Featured on @HistoricalFiction @NARomance
🥇2023 Rose Gold Awards
🥇Literary Book Awards
Story of Edith&Andre:
"O'Lady Liberty divine!
For thee alone, my life I'd resign:
I beseech all to carve thy name so fair,
On my tombstone, for all to stare...
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Little Fiona had a long, long dream.
From the scorching temperature on her forehead, she understood that she was ill again. She dreaded falling ill, because there's no medicine in their home. For a child from a poor family, such minor ailments had to be borne on their own.
She couldn't forget that one time, two years ago, when her mother went out to work for others, she was left alone in bed, her whole body aflame with fever. She gritted her teeth, bearing the discomfort, yearning to moan, yet not daring to make a sound. For her thirst was agonizing, her throat felt like it was being pricked by needles, but she lacked the strength to fetch water for herself.
But it wasn't like this when papa was around. Papa would always smile at her, using his rough, large hands to caress her red hair. In her early years, she often fell ill, but whenever papa's thick-calloused hand touched her feverish forehead, she immediately felt cooler.
Father looked dull, but Fiona knew he could tell the most amusing jokes. During the slack season of farming, he even carved a few crooked little toy horses out of firewood for her.
When she was five years old, papa went on a trip to town and came back with a red booklet in his pocket. They couldn't afford candles, so he would sit outside at night, reading that booklet by the moonlight. Since then, Fiona noticed papa becoming even more silent. Even when working in the fields, he would often be lost in thought and occasionally utter some strange words that she and mama couldn't understand.
She never expected Father like that to later become a bandit and heartlessly abandon her and Mother. He's so small, how could he carry a long rifle? After Father left, she never smiled again.
She did not blame her mama. They were too poor, that's why mama always got angry. When you are hungry, it's easy to get mad. When mama got angry, she would fiercely beat her, pulling at her hair. But when they managed to scrounge up a mouthful of bread, mama would hurriedly stuff most of it into her mouth.
Fiona then recalled the last illness Mother suffered. More dreadful than the lack of bread was the lack of medicine. People had all gone off to war. No one was willing to tend to the two of them.
Mother lay half-naked on the bed, drenching the sheets with sweat, turning them a murky black. Her entire face took on a terrifying ashen hue. No matter how much her daughter shook her body, cried out her name, she would not open her eyes, or make a single movement.
Fiona watched as flies landed on Mother's eyelids, waving her hand to shoo them away, only for another to settle near Mother's lips, stained with coagulated blood. Mother must have suffered as much back then as she herself does now? Probably even more so than her.
Holding her mother's hand, Fiona knew that Mother was about to die, perhaps already dead.
Death! At her age, she still did not quite understand what death meant. It wasn't due to being too well protected, but rather the ignorance brought about by poverty. She had no fairy-tale imagination of death, but still had some vague, religious understanding of it.
