Alone

Argh. It's not as dark as I thought it was... oh well... maybe I'll edit it again some day. Anyhow, this is another old photo which I've just aplied to one of my short stories written while with Katherine. It's based lightly off the song, Johnny and Molly, that some woman sings on Across the Sea, one of my Celtic CDs.

Full Piece:
Alone

With a sigh she gazed out the window at the dark, starless night.

It was a year to the day since she had seen him. He had gone to a war that ended weeks again, and still there was no news. It was easy for her to think of the millions of possible reasons for his silence, it made her wish to ride out and find him. No matter if she be searching the rest of her life.

When she boarded the ship to say her farewells, he had smiled over her petty worry. She had vowed that, if he would allow her, she would follow him. Even in the deadly storms at the Cape, she would be there, she would not abandon him. He laughed. Ever since they were little, that was all he did. Laugh.

But the laugh had become music to her over their last months together. After she realized what was happening, she had hid it for fear he would discover and tease her about it. Love was never something they had desired of each other. As children, they had each done horrid things to the other. He shoved her in a lake, she threw rotten apples. He ties her to a tree and scared her to death about monsters coming to feed on her, she put nails in his seat and tore apart his notebooks.

It was not until their teens that they had called a truce and given up. Time passed, and slowly they could call each other friends. She had not wanted anything more. Not until she saw him on that ship, ready to sail into the pirates’ uncharted seas.

He had seen her _expression, and suddenly he was not the boy she had loved but a man. The memories thereafter for the next hour she could not think about, their warmth and joy was so much. But she remembered laying her cheek on his shoulder. She remembered him promising himself, should he return.

If he died she did not know what she would do. She had concluded to never marry, but her mother and other women in her life were not satisfied with that. They said she was foolish and constantly were trying to match-make her with other young men. It was her great pleasure to ignore or insult the men when they brought up romance. Of hearts she had only one, and that was already taken.

Looking up at the black expanse of nothingness, she wondered if he was looking too. If only she could know he lived. Then she could take heart and comfort. But there had been no letters, nothing, for the past six weeks. He surely was gone.

Quietly she pulled away from the window seat. No more fooling herself. If he was alive he would have contacted her. He knew how badly she would worry. He was gone.