LUNA

Two

Roof Slides
~  Ashlynn Gamma's POV  ~

"Mom!"

"Ashlynn, I am sat right in front of you."

"You weren't paying me attention." I say looking at her with the most adorable face I can pull off- which is perhaps the ugliest one as well.

"Please throw her into the ocean", comes an obnoxious, chirpy voice to a person I'm to claim sister: Raelynn.

"You're mean and then you'll be lonely", I retort.

"Better off alone." Mother dearest lets a low snort, clearly amused.

"Of course you would be! I'll ask that when I leave. I hope I don't hear news of you sniffing and shedding rivers."

"Believe it on the Leus' you won't. If you do leave it'll be because of your stupidity and arrogance." She snaps.

"You take that back", I growl.

"Make me", she says cold and sharp. Mom looks up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

I continue glaring at Raelynn, she returns the favour.

"Ash, what is the matter with you?" Mom intercedes. "What's gotten into you?"

I sigh. "Nothing. I just miss granda, I saw him in my dream last night."

I look out the window, snow falling elegantly, softly, deathly. The snow here is beautiful, world known, but it takes just as many lives as it brings. We lost our maternal grandfather, grandfather Edmund- or 'granda' as I called him- here. Close yet far. I remember it, all too well.

"I wish he were still here, winters were his".

Mom and Rae both go quiet. Rae was just told that he went away to meet someone and I was there when it happened when we were young. But of course, as we grew the truth came out. It was a visit to a friend from whom he never returned.

Granda's warmth I still feel, especially when I go to the library. Any library. I used to go lay by him, reading books. I had a fair vocabulary by the age of six, and he was the reason for it. I smile a sad loving smile, remembering him. It was like this every winter since he passed away, eight years ago in two thousand and ten. Mom looks at me and speaks.

"I'm sure he's always here, Ashy. As long as you want him around, he'll never leave".

That is what he used to say;
'I am with you, always marshmallow. I won't ever leave.'

And I would ask, 'How so?'

And he'd say the same thing all over again.

'One day, my being will be gone. My hands or my feet you won't be able to see or boop my nose (and I'd boop his nose and we would laugh) but I'll always be here. In the way you walk, get up, talk, watch and listen. What you find and what you seek, how you put yourself and where you see your bad and how to overcome it but most importantly; how you'ld define to define something. Good or bad, love or hate, the right and the wrong. It's a little brittle for you to understand now but you will. One day."