Broken Together (MCYT au)

Chapter 26: Iris

The fire was no longer ablaze. Young Denise had heard rumors about the poor family whose home was set aflame. Her coworkers at the clinic had warned her not to go far but she didn't pay any mind to it. In the same day or so, the ferry would be taking her to Caiya where new jobs were being offered.

Putting that red ribbon in her hair and hearing the soft cries of a child in the forest. 'That isn't right,' she thought to herself and went and saw a little baby in a small woven basket, a little bracelet sitting on the child.

A bracelet with a charm, half of a smiley face and a date of the back. "Hello dear!" Denise smiled at the kid, watching as they stopped crying. "My name is Denise Alloy, nobody is nearby... But I promise I will work hard to be your mother!" She smiled and lifted the basket up and brought it back to the place where she was staying.

On her way, she noticed a few flowers blooming and then looked at the child in her arms, whom she had figured out was a girl. "Iris, that'll be your name," she smiled and soon enough, she found herself setting off to Caiya with a baby girl.

A sensible person would bring it to the orphanage or capital building and get her registered, a sensible person would notice the scorch marks on the basket and think that maybe, just possibly, the girl had been in a fire. Yet Denise Alloy was not a sensible person but ended up raising a dirty-blonde little girl with eyes that looked as green as the stems of flowers in the springtime.

Time would go by and when the child could not sleep, her mother would sing the lullaby her own family had passed down. Eccentric, different than most, but is always lulled the girl off to dreamland. "Another head hangs lowly, child is slowly taken," Denise Alloy would sing softly to the girl.

"And the violence, brings such silence, who are we mistaken," the child would sing back sleepily, and that's how most nights go.

"Can't you see, it's not me, it's not my family. In your head, in your head, they are fighting. With their tanks and their buns, and their buns, and their guns. In your head, in you heard, they are crying."

That little girl ended up growing into a young teenager, Iris. A strong-minded and witty girl, just like the mother who raised her but with a certain sweetness and kindness from her own biological mother. The mother she never knew.

Like the seasons which and come and go, so did she. Slightly under fourteen years ago, a little baby girl named after the flowers left the mainland for a new life and soon enough, she returned a wonderful young lady blooming in the meadow and here to come back to the flowers that grew beside her.

Her family.

~

"Where did you get that? Dream attempted to keep his voice low, yet the panic rang through him. The probabilities of every possible outcome. Yet there never seemed to be a probable answer to all his questions. Rushing over and holding the charm in his hands, feeling the magnetic pull between them causing the chains to connect.

A full smile.

"My mom said she found me with it in a forest somewhere around here when I was a baby. We always assumed it was a family relic but if it's yours, take it!" She looked down at the bracelets and neither wanted to disconnect the charms nor disconnect the bond between them.

"Iris, how old are you?"

"Um... 14 give or take. They don't know my exact birthday, but I'd say 14-15... why?" she asked, watching the widened eyes of the other. Iris didn't understand why tears fell, or even why type of tears they were. It's impossible to fight tears once they fall, everyone knows that.