I creep across the floor of your room and listen to the rhythm of your breath. Your chest steadily rises and falls. Your face is soft, round, and peaceful. When I'm sure you are asleep, I plant a kiss on your forehead. You won't always be so small. Someday soon, you'll begin to move your chubby little feet one at a time over the wooden floors. You will go from walking to running, and soon I'll have to be careful not to let you play with the pretty yellow lines on the street in front of our house. Your grubby little hands will pick me dandelions, and your spaghetti-covered face will smear tomato sauce on my cheeks. I'll blink, and you will have moved out of my house. You'll meet a nice girl, and she'll become the most important woman in your life. But that's okay. That's how it should be. Will you be the kind of son who brings me lilies every Mother's Day because you know they're my favorite, or will you be the kind of son who forgets to text me happy birthday? I don't know. So I'll take this moment to kiss your forehead and tell you how much I love you.

I made lasagna for dinner yesterday. I try to make one of his favorite recipes every week. He only has four or five, so I can't make them all the time, but it makes them more special when we don't have them as often. It's like Christmas. I hate that it starts on November 1st. As soon as the last trick-or-treater has emptied his pillow sack of candy and fallen into a sugar coma, Christmas begins. Walmart has candy canes, gift sets, and bows the moment you enter the store, and Home Depot boasts blow-up Santa Clauses and pretty white-string-light-lined wicker reindeer. When I was little, Christmas was confined to December. Each year, it gets earlier and earlier, and with each day, it stretches out, and it feels less special. Diamonds wouldn't be so special if they weren't so rare, and neither would pearls, emeralds, or opals. Christmas, when stretched every which way and dragged out for as long as possible, is no longer an exciting season of parties, music, religion, friends, and family. By the time the twenty-fifth rolls around, if I have to hear "White Christmas" or watch "Home Alone" one more time, I begin to feel physically sick. I should be anticipating Christmas morning, not January 7th, when the dead Christmas trees line the road for the garbage service to collect and everyone puts the ornaments away. Still, I plan to make two of his favorite meals this week because it has been a tough few days for everyone.

She stared at her signature drink the waiter set down in front of her. “I didn’t order this!” She called after the waiter.

“No, but I did,” the chillingly familiar voice reached her ears before he sat across from her. “Hello, again,” he smiled.

“Derek.” She said curtly, willing her face into neutrality. What was he doing here? She’d gone to the city to get away from him. Dyed her hair auburn, got a spray tan regularly, and started wearing glasses. She’d even changed careers from a chef to a school teacher, going to night school to finish her teaching certification. She'd thought perhaps she'd gone overboard; been too cautious. Yet, here he was, in the flesh.

“I’m so glad I found you,” his voice was as smooth as honey. “You still like a green tea matcha latte with a hint of vanilla, right?”

“What are you doing here?” She gripped the paper napkin in her lap, tightly. The coffee shop bustled around them, but here, at this table, the world stood still.

“I came to see you, Sara.” His blue eyes looked into hers, almost sincerely. Those eyes had fooled her before. “I was so worried when you disappeared. I came home to our apartment. No note, no message, no hint that you’d ever existed. You even took your art off of the walls and the spices from the cupboard.”

“Those spices were expensive and— No! You don’t get an explanation. Leave me alone!” Sara hissed.

He stared at the untouched latte with its milky white flower art in the thick green liquid. “It’s not poisoned. I never once touched it.”

Sara didn’t even look at the drink. To accept it would mean she was letting him in. Forgiving him, even if it was only a little bit.

“I know you hate food waste. It was one of your passions as a chef,” he coaxed as if she were a little child like those in her kindergarten class.

“Derek, did you not think that I would have told you if I wanted to be found?” She pleaded. She looked around at the cafe, but nobody seemed to notice, or care, that she was in distress.

“We’re married, Sara. Til death do us part. Or was that just a lie on your side?” His eyes narrowed.

There it was. The real Derek. The charmer and the sweetheart disappeared the day after they said their vows. Reality set in. He was cruel. A liar. A cheater.

“I was going to send the divorce papers as soon as I had enough to afford a lawyer,” she said quietly. She closed the little notebook on the table in front of her slowly.

“I won’t sign. We’re married, Sara. You’re my wife and I want you back.” Derek’s face was serious. No saccharine smile. No narrowed eyes. Straight face.

“You cheated on me!” Sara said a little louder than needed. Now heads were turning their way. She blushed furiously.

“I did and I’m sorry, Sara. I was wrong.”

She blinked, the only show of her surprise. “What?”

“I was wrong. I took you for granted and I want a second chance.” He said. His voice held notes of true regret.

Derek. Mr. Right. Mr. Charmer… he never… never admitted he was wrong. She stumbled over her words, “Derek, I—”

“You don’t have to answer right now. In fact, you probably shouldn't,” he said, standing. “But please think about it.” As he walked towards the exit, he paused. “I like the hair color. Makes your eyes pop.”

The door jingled too brightly. Sara stared at the journal in front of her, thinking about it.

“No. No, no, no!” Sal followed the trail of crimson in the snow to her crumpled form. “Mom!” He pressed his hands against the large red stain on her garments. “Come on, not this again. Your stitches were barely healed, What were you thinking?”

Somewhat deliriously, she smiled up at the large flakes wafting from the sky. “The Winter Berries are ripe, I wanted to sell them at the market. They fetch a great price, you know.”

“I told you already that I make more than enough. I had to leave my job early because Mrs. Potter saw you stumbling through the snow.” He looked down at her feet. “For Titan’s sake, Mom! You don’t even have shoes on!”

Despite her protests that she’d not finished harvesting the berries, Sal hefted his thin mother in his arms and trekked back to their cottage outside the village. Her eyes closed as they walked, drifting off. The blood on her dress began to dry and he breathed a small sigh of relief. He could barely afford their food and rent. Another visit to the physician would officially put them into debt. If the blood was clotting, though, he could take care of it himself.

He set her down on the cot in the corner of the main room and assured himself that her breathing was even and unbothered before he stoked the fire from embers to a large blaze that nearly didn’t fit in the hearth. He was worried about her. Her sleepwalking had gotten worse in the recent months. He’d begun sleeping with his bed against the front door to prevent her from leaving the house. The stitches in her abdomen were from a nasty fall she’d taken while Sal had been at work. She claimed she’d stayed in the house all day but the baker’s daughter, Kristi, had seen her walk like one of the undead into the forest, mumbling about the angels.

The village called her crazy. Sal had fought the diagnosis at first, but as the time dragged on and she grew worse, he feared they were right. Sal worried she might become a nuisance to the town and so much so that the magistrate would order her locked in the asylum in the next city over. Nobody knew what went on in the asylum because nobody was allowed in. If they took her, she was as good as dead as far as Sal was concerned. So far, her craziness extended to mindless wandering and strange muttering about angelic creatures and demonic fiends.

Sal returned to work, and, for the next few days, things continued as normal. He worked in the coal mines, the rhythmic pounding of his pickaxe grounding, in a way. He tried to occupy his thoughts in the dark tunnels, to keep them away from his mother, but he found himself worrying anyway. She could be bleeding out in the snow again, her purple, frostbitten hands reaching for the last of the Winter Berries out in the forest.

“Sal! It’s your mother!” Sal’s fists tightened around the handle of the pickaxe, but he turned to face the newcomer in the tunnels. Kristi.

“What is it this time?”

Her face was ashen. “The magistrate has her. She came into the village shrieking about the Urslusmegalucerus and that everyone needed to leave.”

“Take me to her.” He jogged after the girl, watching her red pigtails bounce against her back. In a different life, he’d have lived in a house of his own and asked the baker to marry Kristi, but with his mother’s condition, he had no other option but to care for her. He scoffed at his mother’s ridiculous raving. The Urslumegalucerus. A fairy story to scare little kids into staying in bed at night. A great big bear with teeth like a lion and antlers like a great moose.

Sal arrived at the town meeting hall where his mother, in nothing but a nightgown and one of Sal’s coats was begging the magistrate to listen to her.

“You have to let me go! You may not believe me but Sal and I have to leave! You can’t let me stay here to share my fate with the rest of the village! It’s coming!”

“Sal!” the magistrate shouted, spotting him the second he entered. “You promised you’d keep her locked up. She’s scaring the town and disrupting the market.”

“Sal! Sal! If they don’t let me go you have to leave! It’s coming! The Urslusmegalucerus!” Her eyes were wide with fear.

Sal’s heart sank as he beheld her. What had she become? How had this happened? “No, mom, it’s not coming. Let me take you home.”

“Out of the question!” The magistrate snapped. His thick, dark eyebrows furrowed deeply. “I told you, the second she began to cause disturbance she was through. I’m having my men take her to Dernum. At the asylum, they will be able to keep her from hurting anyone, herself included.”

Sal opened his mouth to reply, but screams began to rise from outside.

“Too late.” His mother whispered, looking at her feet.

The soldiers inside the hall shared glances before they all dashed outside to see the commotion.

Something twisted in his stomach. Sal, pickaxe still in hand, grit out, “Stay here.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to Kristi or his mother, but he hoped they both listened. He dashed outside into the street and his jaw went slack.

A bear, fifteen feet in stature at least, antlers six feet across, tore through the town. One swipe of his paw brought down the tents and awnings lining the street. Vendors ran screaming. Sal could feel bile rising in his throat as a soldier, sword in hand, charged the bear. The man was dead within seconds. The bear trampled over the body, further into the town.

His mother was right. She’d known. She wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t sure what she was, but she wasn’t a mindless lunatic. He had to get her out. As he turned to go back to the town hall, another one of the massive creatures emerged from the treeline no more than a hundred yards away.

“You have to go now!” he shouted by way of greeting. “She was right! The Urslusmegalucerus. Two of them! They’re destroying the town.”

The magistrate looked stunned. Despite being the son of a madwoman, the magistrate knew Sal was no fool. The moment he regained control of his body, he fled through the backdoor.

“Come on,” Sal said, gripping his pickaxe. They followed the path the magistrate had taken, through the back of the hall into a long corridor. They pushed open the heavy oak door at the end. Sunlight flooded the darkness. The magistrate was climbing on the back of a horse.

“Hya! Move!” he shouted, digging his heels into the side of the beast. The horse sped into a gallop.

“Come on, there’s two more horses in the stable!” Sal shouted as they jogged towards it.

Kristi leaped into action alongside Sal, saddling the horse faster than even he could. He hefted his mother into the saddle of the dappled mare that Kristi had saddled. Before Sal could offer his hand, Kristi swung herself into the saddle behind Sal’s mother.

A scream sounded from the road behind them. Sal’s head snapped towards it as an Urslusmegalucerus tackled the magistrate and the horse from the treeline. “Go!” he shouted at Kristi. “Keep away from the treeline! Don’t stop until you get to Dernum!”

She and his mother rode off, fast. Sal climbed onto the back of the black horse but didn’t follow the two women. He steered his horse to the village where the screaming didn’t stop. He likely wouldn’t make it, but if he could buy a minute, maybe two, for anyone to flee, it would be worth it. He adjusted his hands on the handle of the pickaxe and rode into the fray.

It snowed that morning, laying a thick heavy blanket on the still-colorful leaves before the sun roused from its slumber. Across the street in Vicar's field, yellowed grasses and wild grains peeked their heads from the layers of flakes to glance at the whitened world around them. The streets were devoid of blemishes, marked only by their outline of sturdy mailboxes and the shiny red flags.

The brush dipped deep in white and smeared across the autumn day, erasing the trees, the leaves, the houses, the fields, and the round face of a little boy pressed against the wide front window. Once again, the canvas was blank. The artist dipped his brush in green.

He is the master of the world confined to the fifteen square foot blank space before him, but even he cannot deny that Spring is coming.

The opening chapter of a novel I'm writing. I felt it fit the prompt; I've spent a lot of time here in the last few weeks!

___________________________________________________________________

The smell of leather wafted around the dim room as Lucchieus pushed open the heavy door. The watery light of the autumn morning filtered in the doorway, illuminating the speckles of dust that danced around the air. Long strips of leather hung from the walls and sat in stacks on the benches lining the room. Different-sized lasts were thrown in haphazard piles and shoved under the tabletops. The only mildly organized items were the tools on the table nearest the door in the long stone room. Though the sun had not fully risen, Master Guire was hunched over a workbench, muttering something under his breath.

Lucchieus stood in the doorway, watching the master at work. His weathered hands gripped the last with dexterity as he stretched the soft brown leather over the top. He fitted his mouth in a line, focused on the task at hand. He reached over the rough table that had given Lucchieus many a splinter and grabbed a hammer. It was a new one that Lucchieus had fetched from the blacksmith earlier this month.

He’d begged his father to let him become a blacksmith. The blacksmiths worked by the roaring fire of the forge and hammered out swords and shields. Lucchieus could see himself, muscles bulging beneath the heavy apron, his arms bringing the large hammer down again and again against the piece of metal with a resounding clang. The sparks would fly around him, but his hands would be calloused and immune to the heat.

Instead, he watched Master Guire scratch his chin through his scraggly white beard and sigh heavily. He set the shoe down, now secured over the last. “Lucchieus! There you are my boy.” He smiled, half of his teeth missing.

“Good morning, Master,” Lucchieus answered, shutting the door behind him and plunging the room back into its dim state. The sun would illuminate the room soon, but until then, he resigned himself to working in the dullness. He’d made the mistake of asking master Guire to light a lamp one morning, but the master said it was a waste of precious resources. He made Lucchieus clean the workroom and the storefront that day instead of making shoes.

“Finish cutting the leather you started yesterday.” Master Guire said. He handed him a curved knife. “This needs to be sharpened before you do.”

Lucchieus took the knife from his master and walked down the length of the room to the whetting stone, his footsteps echoing around the stone room. It was not a shabby place to work; there were worse places where his father could have apprenticed him. His cousin was an apprentice at a butcher shop. Lucchieus wasn’t sure he had the stomach for that sort of thing. Besides, his father and older brother had a worse line of work.

Lucchieus remembered the day they received the order from the king. They’d been drafted to fight in The Great Nimiriam Wars. His brother, Rema, had been only fifteen. He’d be nineteen now if he were still alive. There had been no word since they’d left.

The Nimiriam were a constant threat in Lucchieus’ kingdom. They’d been part of daily conversations since he was a boy. Those that survived the first war would speak of them in hushed whispers as if they were afraid to summon them.

They were a race of warriors whose height reached seven or eight feet. One of the greatest war heroes in their town told Lucchieus that they looked like giant humans made of rocks. They had grayish skin with armor like that of an alligator. Their little black piggish eyes were full of hatred, peering over the giant tusks protruding from their mouths. Their huge hands ended in stubby black nails.

“They speak a language of cruelty and feast on the fear of the enemy.” He said to Lucchieus. “Monsters. All of them.”

The day the white horses that belonged to the king’s messengers had come stampeding down the road was the first time the war seemed real to Lucchieus. The shoed hooves clanged against the cobblestone, sounding like thunder. The herald shouted over the din, his face red with effort. The King ordered all men above the age of fourteen to report to the town square.

Lucchieus tried to go with his father, but his mother wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m already losing two men; I won’t lose you too.” She whispered, her arms shaking. Lucchieus stopped struggling against her.

Rema, ashen faced, looked toward their father. His brown hair, the same color as Lucchieus’, fell over his forehead. Were it not for the height difference, they could have been mistaken as twins. “Is this the last time we’ll be home?”

Their father looked out the window as if seeing far past the ensuing chaos outside. The rising sun cast a glow on his father’s face, making him look years younger. He’d fought in the first war. Was he afraid to go back? “We’ll get our orders and likely march this evening. We’ll have time to say goodbye, don’t worry, my boy.”

The two pulled on their coats. Lucchieus’ mother crossed the room in two strides. “Don’t stray one step from your father.” She whispered to Rema, her face buried in his locks of hair. “Stay together and come home to me together.”

She squeezed Rema tightly, bowing her head over her son’s.

“We’ll be back to say goodbye, Lenore.” Their father said, gently removing his wife’s arms from around their son. “It’s time for us to go now, though.”

A spark from the knife hit Lucchieus in the arm. The greenish blade shimmered as sunlight streamed through the window. He liked this knife. It was an heirloom of Master Guire’s family. If he was to be believed, it was an elven blade. But the elves were rarely seen. And they rarely spoke to humans, even when they were seen.

The handle was wrapped tightly with leather that still looked new. The silver knob at the top was polished so that Lucchieus could see his reflection. The first time the master let him use the knife was about a year ago.

“I planned to give this to my son one day,” Master Guire had said, letting the blade rest easily in his hand. “Now, I will not get the chance.”

He let Lucchieus use it after that whenever he was cutting leather.

A flash of light

Slashes the night

sky. I wonder

to be under

the high heavens.

My dreams are close,

Part of me knows.

The vastness is

soaring within,

and silent out.

The flying star

screams from afar.

Distance swallows

Vict'ry follows

her silent songs.

Interstellar

golden traveler,

Why cut life short

to sail dawn's court?

Spent life at once.

She sails the heights.

Seconds in sight.

Disappearing,

smiling, sharing

her life and joy.

Do I live long

or sing the song

of the bright stars

whose short life mars

monotony?

Lucy's medicine cabinet was stocked almost completely with herbal remedies and handmade soaps from her mother's farm. My bottle of Ibuprofen on the shelf beside a tin of homemade dandelion lip balm looked out of place. I took it out.

With the small bottle of pills in hand I decided to try the kitchen. But, of course, among her jars of granola, dried fruits, and unlabeled containers of various aromatic, varicolored powders, it stuck out even more. I don't think she'd care where I left it so long as it wasn't sitting out on her countertops, but I just couldn't sit it down next to her matcha powder in its pretty Mason jar with a pink cloth between the ring and the lid.

She cleared out a drawer in one of her nightstands, a small wicker basket in its tropical-feeling bedroom. Well, she almost cleared it all out. There were a few rings left in the bottom: gold bands, one with an opal in the center. Probably some that she made. I would often catch her at her little refurbished coffee table sitting cross legged on the hand-tied rug with a pair of needle nose pliers winding wire into an earring.

I dropped the Ibuprofen in the container along with the socks and toothbrush from the plastic Walmart bag in my left hand. I set the rings on her dresser.

Between the gaps in the wicker, I could see the glaringly white bottle of Ibuprofen and the neon green of my toothbrush. I balled up the plastic bag and shoved it in my pocket.

Lucy didn't like plastic. She was too afraid of the turtles dying or something. She didn't eat meat because, she'd say, if she wouldn't eat my pet cat, who was hissing from his carrier in the kitchen, she's not going to eat a cow. She exercises and does yoga every day, but she won't get a gym membership because their carbon footprints are too big and the guys at the front desk only have plastic cards to give out.

I like Lucy. I might grow to love her, but sometimes I wonder if it would be worth the work. She says she doesn't mind if I order a steak, but I can't do it around her. I hide my plastic packaging and pretend I don't need Ibuprofen and Tums to stave off my headaches and indigestion, using her herbal remedies daily and acting like they've cured me. She's too sweet to say no to and too gentle to hurt her feelings. Honesty is hardest with the people who are kindest.

I take my Ibuprofen out of the wicker basket.

Slice against the grain when you have this cut of meat. You have to select the correct knife, and you have to sharpen it, too. You know it is more dangerous to use a dull knife than a sharp one. Hold the steel steady and run the knife's edge at a twenty-degree angle over the surface. We used to have a whetstone, and it sharpened blades like a dream. But we lost it when we moved into this God-forsaken apartment. But I shouldn't say things like that. The apartment is nice. I wish the landlord would let us paint the walls any other color than mustard yellow, but it is what it is. The curtains brighten the room, and so do the plants my sister bought us.

You were too young to remember the house we had in West Virginia. The weather there is nice. Nicer than here. The snow hasn't let up for days. I hate the snow. Especially in the cities. It gets trampled down and turns the color of ash. It hides the pitfalls in the sidewalks and soaks through your shoes. Snow in Colorado is like a blanket of crystals. In New York, it turns into balls of cigarette butts and garbage in the gutters and on the sidewalks.

You know better than to smoke, don't you? That's what killed your grandmother. She smoked cigarettes. I broke the habit mostly. I only need one when your dad comes home. Kicking that habit may be the death of you if you ever start. Habits are hard to break. Your uncle died trying to get off the alcohol, but you knew that. But he was a Catholic. I hope he was good enough besides the alcohol to make it into heaven. You've always been a good girl; better than the rest of us. You go to school in the mornings, and you take care of your mama at night. I wish you didn't have to.

Someday soon you'll be on your own. Maybe then you will do better than we have. You won't smoke like grandma and your mama, you won't drink like Uncle Buck and your daddy, you won't be on the streets like Ben. You'll be a good girl with a good job, and you'll find a good guy.

Cut against the grain.

One summer, the kind where the air is so hot and sticky, you lay on the tile floor just to get some relief, we piled into the van, all five of us. I was stuck in the back as the only kid without a carseat, so sweaty I was slipping against the fake leather seats. The air conditioner worked, but it only cooled the front half of the van. They couldn't turn it up too high or my sister would whine about the cold. We were going to Nana's.

I loved Nana's apartment. She had all the junk food that mom would never buy like Oreo cookies, Smartfood popcorn, and rotisserie chicken. It made Nana happy that we liked those snacks, so she'd always buy extra, even when dad told her not to. He used to slip twenty- or fifty-dollar bills under a magnet on her fridge. I didn't know until I was older that she could barely afford electricity, let alone gobs of junk food and the hundreds of DVDs and CDs stacked along the walls or in boxes.

She had the ugliest golden rug on her floor, but I liked the shag fabric, at least in her apartment. It was so small that one window unit left it cold as an icebox. I loved to lay on the carpet while we watched Hell Boy or Star Trek: Generations. Mostly movies that we couldn't watch at home. But Nana was hard of hearing, and she lived alone so my parents let her do whatever she wanted.

I was seven, though I could’ve been eight, when her TV set broke. Dad drove to Best Buy to get her another one. She's the kind of person who needs the TV on at all times, even though she can't hear a word anyone says. She made dad scale up the captions so big that they took up the bottom third of the screen, but she refuses to get glasses.

While dad was at Best Buy, my mom took Nana and all of us kids grocery shopping. That was when there were only three of us. We meandered through the store, whining about how cold the refrigerator aisle was, and complaining about the heat as we entered the bottle return to collect nickels for cans.

Nana insisted we stop at Savers. Some big consignment chain that I've only ever seen in Rhode Island. My mom's the frugal type and shopping with Nana stressed her out a lot. Nana didn't understand unit pricing or buying off-brand. At Savers Nana bought mugs she wasn't able to fit into the cupboard when we got back and a pair of fuzzy clogs that had the old Tweety Bird on them.

We passed by a huge shelf of books, and she said that she wanted to pick one book for each of her grandchildren. Nat was still a baby, so she got a board book about colors. My brother was handed an abridged version of James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." He never read it. Nana perused the shelves a few more minutes. I could hear mom sighing impatiently behind her as she calculated how much all of Nana's trinkets would cost from the pink candlesticks to the fake-smelling incense sticks. Nana picked up and old faded book, then a second one. Two 99 cent books with cracked covers, loosely attached binding, and yellowed pages. Frances Hodgson Burnett's books "A Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess."

We checked out and Nana didn’t see mom put the incense behind a bag of popcorn before we reached the cashier. Mom’s mouth was set into a firm line as she pulled out her wallet to pay.

Dad still hadn't come back with Nana's TV set, and we'd already had lunch. So, without the TV to entertain, and not wanting to learn how to crochet, I laid on the rug and opened "A Little Princess," careful not to rip the fragile pages from the spine. My elbows dug into the gold carpet and my feet swung loosely through the air. I was transported to a wintry London. I felt like I was breathing in the yellow fog.

I hardly noticed when Dad came back in with the TV and mom allowed Nana to put on Shrek. I was entranced by Miss Minchin's schoolroom and Sara Crewe's perfect French. I wanted to learn French and wear pretty frocks. I even grew to like Ermengarde and Lottie.

I didn't mind when I was squished in the back of the car for an hour-long ride in the hot backseat. I had Sara for company. When I got home, mom wanted us all to rotate in the showers before dinner.

"What happened to your arms?" She asked me, pointedly grabbing my forearm so that she could see my elbow. Rug burn from Nana's apartment. I hadn't even noticed.

Mom chided me for trying to read while she put antibiotics on the burns. I couldn't put the book down. I read the book until I was taping the pages together and gluing the cover back on before Dad bought me another copy.

I never got rid of the copy with the fragile binding and the faded pink cover. It still sits on my shelf. A reminder of the afternoon of yellowing pages, rug burns, and a selfless little heroine.