In a kingdom where we have no footing, two children are born. The boy was dark; dark hair, dark eyes, all except his skin which carried scars no one remembered. The girl small and frail; the lightest blond hair hung in thin tangled clumps, her eyes spoke of the blue of a clear sky, her skin thin as paper where streaks of dirt would hide. King and Wing. Freedom and its protector.
When he greets you he is always a child, his sister hidden behind him plucking at his sleeve to remind him she is still there. He offers you his hand to welcome you into his kingdom, but his eyes carry the burdens of a kingdom. Seeing that in a child's eye's is...Reach for the girl and she will flee, she can only survive in her brother's shadow.
"Mom." the girl shakes her head. She looks up and sees her mom crouched over another box. They sit in the doorway of the garage in back of her grandmother's house. Heavy dust circles them. The ceiling had caved in last fall and they had offered to clean it out of "important" memories. The girl held a molding story book, half the words and pictures unintelligible. "Mom!"
Her mother looks up a bandana tied around her mouth and hair, the top one damp from sweat. She refused to let her daughter go in to scavenge, so she delegated the girl to sorting. She rests her back aching, not really seeing the random objects protruding out of them.
"What?" she wheezes.
"You okay?"
"Yes, what?"
"This book is demented." the girl flaps it at her and mold spores scatter into the air.
"What? Give it here."
The girl tosses as her mother reaches. The brittle pages slid from their binding as they hit the ground.
"Oops."
"Oh well. Can't do nothing about it now. Get that trash bag and put that in there. We're gon need more soon anyway." the woman stands and stretches. "I'm gon go get more boxes."
The girl rises, "No, ma. No." she blocks her mother's path defensive as if afraid the woman will rush her.
"Olwen, girl you betta get out my way. I'm tired, it's hot, and I don't have time for your foolishness." the woman snatches the rags off her head and chin.
"Mom I got this." She tenderly reaches for the bandanas as they dangle from her mother's squeezed fist. "Come on, come on. There you go."She says as she eases them out her mother's hand. "Those too." the girl slips the gloves from the woman's now passive hands.
"Olwen-"
"I know, I know. But that roof already fell and there's nothing else to fall on my head. We've been at this for half a day. Go on and sort those boxes." the girl shoos her with the glove.
"I'm not playing with you Olwen." the woman says watching her daughter tie the bandanas around the top and bottom of her face. She turns to sit on one of the up turned milk crates strewn about the yard.
"You too, get on with it then." The girl swats her mother in the bottom with the gloves then hops out of reach into the shade of the garage.
"Alright now." The mom says as the girl goes deeper into the interior. The garage was built a long time ago by the woman's father before her and her siblings were born. He built a porch onto the back of the house and the separated garage that hasn't held a car since after his death. The girl, now sixteen, had been a baby.
"You woulda loved your pop pop." the mother always said. The woman settles down onto a carton looking into the box the girl had been working on. As she looks into it she breaks into a sheen of sweat quite unrelated to the heat of August beating down ont the back of her neck. In the box were writings from the girl's great aunt most of the family ignored. Just looking at it gave her chills. The old woman had died years ago in a pleasant Home somewhere in Maine. The woman's mother, who's back yard she sat in, had never spoke of her unless to mock. Yet even then there was a kind of fear or reverence in her tone. After all it was still her sister. The woman dropped the rotting paper back into the box. Olwen should have had gloves digging through this stuff, she thought. She glances at the sheets of paper rising in a breeze too subtle to feel.
In the garage Olwen looks for something redeemable. She had hoped they'd at least find something valuable to sell or some cool vintage stuff to decorate her room. If her mom was stuck on this detail, and by default her, she might as well get something other than the two dollars her grandmother always paid her for any work done in the house since she was ten. Before that her mum mum never felt obligated to pay her. That said, two dollars, for cleaning that whole house top to bottom- you can't even buy anything at the movies for two dollars. The girl shakes her head. It didn't matter. Not really.
She comes upon a stack of boxes that looked promising stuck under a fallen tall metal fan. Inside the second box peaked the edge of a record. The fan was rusted brown and covered in dust. She was glad for the gloves. She could've used them outside but hadn't known where her mom had put the box of dish washer gloves.
"Hey buddy," she talks to the fan as she grips the body and proceeds to move it. She breathes in the stale old air imagining all the spores of mold that are entering into the cloth, coating her throat and lungs. What was that thing really doing? She grunts as it finally begins to move. Oswin had only gotten out of it because he is apparently allergic to mold, Olwen thinks as she shifts the weight of the thing onto her shoulder. She steps back and loses her balance.
The crash that resounds is answered by the frantic calls of her mother.
"Olwen? Olwen!"
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Hey thanks for reading. The fantasy stuff will start in the next chapter, just wanted to lay the ground work for this one. Tell me what you think. If there's any critiques those are welcome too. I'm giong to try to reach a thousand or more words for every entry.
