Red as the Dawn

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

(/Cal/)

A tiny finger pressed into my shoulder blade for the fifth time that night, and I expelled an annoyed sigh through my nose. Maggie had switched beds five times so far, this would be the sixth time since I had actually managed to get in bed. She had developed of cycle of crawling in with me, squirming an hour later and complaining that it was too hot, then getting up, kicking all the blankets off, and crawling in with Mare before getting up ten minutes later and complaining that it was too cold. The first two times it had been cute and I had let her curl up against my back, but after that, it had gotten old and at this point in time, I was not going to put up with it anymore.

She prodded me again, his finger digging into the muscle right below my shoulder blade, and whispered, "I'm cold." Her voice had taken a whine and it didn't take much to know that she was on the verge of tears. Sighing heavily, I sat up and looked at her closely, barely able to discern her face in the pitch black. "You need to pick and bed and stay there Maggie, this is not-"

"But it gets really hot with you, and Mare is a terrible sleeping friend, she kicks!" Maggie whined again, before wiggling under my blankets and curling up like a cat. Expelling another heavy sigh through my nose, I laid back down and stared at the ceiling, at this point, I wasn't going to get any sleep, and I envied Mare who seemed to sleep through every one of Maggie's transitions. Maggie shifted and curled up against me, her arms winding around mine as she whispered, "can you tell me a story? My daddy used to, and it always helped me go to sleep."

Running my fingers through my hair, I muttered, "I don't have any good stories, none that you would like that is."

She sits up, and with a gasp that would have woken the dead, cried, "did your mommy or daddy not tell you stories?"

Her words sliced through the darkness like a blade, and cut into the deepest wound I have ever received. No amount of trying to ignore it seemed to fix the problem, the nightmares still came, the memories remained, honestly, it was more of a nuance now. The memories were avoidable, but the nightmares, the ones that came in the middle of the night, right when I thought I would get an actual night of sleep, were the worst. "No Maggie, they didn't. My father never had time to do things like that, and my mother... she left a long time ago."

Maggie's head tilted to the side, and her curls tumbled off her shoulder in a waterfall as she simply replied, "oh."

She sat in silence after that, her eyes searching my face it seemed, wondering if I was going to divulge any more of my past. Evidently, she realized I wasn't going to, because she curled up next to me again and whispered, "my mommy went away too. She left when I was born. My daddy said that she went away so that I could live, did your mommy go away so that you could live?"

I tried not to let her question cut into the dark recess of my mind where I stored all of the thoughts that I had buried about my mother, Elara, Maven, and any regrets that I had ever had, but Maggie seemed to always open that vault with her comments. She turned her head to gaze at me watchfully, her expression curious and sad at the same time. Sighing heavily, I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and whispered, "no Maggie, my mother didn't go away for that reason, she went away for very different reasons."

"Oh," Maggie whispered again, and she didn't appear to want to pursue the subject further. But a moment later she nudged into my side to get more comfortable and whispered, "well, my daddy said that my mommy loved me a lot, I bet your mommy loved you a lot too, and I'm sure she was really sad when she had to go away."