Lines

The sky is the same.

Funny, how that thought comes to her head. Of course the sky's always the same. She's doing a PHD in astrophysics, if anyone knows it's her. But that's not what she means, not this time.

She'd had her last meal with him here, before she got on the plane to university on the other side of the world. She doesn't remember what they ate last time, but she remembers that she ordered a caramel milkshake for afterwards. It was never her favourite flavour, but it was his, and something in the last moments had made her choose that one over her usual order.

"Gonna miss you, sis," he'd said as they sat. "You'll call all the time, right?"

She'd let her gaze fall out the window, over the skyline of her hometown. For the life of her now she can't remember what it was anymore that made her so desperate to leave it, to run from the arms of the love and life she already had. "Yeah," she'd replied, then, and she'd meant it. She really had back then, before her new life and new goals and new work swept everything away. And before she knew it, it had been a decade since they'd last spoken.

Down in her pocket there's a buzz, and she braces herself, because she knows what it's going to say. She reads it anyway, because it's the easiest way to clear an unanswered text. And then she ducks her head into her arms and pretends the tears aren't falling, clenches her teeth around the sweetness that despite all the bitterness in her still manages to touch that small piece of pure, childish joy which has managed to live all these years inside her. It's been fifteen years since she had the last one, but the memory of the old taste blooms fresh and clear and she puts it down after one sip because it's different. It's changed too, like everything else. Thoughts run in her head, what-ifs, if she'd for once gone home for Christmas last year and seen him one last time"but it wouldn't have been the same. Even if she came back, it could never be as it had been when she'd been a girl running alongside her little brother in the new spring grass, looking upwards in the wonder of youth and not through the old eyes of the academic trying so hard to make something from where something else already bloomed. Something less exciting and important, but softer, sweeter, more human.

Funeral arrangements set. Will see you tomorrow. - Mum and Dad.

Like almost everything else. Behind her, the bloody sky's still the same.

Author's Note

Written in 20 minutes for a flash fiction prompt at a chat event along with Shells, edited a little after. Prompt was to place your character in a restaurant, and to describe what it looks like, why they picked the place, what they're eating, and why. My default spontaneous seems to be 'dead family member', hmm.

First thing I've written after a long haitus, it also happens to be. Feedback would be cool.

Reviews

[Mary]

Damn what ifs! The woulda's the coulda's the shoulda's! and what do they really do for us? or for the ones who have passed on? This is an excellent read- it made me uncomfortable and sad, and hit its target, my heart, for I myself have experienced the loss of a brother.

[Norma M Sutton]

This seems appropriate for this time in history with all our boys and girls fighting. Well done indeed.

[Angel]

We know, deep down, that death is a part of life. We know when we leave family and loved ones behind that we may never see them again.
We know this...
Yet, somehow, it always comes as a shock...

[Larry Dyson]

So my friend as one psychic to another...? who do you need to get in contact with and why haven't you done it?..safe hugs Laury