Dawn burst through the remaining pieces of night with lasers of red and gold before exploding into a haze of brilliant pink clouds on the last morning of the year. It was a sign, or so Emmeline believed. She had waited for the transformation of dawn on the 31st of December every year since her tenth birthday, and in eleven different dawns she had never seen the sun break through the night in this particular way before.
But pink clouds could not change a tradition that had been repeated eleven times over eleven years, and Emmeline's eyes stung as she tried to hold back the hot tears boiling within them. They flowed over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Misshapen diamonds that caught in her dimples and in the curve of her lips.
On the 31st there was always a dawn, there was always Emmeline, and there were always tears that shone like diamonds in the aftermath.
She wiped her eyes brusquely with her sleeve and climbed back inside from where she'd been sitting on the windowsill. Tomorrow would be her 21st birthday, but today was just another day. She trudged back toward her bed, extracting a pair of black trousers and an only slightly dirty polo shirt that had the words "ICE CREAM QUEEN" emblazoned in bright yellow across the back from the pile on the floor as she went. She shook the creases out of it and then snatched a towel from the hook behind her door before she headed for the shower.
"Nice day out for ice cream," her grandfather said with a chuckle when she came down the stairs later with make up sort of done, hair mostly dried, and the rest of her generally ready for another day of work.
Emmeline smiled but said nothing. It was still too early for talking in her humble opinion. He grunted and flicked from the weather channel to a re-run of Eastenders as she walked into the kitchen to find something to eat.
She looked out the kitchen window at the miserable grey winter day that had developed from the remnants of her pink dawn, and she had to agree with him. Ice cream in the middle of an English winter was only something that could tickle a tourist's fancy.
"The dawn was pink," she said to her grandfather when she returned to the living room with a bowl of coco pops and hot milk. She sat on the couch across from him and began shovelling it down.
Emmeline's grandfather was in his late seventies. Not ridiculously old, but not particularly healthy either. Diabetes and smoking had gotten the better of him over the most recent decades of his life, though he had given up the later once Emmeline came to live with him. He coughed twice, adjusted himself in the lazy-boy, and turned to look at her, "Red sky at night shepherds delight, red sky in the morning shepherds warning," he intoned with Shakespearian eloquence and a mysterious furrow of his eyebrows.
Emmeline put down her bowl and gave him a 'look'. "I said the clouds were pink," she corrected him.
He shrugged, "Any chance of a tea before you leave?"
She balanced the coco pops in one hand and gave him a kiss on the forehead as she headed back to the kitchen, "Only for you," she muttered.
By the time she left the house the weather had truly turned. No one was coming to the park for ice cream today that much seemed for certain. It even seemed unlikely that anyone would feel like going out to see the fireworks for New Year's tonight. But a job was a job, and fireworks were a tradition, so Emmeline would be doing both before she turned twenty-one at the stroke of midnight.
She slammed the gate behind her against the wind as she headed out to work, the secret of the pink clouds at dawn and her lonely tears left to hide for another year.
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This novel was inspired by 31 people who provided the 31 topics I wrote Emmeline to, over 31 days. When I first set out on the 31 day writing challenge, I knew I was possibly crazy, and that I was going to weave the topics I was given together to tell a story, but I didn't know how, and I didn't know who would get involved when I put the invite out for topics. As it happened, those who participated came from all walks of my life and even from complete strangers. They are all now people I'm honoured to have collided with on the journey of life, even when they gave me some fairly peculiar topics to use in the telling of this tale. At the bottom of each chapter is the original introduction to that day, mentioning the topic I was given to use, and the person who gave it - see if you can figure out how I wove them in as you go along...^_~