Crashed

Epilogue

Epilogue

Somewhere in the rural land of California, the sun shined into the back windows of a tall, Victorian home with a deck built around the back. The year was 2013 and the world had not ended, not yet at least. A high-pitched squeal echoed through an almost empty dining room with wood floors and the source of the noise rounded the corner, toddling quickly through a tall, ornate doorway. It had come from the mouth of a small, black-haired girl, around two, with green eyes. She was dressed in a purple, short sleeved shirt, a green tutu, and rainbow striped tights topped off with black tap shoes. She couldn’t have been more mismatched if she tried, but it suited her toddler form perfectly. She was followed closely by a dog that was a mammoth in comparison to her, a Bernese mountain dog.

“Bray!” the little girl cried, “Bray! Bray!” The dog whooped out a deep bark that echoed through the house just as the toddler’s scream had. The child giggled loudly and then a man stepped into the room, lifting her from her resting place on the floor. She grinned at him and patted his cheeks. He smiled at her.  

“Come on, Macyn,” he cooed to the tiny girl. He carried her on his hip up the stairs of the house and into a room that was dimmed by the purple curtains that hung over the windows. There was a figure sleeping in the bed. The man sat the small child near the sleeping person and watched as she crawled over slowly and started patting the sleeper on the forehead. A woman groaned. The man laughed and walked over to draw the curtains open. The woman in the bed rolled over and smiled up at the little girl above her.

“Hi Macyn, sweetheart,” she said sleepily. The toddler grinned and bounced up and down.

“Az, Az, Az!” she chanted. The woman laughed and then looked up at the man.

“I’m not sure she’s ever going to learn to call me ‘Mama’ rather than ‘Az’ if you keep calling me that in front of her,” she chuckled. The man laughed.

“Well, our daughter wouldn’t be yours if she didn’t do everything differently,” he told her and then leaned down to have a kiss from her while the little girl patted his shaved head.

The End