15minuteFiclet: Invocation
Mar. 19th, 2011 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aldersprigOriginally posted here, in response to this image prompt.
Every night, after her shift was done but before the sun had set, she walked to the yard where the statues sat, though it was a half-mile out of her way, though it meant that, no matter what route she took, she would be walking home after dark, into a neighborhood that was not considered the safest for a lone woman to walk alone in.
Every night, she bought a candle from the candle-vendor whose stall was just outside the statue-yard. Sometimes she bought two, if one of the others was not there, or if they were there, but down on their luck; the week the button factory by the river closed, she bought seventeen. It wasn't charity; they were a sibling-hood, a family, their quiet and unspeaking ranks nevertheless closer than any blood tie.
Every night, she lit the candle and set it in its holder, then knelt by the feet of the statue, her statue, her Gregor's statue. She did not pray, nor commune; there was not believed to be anything there to commune with. It was, after all, just a statue, bronze, gone a little tarnished with age no matter how she tried to polish it. Bronze had no feelings and no sentience.
What she did every night, aside from polish his green-black toes, was remember. She remembered his touch on her back, his expression as he held their firstborn son. She remembered him with all three of their children piled around him, his face gone bemused and a bit beleaguered. She tried, and sometimes she succeeded, not to remember the sedition that he'd first whispered, then murmured, then shouted. Not to remember when he had said goodbye.
And every night, she hugged his neck, his statue's neck, mindful of the small candleflame flickering against his tarnished bronze, and listened, for minutes, holding her breath for silence, for any sound of him, any sign that he was still there.
Every night, after her shift was done but before the sun had set, she walked to the yard where the statues sat, though it was a half-mile out of her way, though it meant that, no matter what route she took, she would be walking home after dark, into a neighborhood that was not considered the safest for a lone woman to walk alone in.
Every night, she bought a candle from the candle-vendor whose stall was just outside the statue-yard. Sometimes she bought two, if one of the others was not there, or if they were there, but down on their luck; the week the button factory by the river closed, she bought seventeen. It wasn't charity; they were a sibling-hood, a family, their quiet and unspeaking ranks nevertheless closer than any blood tie.
Every night, she lit the candle and set it in its holder, then knelt by the feet of the statue, her statue, her Gregor's statue. She did not pray, nor commune; there was not believed to be anything there to commune with. It was, after all, just a statue, bronze, gone a little tarnished with age no matter how she tried to polish it. Bronze had no feelings and no sentience.
What she did every night, aside from polish his green-black toes, was remember. She remembered his touch on her back, his expression as he held their firstborn son. She remembered him with all three of their children piled around him, his face gone bemused and a bit beleaguered. She tried, and sometimes she succeeded, not to remember the sedition that he'd first whispered, then murmured, then shouted. Not to remember when he had said goodbye.
And every night, she hugged his neck, his statue's neck, mindful of the small candleflame flickering against his tarnished bronze, and listened, for minutes, holding her breath for silence, for any sound of him, any sign that he was still there.
