“Please don’t scream anymore.”
Everyone was startled by the low words from the crouching man in the middle of the room. They hadn’t realized that he’d stopped singing the quiet lullaby to himself until that moment.
“I don’t want to know what will happen if you wake her up.”
It was his oldest friend that ventured the question they were all wanting to ask. “Wake who up, buddy?”
“The crying woman in the back of my head.”
There was never any one thing that kept her going.
Sometimes she kept moving because if she stopped there would be no one to stop Them.
Sometimes it was because she knew she would disappoint her family if she gave up.
Sometimes it was because she didn’t have it in her to lay down and stop moving.
Either way, she’d been going for so long, mostly alone and almost always having to leave behind every good thing she found that she didn’t know how to stop.
It was a lot more difficult to stand still than it was to push forward.
I struggled with this prompt more than the others. I couldn’t figure out if I was going to write a little story snippet or write a poem. Either way, this was what happened after reading the Dungeon Prompts: Needing Some Inspiration.
If there was one thing she prized above all else, it was choice.
Not everyone made the same decisions. Not everyone should make the same decisions.
And no one, not one single person to ever live or ever will live should get to make another’s choice for them.
She had lived through so many others making her decisions for her, without her consent and mostly without her knowledge.
But now…
Now that she knew what had been done, what had been bartered, what had been taken and stolen from her…
Now she would take back what little of her own life remained.
If she should die, then by all that was and would be, she would die having chosen to do so.
That did not mean that she was choosing death.
Oh no.
She was choosing to live and make her own choices.
If those choices placed her at odds with the world and that led to her death, however…
She closed her eyes and shrunk in on herself.
For one moment, she was more alone than she had ever been in her entire life.
She felt the burn of her lungs as she refused to draw in air.
She took that burn and used it to pull herself up, her shoulders widened from where they had been cringing against her body. Her head came up and her feet took a steadier stance. Her eyes opened as she finally let out that one held breath slowly and then allowed more air to come in again, regaining the rhythm that all know when they are breathing in measured strides, as if preparing themselves for something that would not be easy, but would be worth it.
This was her life and her decision to make.
No one else’s.
This little snippet was born from the Dungeon Prompts: No Matter Time nor Place.
It was certainly one of her favorite holidays even if more people didn’t really consider it a holiday at all.
Mary smiled as she twirled around in her ‘costume.’
No one had to know that she’d made it to look exactly like what her sister had worn during the War.
Everything else I said is true! –Starlight Glimmer, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Once you’ve spoken one lie, one major lie,then everything else becomes suspect.
Maybe this was one lesson that She should have really paid attention to during Her time amongst the mortals.
You’re only given complete trust freely the one time.
Sometimes she found herself saying the obvious not because she wanted to annoy people, but because it needed to be said in the first place.
There are times when you can’t accept what’s happening unless the obvious has been said.
She screamed, but over the sound of the crowd it meant nothing.
Just like all of her attempts to save her half-brother’s mother from burning at the stake meant nothing. She grabbed the little boy’s hand and dragged him away from the sight of his mother before the flames even reached the woman’s skirt.
If she’d had the time, Helena would have glared at her father from where he’d sat on a velvet cushion while he’d let his mistress burn at the stake for the witchcraft that he himself had been working, but had allowed an innocent woman to take the fall for instead of even trying to repent.
Helena hated the man that was her Lord father, knowing that he would do it all over again so long as it got him out of trouble with the local priest.
“Mother!”
Helena shushed her little brother, only five years old and not quite old enough to understand why the genteel woman that was somehow his sister was dragging him away from the only parent in his life.
“It’s all right, Sebastian, just come with me, your mother wanted you to spend more time with me and so you will come with me.” Helena babbled as she continued to pull her brother, now her charge away from the town square and back towards the keep that she, now they, lived in.
Helena now had far more to lose than any other time in her life. She wasn’t going to take the chance that her father would spirit the boy away for some nefarious reason so she had best get him added to her household before her father could do so.
If he hadn’t already, that is.
No, don’t be silly, Helena, she chastised herself, If Father had already done so, then he would have already taken custody of the boy. There is still time. There is still time.
I don’t know why I wrote this, but it’s been in my head for almost a year now. Maybe writing it down will get it out of my head? (I won’t hold my breath, though.)
She looked at him, kneeling in front of her, tears in his eyes as he begged her to stay, “We’ll figure it out.”
She shook her head, one hand over her mouth to hide the trembling of her chin.
She said nothing as he hugged her legs to his chest while he buried his face in her knees and cried.
The pregnancy test lay on the counter with a little positive sign on it.
He was sterile.
She’d never been with anyone else.
She hadn’t realized just how often she saw him. It was almost like he was following her, but she knew that such a thing was the height of silliness.
A dead man couldn’t follow you.
He’d met heroes, and been accused of being one himself. –unknown
It was insulting, is what it was. Calling him that! It’s not like he’d done anything that was particularly special, anyone would have done the same thing.
All he’d done was stick up for someone, just because sticking up for them happened to include defending their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness did not in any way make him a hero.
It just made him a good man who was willing to do something about it.
Breathing In 