The Window

A short story about a little girl's imagination.

Ingrid Foster stood by the window absolutely still and motionless. Her eyes gripped the image of the window and seemed to be memorizing every inch of it. 

The window used to be a vortex of imagination a long time ago. It used to be transparent and wasn't always shawled with thick sheets of dust that barely allowed any light to pass through. 

 

When she was much younger, Ingrid liked to think that the glass on the window was a slab of crystal that was strong enough to resist any force that ever came clamoring towards it. She would often stand by the window and pretend to be a weaver with an ill fate.

After listening to the story of King Midas, she marveled his abilities, wept for his daughter and felt the triumph once everything had regained its original position. 

Midas's fate caused her to create her own character called Anthony, a boy who had the same abilities as King Midas except he had turned his fiancé into gold and the fairy that appeared to grant King Midas his wish to turn everything back to normal, never appeared to help Anthony. And that's how Anthony spent his days, spinning gold and growing accustomed to a life that bled for mercy and had been curtained by loneliness.

 

The radiant streams of light that shed from the sun alongside the cluster of dust particles looked magnificent. Anthony would loop his hands around the strips of light in order to spin the gold.

But that's wasn't all to Anthony's character. 

The widow overlooked a beautiful garden. The garden was quite the jewel to Ingrid. During summer the plants would bear mangoes and watermelon and other flowers which were bright and vivid. Anthony would take the time to relish the tropical fruits and water the flowers to quench their thirst. He would also scatter crumbs for little sparrows to feast on.

Spring and autumn would pass by just the same, except Anthony would collect leaves and pebbles and collect firewood for the winter.

Winter was the season that Anthony dreaded the most for he could not spin his gold due to the clouds trapping the light. His days would pass by sitting alone by the garden, waiting for the birds and flowers to wake up once again.

 

That was the life Ingrid had always envisioned throughout the window. Her thoughts of Anthony and the garden were the best memories she could remember from her childhood.

But all that changed after a while.

 

Ingrid sat down by the window and ran her hand across the rough plane. The rectangular slab of glass had been framed with mahogany but now it was gritty and had an awfully rough texture.

She looked out through the window and she tried to film the memories of the garden but all she could see was the eloquent barrenness that had shadowed over her utopia of joy.

 

"Hurry up Ingrid, we have to leave!" her mother shouted at her. Her eyes were bloodshot and her voice was high pitched.

“But mother, we can't leave this house." Ingrid had protested.

“But if we don't leave we will die Ingrid. Please let's go." Her mother panicked. "They might be here any moment."

Suddenly a rock came soaring cross the room and nearly hit Ingrid, the glass in the window had been shattered.

Ingrid could feel her accomplishments getting bruised by the sudden attack.

She was petrified with fear and dared not to move. 

She could see shrubs of smoke from the garden.

 “Ingrid, we have to go now!" her mother yelled, trying to control her voice, trying to pacify Ingrid through her abrasive tone.

 

Ingrid had left Russia that day. She had fled away from the Great Purge, she had fled from the dictatorship and she had fled away from all the hatred. But most importantly, he had fled away from her house, she had left her garden and she missed her window. What would happen to Anthony?

Who would feed the sparrows and water the plants and collect the firewood? Who would continue to spin the gold?

Ingrid had left all that behind. The only thing that she could think about at that time was the agonizing pain that bleated throughout her body because she was grieving for the loss of her own shelter.

 

"Ingrid darling, we should go now. The plane leaves within half an hour." Her mother's voice stirred Ingrid back to reality as she forced herself to look away from the window.

"I can't believe that the house is still here, after all these years." She finally turned to her mother.

"Yes, it's a miracle isn't it? You were so young back then...." her mother started to say.

Ingrid smiled and escorted her mother towards the doorway as they headed out of the house.

 

There she was leaving her fortress once again, wishing, hoping and praying that it would remain. She bid a final goodbye to the garden, to the flowers, to the birds and to Anthony who along with her childhood self could never let go of the house.

 "Goodbye Anthony, I hope you've been well." she whispered as she took a final look at the house before turning away.

 

Reviews

[Kaliope]

What a touching story, very well done!

I do have two minor suggestions:
The references to King Midas puzzled me a bit. Of course I've read the story but that was long, long time ago, so I didn't remember what exactly had happened to his daughter and what was up with the fairy. So my suggestion would be to either elaborate a bit more or to get rid of the references to those details. Could be just me though, maybe everyone else is intimately familiar with the story.

The other thing that confused me was the jumping around between Ingrid's past and present. Maybe you could have used different tenses to clarify the different points in her life? You know, present tense to describe her current reflections and past tense to describe her childhood? Don't know, might work...

Nevertheless - I liked it, great piece of work!

[Elodie Thompson]

Thank you so much for pointing out that I left out the role of the fairy in the story. I will try to include her part right away. My apologies for the grammar, it was always one of the hardest things for me to correct but I will most definitely try to work on it.
Thank you very much for the review.

[Kaliope]

just to clarify: I'm not qualified to judge grammar, English is my second language.
And I didn't think it was grammatically wrong to use past tense throughout the story, I just thought that it might have been easier for the reader to follow if you had used different tenses as a stylistic device.

No worries, your story was really good! :-)

[Elodie Thompson]

Thank you very much.

[PANDORA]

Ok, I am going to do a critique. Please bear in mind this is just my humble opinion.

I thing your use of adjetives is a little over the top and takes away from the general feel of the story.

Example:

Ingrid Foster stood by the window absolutely still and motionless. Her eyes gripped the image of the window and seemed to be memorizing every inch of it.

I think that in the second sentence it could be simplified to "She seemed to be memorizing every inch of it."

The use of "Gripped" just seems to throw the flow of and at the very beginning of the story which might put a reader off.

So work on too much description and simplifying it and the flow of the read will be much easier to read. Again, just my opinion.

I like the story and even the back story you created here. Thanks for the read

[Elodie Thompson]

Thank you so much. I did overdo it with the descriptions, didn't I?
This is one of my writing flaws. When I start writing a story, I just have to describe whatever I can find fit to describe.
I will surely try to fix it and thank you so much for the review.

[Kajal Sharma]

that was really a good one. It was depicting the pain of a child to move to a new place. It also put light on what conditions of war and terrorism force people to do. For a child to leave her comfort zone, the place she assumed will always be the place where she would live makes her nostalgic. Loved it!!

[Elodie Thompson]

Thank you very much.