fic: The Fingerprints of Rain

[green_apples]

Title: The Fingerprints of Rain
Author: ghani_atreides
Raiting: PG
Word Count: 582
Disclaimer: MINE. Take it and I'll hurt you. There'll be blood.
Summary: No matter what happens tomorrow, yesterday cannot be undone.

She sat there. Dusty old chair creaking under her weight, even though she was still as a stone. There was nothing to it, she’d have to give it all away.

 

Well, maybe not all, but most of it anyway and it hurt no less. It was the right thing to do, but most importantly it was what her grandmother wanted her to do. But that was no comfort, for as lifeless as they might seem to the naked eye, all of those objects, each and every single one of them, breathed with life.

 

Her eyes were not naked; they were dressed with years and years of shared history. Hers was the gently detached observation of someone who had a part in the coming to life of those items.

 

The rocking chair in front of her was the same one her mother used to sit on to nurture baby Sammy, her little sister. Family tradition dictated that the chair was used by her too, when her baby came out; and by Sammy as well, when her turn came to add her cent to the human genetic pool. But Granny Betty was far too liberal to let something so irrelevant as tradition rule over her. So the rocking chair was going away.

 

So was the dresser in the corner. The one where she once drew blue and pick flowers because it was winter and she could not wait until actual spring came along to see flowers again. She already had a buyer for that one, an old man who wanted it because of her flowers.

 

Then there was the bed. She loved that bed; she wanted to keep it but her husband was right, they didn’t have enough room in their house for it as it was, and the baby was coming soon, so they would have even less physical space; somebody else would most definitely put it to better use. Somebody else would take a better advantage of the bed she was born in; where she and Sammy laid together that time when they both caught chicken pox at the same time; where her grandfather died. Someone else would sleep on it and would mark it with their own memories.

 

But she wasn’t worried, she knew her scent wouldn’t be erased. Her grandmother’s lilacs perfume would forever linger in all the dresses they were giving away too. History might get distorted, sometimes even forgotten, but that didn’t negate it, that didn’t reverse it.

 

Some other child’s tree would not overshadow her blue and pink nondescript flowers, it would complement them; another baby would be put to sleep on that rocking chair; that bed would serve for another pair of scared siblings, sheltering them on a stormy night.

 

Other people would leave their imprint on those pieces of seemingly lifeless furniture; but the new prints would only overlap the older ones, for these would not cease to exist just because a new story was being written on top of them.

 

The new prints would be like rain that washes away the dirt and brings forth a deeper green on the tree leaves, breathing a new life into them, the stark contrast between before and after would make it all the more poignant, all the more present.

 

Some fingerprints (or was it more appropriate to call them lifeprints?) couldn’t be erased; some stories cannot be forgotten. Even after the rain has dried out on the ground and the sun shines bright again, even then rain drops remain fallen. Remain there.

 ***

End.