carpets she has grown to hate.
This house is a living tomb—her only companion a doomed child and a husband long engulfed by dust and ashes.
She hears the clinking of his glass against the decanter, the sullen tap as he sets it on his polished desk. The clatter of his wand dropping beside it stirs her; she cannot help but slip noiselessly from the bed. For a moment, the old fear tingles at her fingertips and crawls through her veins. She pauses at the doorway, her hand resting on the richly appointed molding.
Barring herself against the cold that seems to permeate the corridors of the lonesome manor, she edges through the open door and into the darkness. Her feet make no noise as she climbs down the staircase and walks past the foyer. She can see his cloak, gleaming and spotless, hanging from the cloak hook. A furrow creases her brow. Is it possible he did not return from where she thought him?
In a matter of moments she is standing outside the entrance to his study, her sharp eyes scrutinizing the landscape beyond the crack of the door. The edge of his desk is gleaming, free of any clutter or papers. Beyond the windows draped in dark greys, the pale light of the moon shines. She feels as if she is wrapped within a spider’s cocoon and only just able to see the faintest glimmer of the world outside.
A slow creak moans from behind the door— her breath stills. She hears the whisper of his trousers as he eases himself into his chair and rests one leg on another to remove his boots. Her heart races as the tips of his pale fingers breach her line of sight. There is a single muffled thud, and then another, as he leans the boots against his desk and rises from his chair. A quick glimmer of his black shirt, curiously unsoiled, is visible as he turns.
Her body tensed, she turns her gaze back towards the boots resting against the lustrous mahogany desk, and blood swells in her mouth as she bites her tongue to keep from alerting him to her presence.
The sleek leather is splattered with flecks of dried blood and dirt, the tracks along the bottom clogged with something grisly and far more tenacious then mud. From the heel of one boot trails a long clump of hair.
She cannot help the bile that rises in her throat, the sweat that breaks upon her forehead as she steps quickly backward.
Just as her fingers fall from their place on the molding, the door is wrenched open, and suddenly she is filled with him.
Her lungs are assaulted with the crisp smell of him, only faintly tinged with the reek of something acrid. Eyes as piercing as a tongue of flame scour every hidden spot within her. In a single moment she is robbed of not only her breath, but her identity. In this world of his, she has ceased to exist as she once did and remains only as a cracked shell of what she has had to become to survive.
She can feel the tremors beginning to return as he gazes at her, his eyes always hiding something behind their misty depths.
When he had first slipped his ring around her finger, he had promised that there would be no secrets lurking between them, no doors curiously locked or clandestine meetings, but soon enough, the ring became a noose, and as their relationship grew and changed, as their feelings and selves became twisted, she realized that locks had never been necessary. Every door, no matter what it led to, remained unlocked, but the secrets blossomed in places that needed no bolts or keys. There had been a time when his eyes were always open to her, wide with honesty and love, but now the only truth they offered up was what she hid from every day.
She clenched her fists tightly to hide the tremors that crept along her spine, and forced herself to crawl inside the shell she had become. She would not allow him the pleasure of seeing her broken and terrified. Rather than that, she would face him in the guise of another, someone stronger than she had been—someone undaunted by the nightly jaunts, the bloodied wand, and the loneliness of it all.
When she spoke it was with a stranger’s tongue, and when she looked at him, the eyes she watched from were not her own.
The words sounded hollow and uncaring, but withering under his scrutiny, they were the only barrier she could muster, and she was prepared to match his callousness with an indifference of her own.
“You can Scourgify your bloody cloak, but not your boots?” she hissed, her voice low and her eyes flickering towards the desk behind him.
Immediately his expression hardened, and whatever had been lurking behind the mists of his eyes disappeared, shut up tightly behind a panel of flat grey.
“Worried about the carpets, love?”
She could not help the involuntary flinch at the tone of his voice, the cut beneath his words. Here was a man who had been so thoroughly twisted and mutated, that were he to be confronted with the person he once was, he would murder him for fear of something so different than himself.
Stamping down the tight knot of sorrow that was slowly building in her throat, she met her husband’s eyes once more. Even though she knew what it was her eyes would meet, it still stung to see the hatred he bore for her. Afraid that her carefully constructed shell would break and show him how lost she truly was if she spoke another word, she turned and strode swiftly down the hallway, only allowing herself the indulgence of tears once she had shut the bedroom door securely behind her.
Stumbling past the gracefully carved furniture looming in the shadows, she made her way into her son’s nursery, collapsing despairingly against his bed, her nimble fingers gently tracing the curve of his cheek, the soft hollow of his neck.
Her lips were cold and dry against the tiny hand that had fallen loose of the blankets, his green stuffed dragon hanging limply from his fingertips. If she placed her hand gently against his chest, she could feel his heart thrumming quietly within him, and the panic that had been slowly building in her dissipated.
She was unable to quell the consuming fear that as her child grew, he would grow twisted and dark, and one morning she would wake to find him like clockwork—like his father—that if she pressed her hand to his chest, instead of a heartbeat she would find nothing but ice.
The little boy shifted contentedly in his sleep, and the dragon he had been clinging to thumped softly against the carpet. A slight whimper escaped his lips, and his fingers twitched as his dream-fogged mind searched for something it knew was missing.
Fighting the urge to wake him and sob into his fragile little hands, she pulled the blankets up tightly around him and tucked the dragon in safely by his chest.
“Rest well, my little dragon,” she whispered, placing a trembling kiss on his forehead before stealing across the darkened room and entering her own.
The enormous suite, no longer lit by the crackling spears of lightening, settled into a sullen gloom, its towering ceilings and many grottos draped in shadows that never seemed to depart— only grow. Beyond the windows she could see the black horizon, no hint of early morning light feathering over the lonely hills and warming the land— she wondered if it would ever come.
She slipped instinctively between the silk sheets of the bed, her mind caught between the nightmares of waking and sleeping, and as she waited, for what, she knew not, the silence of the house was measured by the echo of his boots as he paced the foyer— and the whisper of the front door as he disappeared into the night.
Author notes:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've enjoyed my story, or even hated it miserably, please review and let me know what you thought.
-Katzegeliebter
The End.
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