Wishes by Striped Candycane
Chapter Notes: I purposely didn't reveal the character's name, though I think I left enough clues to make this obvious. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Sometimes she wanders through the streets, searching. She isn't exactly sure what she's looking for. It isn't any of her usual concerns (food and shelter), but something else. She thinks that maybe, a dry-dust eternity ago, she might have known, but now she has forgotten it forever.
Maybe she is looking for the house. Not the house she knows, with its dirty cracked window frames and rotting wood, but the one she believes in. This one is yellow, with white trimmings around the sparkling clean glass windows. There are no shadows or cobwebs lurking in the corners. Everything glitters and gleams and glows with radiance. And in the mornings, the sun hits the skylight (like so) and rainbows dance on the waxed floorboards.
Maybe she is looking for the stick. It is more than just a stick, of course. It is the way the wood feels beneath her fingers, its sleek smoothness. It is the way it warms in her hand as the words roll off her tongue, ripple through the air. But she has forgotten how to speak, and now the stick lies broken. It sits in a gutter, sinking slowly in the muck.
Maybe she is looking for the man. This is what she tries to forget most, because forgetting numbs the pain. She doesn’t mean to look for him, as she knows she is unwelcome, but what she means to do and what is done are often two different things. She still hasn't learned though, and she still manages to cut a little deeper with every step.
Sometimes the baby kicks inside her and forces her to stop searching. Then she looks down at her belly, the gentle curve, swollen like a perfectly ripe melon. It looks like it belongs to another woman, in another place, another time. This belly should belong to one of those ladies with smooth silky hair and dreamy expressions that she often sees on the streets. They carry bags filled with baby clothes and baby toys and baby bottles, and radiate this warm, heavenly glow. A sort of motherly aura she can never hope to achieve.
She saw a pair of shoes in a shop window once. They were little blue cloth shoes, tied with white silk ribbons. She could imagine them on baby feet, perfect plump pink baby feet that would kick them off. She could imagine gently retying them, just to see those tiny feet kick them off again.
But then she saw her reflection in the glass, hovering ghost-like in front of the shoes. Her face is drawn and waxy; her hair is greasy and stringy. She has become the spectre of an ugly woman: there is not a hint of beauty in that face. Her eyes haunt, linger, things of dreams where she wakes up crying. As she gazed at her reflection, she remembered a word, an expression, a litany: filth. She was born into filth, she lives in filth, someday she would die in filth.
Death. It means much to most, but to her its definition has become garbled, meaningless. Some say it leads to a golden paradise where there is no hunger and no thirst and everyone has a roof over their head. Some say there is a burning pit of fire, an eternal torture-chamber. Others say there is nothing at all.
But what does that mean to her? What does that mean to a woman who is beyond craving, beyond caring?
And yet no. She wishes she were.
Wishes. Sometimes she closes her eyes to make one, and the floodgates open wide and they come in streams that drown out the world. She wishes for a home, a cloak, a loaf of bread. She wishes for honey blonde hair, white kid gloves, red heels that clack. She wishes she knew the date. She wishes for a bag of moonbeams. She wishes she could see the baby grow. She wishes for love.
But it doesn’t matter what she wants, it never has.
And she trudges up the last hill to…where? She doesn’t know. The baby is weighing her down, anchoring her to the cobblestones, making the climb seem steeper than it really is. It is strange, the way she feels like she's falling even as she makes her way up. She isn't searching, nor is the baby kicking, which is odd, because that means that she isn't really doing anything, but then again, she is still climbing. And for some reason, that means everything.
At the top of the last hill there is a door.
It is sturdy, panelled; the wood is so dark it is almost black. She knocks, since she remembers that that is what one does with doors, and waits. She makes a last wish: she wishes someone would answer. If no one comes, she will wait forever.
But it does open, and light floods from the doorway. It blinds her for a second, and for a moment she just blinks blearily. But then she steps inside, clutching her belly uncertainty. And the light envelopes her and the unborn baby, shining like a thousand wishes come true...