Authors note:
In the middle of a challenging year and semester, I found it difficult to find something that felt consistently comforting and resonated with positivity more than anything else.
I drafted this story and its first few chapters at the b...
////I thought I could offer some engagement on my part by attaching some pictures which, in my opinion, represent some aspect of one of the characters or their personalities. Just to give you, the reader, a more visual idea. Fuel for the imagination, you could say. Below you'll find one for Willow. Have a lovely day!////
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Hoping for a distraction from the new and unfamiliar emotions flowing through her body, Will was thankful that she had to drag two suitcases full of clothes and books up two flights of stairs to reach her room. She thought settling in would be easy, but seeing pictures of everyone together distributed across the house had her mind numbing with emotions.
Fortunately, this house had seen many things for this family. Unfortunately, that included the bad parts too. It was there to watch Will's grandparents raising her aunt and her mother, two notoriously naughty and hyperactive little girls. It saw Will's birth and her parent's decision to move the family into the city for a better future. It comforted Will when her father passed away and her grandfather later that year. It mourned with her when her grandmother fell ill. It supported Will when she moved away for university. However, after all the years of emotional and familial peril, she was lost on how to process life's most recent challenge for her family.
She tried her best to suppress all the memories from over the years and to focus on unpacking her bags, but no matter how hard she tried not to think of everyone she had lost or was about to, the more she wanted to lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling. It destroyed her, thinking about how it only took a decade for her family tree to shrink from six to three and that now this number was dangerously close to reducing down to two.
"Now, why did you bring a shelf worth of books with you? It's summer; you can't expect I'd let you stay cooped up inside this whole break." she smiled at her aunt's remark and internally thanked her for breaking her unconscious stream of thought.
"Even if you don't, there's no harm in preparing for the imminent failure of your plans to do so."
"I promise you at least this for now. There is no way you're going back to college without having made a new friend and me pushing you out the doors to hang out with them. You're twenty; act like it."
"May I ask where you're planning on finding this new friend and eventual opportunities for me to act twenty with them?"
"Oh, you leave that up to me." her aunt smiled and left the room. "Did I ever mention that I was the reason your mom decided not to be shy for five minutes and flirt with your dad."
"You've mentioned," I yelled, "about once every week of my life" the end of this sentence came out more as a whisper to myself.
Satisfied with her stack of books on her study table and her handful of clothes hanging in her cupboard, she joined her aunt in the kitchen. "So, what are we cooking today?" they smiled at each other and walked downstairs, where they would scan the pile of cookbooks for an attractive recipe only to end up making mac and cheese, eating it by the fire, and heading to bed and falling into a food coma.
