morgyn {d6/fin}

When she was four, her mother would hang her sketches on the walls, marring their white-washed surfaces with colors that strayed from their boundaries. And though these exhibitions were closed to any but the private eye, she marveled at her accomplishments as if they had been tacked upon the greatest museums, only one step away from writing her name down alongside those who were synonymous with greatness. She never once signed them, leaving her identity unknown to visitors who crossed the her plane of reputation, though most had quite the idea of their creator.

Watching from the staircase, she could see the hem of a woman's dress, light and airy like the words she spoke, "Are these your daughter's?" From her hidden place a smile crossed her face, and with all the self-restraint a six year old can manage she keeps herself from blowing her cover to point to each one and explain the meanings, but she leaves this to her mother, and as the familiar voice is heard she nods with vigor.

"Yes, quite the artist, isn't she?" There's exhaustion laced in each syllable, late nights and daunting tasks laid on the shoulders of a mother trying to save that which was not hers, and with every life that fell at her fingertips and every last breath taken with her at the beside, the drawings of her daughter became something relied more and more heavily upon. Turning to sterile halls and bandaged wounds to heal the tear in flesh at the loss of husband to one and father to the other had brought about the repercussions of sunken eyes and creased brow, but every marked piece of paper and bright smile of her daughter was a stitch in an otherwise gaping wound.

"Don't you wish she had her head on straight, like you at that age?" The smile falls from the girl's face, and as she scrambles to leave her hiding place for that of another, one more secluded, her feet hit heavily upon the steps, and her mother lets out a sigh as she turns to listen to feet weighed down by a heavy heart.

"No, I wish for her anything but."

Time passes slowly in the corner of her closet, and as light flickers in through the minutest of crevices she counts the seconds that pass, until the number matches the sound of approaching footsteps, and as the two continually coincide she draws back, until no sound can be heard but the slightest breath falling from her lips, until her mother's voice shatters the silence, "Morgyn, there's nothing worth finding in the corner."

The sliver of light expands steadily, until the disheartened red head emerges from the shadows to sit beside her mother on the bed. She mumbles quietly as her mother untangles the knots that fall past her shoulders, "There's a lot of nice stuff back there." Her mother chuckles, running her fingers across freckled cheeks to clear them of a sadness that can't be comforted by touch alone.

"Like what?" Her mother asks, the tone neither condescending or rhetorical, but rather truly inquisitive, as if the answer eludes even her ever intelligent mind.

"Like..." And here her voice trails for a moment as her mind wanders to her moments spent in solitude, "like only the colors of black and white, and people who aren't mean." Her mother smiles, brushes the hair from her eyes before wrapping her in an embrace defined by cold facts and hard floors, even if disguised by the warmth of maternal instinct.

"You know the world would be a sad place if there were no color." The girl in her lap nods, exhaling deeply before rocking herself back and forth as far as her mother's touch will allow.

"But then no one could tell me I was wrong." The smile across her face fades slightly, her eyes turning to watch the floor as her mother takes the small hand into her own before lifting the girl off her lap and setting her on the bed. She kneels down to face the tender heart, letting their gazes meet before beginning to speak. 

"What you feel, here," she taps lightly at a heart still rapidly beating at the thought of falling short as she continues, "about the world that you've found around you, can never be wrong." She nods, watches her mother's feet leave the room before pulling herself up and walking to the window, eyes trained upon the sky that sits above her head. She imagines the wings of birds overhead to be sheathed in grey, the ground beneath her feet to crumble away to the monotony of black and white.

Even at six years old, she knows nothing could be less desirable.

At seventeen, she knows it to even a greater extent.

For once the kitchen walls contained that which she painted and sketched, but time has called for productivity and with it comes an expanse left with no space to show for it, and with each brushstroke and scratch of graphite the walls lose their purity to the static of what lies in the human mind. Some are beautiful, the fantasies of what should lie upon the surface of the world according to one soul, while others turn to the temptations of the heart, those of lust, pride, and selfishness. She wanted a world of white but painted that of a darker shade, and even though blues, greens, oranges-- the best of these-- cross her papers and canvases, they meld and merge until she's left with only the confusion of an untidy hand.

She had never been one to color inside the lines.

I did not wander from home today,
But yet instead I was led astray.
For the morning sun was yet deceiving,
Beautiful and radiant, but still grieving.
For the sun had lost her counterpart,
Her life and love, her half a heart.
I watched her rise; I watched his fall,
But within it the smallest grace of all,
Tumbled and plummeted from saving grace,
And surely the shock would show on my face
When the feather of a bird came to sit,
Where one could not ignore or acquit.
I turned it over lightly between my fingers but I,
Could not see its lover in the sky.
To be stripped of that which kept your feet off the ground,
Must be tragedy of a greater sound.
For I want nothing more than to see,
What’s spoken of by those who lack a plea
For sky and sun,
Who no longer wish to run.
Because they must have it figured out,
If they do not wish to leave this place,
To never scream or shout.

And so I cried for that long-lost bird,
I prayed that my cries were truly heard.

I could not bear to wander from home today,
In fears that I would be led astray.