Once there stood a small house. Now stood a burnt foundation of ashes and blackened wood. Her hand moved over the soot softly, turning her fingers black and staining her shirt. Her clothes were already muddy so the ashes of somewhere so dear to her heart did not bother her. Slowly, her hands traced an image of a face she was struggling to remember through the soot and mud. Puffy hair on top of the rough face lined with laughter. A scratchy beard lining his chin and dark hazel eyes much like hers. A pointy nose topped it off. Of course, the drawing in the dirt did not look like this. More a circle with squiggly lines for a beard, a smily face, and fingerprints for hair. But vividly the face did appear in her mind.
She sat back gazing down to it and remembering laughter as she murmured, "Good evening, dad." She felt the faint sting in her eyes and warmth on her cheek. Then she shifted into a squat, forming a large rectangle beside the face. Using her fingers to create swirling designs, she remembered the tall wooden table she once sat at. Then on the far side from the man, she began to draw his wife. The face she knew did not smile that often, but one night she recalled her father referring to the woman as sexy, which was the few times the woman beamed. With long wavy hair much like her own, she pictured the deep brown eyes and the rounded nose unlike to her and her father's pointy nose.
"Good evening to you too, mother," she said with a more respectful bow of her head. Then she moved to the next side. The girl she drew who sat here had blonde hair and hazel eyes. A pointy chin and nose. A grin on her face and an excitement as Nettie remembered the night they celebrated the girl's betrothal. The mead they drank, the duck her father splurged on and her mother cooked. They were happy then, despite the cough her father had acquired.
"Love is exciting, Alanaa," she whispered now. Then she moved to the final edge and drew the freckled faced girl with wide doe eyes and a giant grin across her face. The spitting image of the man who sat with his family. The girl who rambled on and on about anything and anything. The girl Nettie use to be. Standing up, she looked across the piles of ashes and wood sitting about. The ruin pile of stones that was a fireplace. Once a chair sat there, a bed here. Once a spinning wheel sat near the door where her mother turned piles of wool into spools of yarn. A chair near her bed where Alanaa knitted her little sister a sweater in fear that the girl would catch a cold like their father. A table where once long ago they all sat as one family and ignored the bruise on their father's face from a brawl he got into earlier in the day. And they ignored their mother's retorts about their hair or how clean they were.
Looking down to the faces in the soot, a warm calmness washed over her as she remembered the warm summer days playing on the bridge or the cool autumn evenings chasing him through sheep filled fields. The cold winter days watching snow drift out the window as the fire heated up their ciders.
But then, a droplet hit her father's cheek. One, two, three. Suddenly rain washed away her family and soaked the burnt foundation of what once she called home. As quickly as the rain fell, she felt the warmth cover her cheeks as she lowered herself to a seated position in the middle of the ruined house. Her nose started to ache as she couldn't breath. Forcing her mouth open, she gasped in the sob as each droplet of rain felt like it added a heavy weight to her shoulders. No, they were not all dead. Yet since the fires scourged their home, it felt as if their family burnt with it.
But then the sound of footsteps nearby lifted Nettie's eyes. Standing in what was their doorway, the clean albeit soaked dress was raised as if the woman avoided letting the edges touch the ground. The fabric was simple and brown, but well kept. A hood shielded her blonde hair from the falling rain as their eyes met.
"Nettie?" She whispered.
"Alanaa?" Nettie whispered back.
Suddenly the dress was forgotten as Alanaa fell to the ground beside Nettie, wrapping her arms around her sister tightly. Resting their heads together, they sat in silence as the rain fell upon their ruined home. Nettie's eyes drifted close as she felt the warmth of her sister beside her. The smell of fire and warm stew lingered on the cloak that her sister spread across both their shoulders. Slowly, it all began to drag out into a mellow suspension. Nettie swore as they sat there, the warm embrace of their father wrapped around them as well. She could smell him. And somewhere she heard the whisper in her ear, "Come home Nettie."
But when she awoke, she was entirely alone in the pale twilight with a sore head and a stuffed nose. She stood and kept her eyes forward as she slipped out of the abandoned ruins and towards the field.
A few days past by from that night. A night Nettie marked as the last time she could ever close her eyes and sit around the dinner table once more without loosing her sanity. Clouds rolled across blue skies without a droplet of rain as Nettie's boots stepped down the cobble stone path. She stopped, seeing the familiar face if her cousin Elsie reaching out to take a bowl from the hands of the older woman. Nettie's mother. Nettie slowed her pace to a stop at the bottom of the stares as she heard Elsie murmur, "Thank you Aunt Elanor."
Elanor smiled to Elsie before looking to Nettie, "Well look what the cat dragged in."
"Hello mother," Nettie murmured, avoiding looking upward.
Elsie stood as she looked between the two, "I should take this inside." Quickly she turned and returned into the house.
"What do you want Nettie? You haven't come by in days. You yell at me, storm off, and only now return? What have you even been doing? You turning into your father and getting drunk in the fields? Or... are you turning into one of those women who give themselves to the pleasure of men for an easy coin?"
"Mother," Nettie muttered.
"No Nettie, don't you mother me. I don't care what you do anymore. It's your life. But begone, I have enough to deal with than to worry about you," Elanor retorted.
Looking upward, Nettie frown deepened, "I came by to talk to Alanaa."
"Alanaa is in bed. She's not feeling well," Elanor said flatly.
"Is she alright?" Nettie's brows furrow.
"She just has a cough. I'll tell her you stop by when she awakes. Now get," Elanor waved her hands towards Nettie as if shooing a dog.
Turning away, Nettie swallowed heavily. Alanaa just had a cough. Perhaps she'll stop by in a few days and talk to Alanaa then. Of course, it's not like Alanaa would end up like... Nettie cut that thought short as she lifted her head to look to the fountain still standing dividing the burnt and clean portions if the city. Wandering over to it, she leaned back and looked up to the sky with a soft breath, using her finger to pick at her teeth. Yes, Alanaa thoughts needed to be stuck in the chest inside Nettie's head where the rest of the thoughts she could not think were locked up and pushed into a shadowy corner. Suddenly a voice caused her to turn her head.
"Ms. Woodruff... Nettie, was it?" She could see the mercenary walk towards her, stopping beside her. Her heart dropped in her chest in concern of what he might want, but then something magical happen. For once, luck turned to her favour when he held his hand out holding the coins she so desperately wanted.
