Tonight, the window she left open, to cool the mooncakes she'd recently baked.
A door creaked open. The stomp of mud-daubed boots, the wet soles squelching on the floorboards.
He did not greet her. He did not light the candle at the door, for she did not see the pale lamp illuminate the porch from her window. Knives pricked the back of her eyes, staining her vision. Her hands were parched and cracked, from hours of scrubbing clothes and mixing pots and cleaning cinders from the hearth. She sighed, a broken, small sound.
As though responding to her cry, the clouds parted from their shroud. Moonlight streamed through the window, painting the cakes and her crusted, filthy fingers. But here, everything horrible turned beautiful. The pale batter on her hands was like the smothers of pastel paint. Oh, how she loved to paint.
Chang'e looked to the moons outside, lambent and full.
She wondered if she could ever touch them, perhaps escaping this horrid place and living there, where no one but the stars could reach her...
She could.
The woods were promising, bending and arching into a canopy of a misleading path. A path of escape.
Chang'e spared one glance at the quiet living room, at the rush of the leaking tap in the bathroom, at the discarded muddy boots. And knew this was the opportunity she'd been waiting for all her life, ever since the year turned her forty.
What was she waiting for?
YOU ARE READING
THE DREAMER'S LAMENT
Short StoryIn the hearts of dreamers, lament will always linger. Sadness can bloom into the brightest, lambent shades, like the rain giving way to the phantom of a rainbow, like the promise of hope. But sorrow may also wind down a darker, colder path. Our hear...
