One Shots

The Lifespan of a Home

Baba Yaga flipped through the scrapbook of memories she kept. The book itself was falling apart at the spine–an event that was bound to happen sooner or later since she pieced together the pages and the spine and made it presentable all by herself rather than going to a professional. The leather was dotted with spots of light from the beating sun through her window hitting the drying pages day after day with every new addition. The pages should all be equally worn and aged from exposure to the light, but the plants on her windowsill did a decent job of blocking out the excess rays and caused her scrapbook to appear as if she attempted to dye the leather and it ended poorly. The yellowing pages were worse around the edges where the sun hit most often, but even before the light disfigured the pages they were far from perfect. At each instance of gluing the pictures onto paper there were fingerprints of her dirt-covered hands gracing the pages. Even so, she looked back at her memories fondly.

The first picture was of her as a young girl with a giant egg. Much taller than herself, the egg was speckled with pale brown polka dots and stood as tall as the house behind her.

The second picture showed the very same egg, but there were cracks at the bottom where chicken feet broke through the shell and kicked back and forth in the air.

In the third and final picture on the first page, the egg was gone entirely and replaced with a modest sized house. She was standing in front of it, staring up in wonder as the chicken-legged house bent its knees to give her access to the door.

She couldn't turn the page. Baba Yaga has been called many things throughout her life, but sentimental was not one of them. So why? Why were tears pricking at the corners of her eyes and threatening to spill out? Why were choked sobs and gasps leaving her throat no matter how much she tried to stop them? Why was she so heartbroken?

Her companion of many years was gone, and it broke her. In its final days, it shrunk from the large house with legs it once was and became a pile of bones that were shaped vaguely like a person's. Instead of the house she has lived in for her entire life, there was a tiny birdhouse as if to say, "The only companions I need now are the creatures of the wild." She hated that her house left her–that it got peace–and she was stuck here mourning.