Quote:
The holidays are close to ending and it’s time to start packing away your decorations. In a stroke of bad luck, you drop an ornament (or other small bauble) and it shatters. Inside was a strange, glistening dust that you accidentally inhale. You are immediately met with a strong hallucination of a previous holiday memory. It only lasts for a few moments, but it feels like you are back in the memory, reliving it. It seems so real but when it ends, you are back in the present with no trace of the dust left in sight. Which holiday memory did you relive, and how do you react to being torn from it?
Word Count: 830
Christmas was over, as was New Year's day so now it was onto the months of dreary cold and dampness until spring started to warm the earth. Honestly that was a rather morbid way of looking at it but as one carefully pulled down the festive bunting and glittering ornaments that made one’s house bright and cheerful it was a bit harder not to see the current ‘season’ as dreary and gray. For a young girl it was especially so. Abby prefered summer to winter, warmth to cold, color to gray but she also knew that it wasn’t appropriate to leave the holiday decorations up for months on end so that's what she was doing. Piece by careful piece she was delicately taking down each bauble and wreath, packing them back up and putting them away for the next year where she would once more put them out. It was a tradition that her mother loved, her father enjoyed the holidays but for him the decorations weren’t needed. They were all for her mum, and it was for that reason alone that the young woman had kept up the tradition. The tree, the lights, the little miniature snowy village on the mantle… all of it.
She was in the middle of taking down some christmas ornaments that were decorating a fake evergreen wreath when Sherlock came racing through. He was intent on something, she had no idea, and in his head long rush to get where he was going he just barely brushed her with his tail. It wasn’t a big deal normally but this time it startled her just enough that her fingers knocked into a little blue glass bauble, shaking it’s hook from the wreath and sending it tumbling to the wooden floor where it promptly shattered. Abby had tried to catch it but could only curse when she saw it hit and break, she didn’t notice the dust that exploded from the ornament because as soon as she opened her mouth to utter a curse she was lost in a hallucination, a vision of the past.
The smell of cookies baking and evergreen candles, christmas music playing softly in the background, and laughter… so much laughter. Abby, much much younger, giggling as she helped her mother in the kitchen decorating a gingerbread house while her father was trying to set up the artificial tree in the living room.
“Mum, mum, let me!”
“Ok sweetheart.”
Experience and gentle hands guiding smaller, shaky hands as little Abby piped white icing all over the roof of the little house before covering it in rainbow jimmies.
“Look mum! Isn’t it pretty?”
“It’s beautiful my darling.”
Her father coming over and announcing, “good enough to eat!” and pretending to take a big bite out of it while little Abby squealed “nooooooo papa!”
“All right then but I’m hungry so I guess that means I’ll just have to eat you!” Laughter filled the flat as Abby playfully ran from her father, who skipped after her. The duo ending up on the couch as after a rather spirited tickle fight when her father admitted defeat, “you win! I just can’t beat you, your just so good! I’ll just have to die from hunger since I don’t even have the strength to get up anymore. You wore me out!” and dramatically draped himself over the couch in ‘death’.
Abby giggled and poked him until he rolled over and scooped her up in a big hug, any further teasing and playing around ended when her mother came over. “Alright you two, time to rise from the dead,” She tapped her husband on the head, “Dinner is ready, then we will need your eye for color and design to get the tree done tonight.” She said as she extended a hand towards Abby to help her up only to have her husband take her hand instead. He pulled her closer until all three of them were on the couch, little Abby snug between her parents.
“Ahhh, my two girls. The best place to be.”
“The only place I want to be my love.”
“Ewwwww, gross. Stop kissing!” Abby’s giggle rang out again as her parents, who had been kissing each other, each gave the little girl giant, loud, smacking kisses on each cheek.
Abby blinked away the tears that threatened to fall as she stared down at the glass shards on the floor. That memory had been so real, it was like she had been a child again. It hurt to remember… but it also felt good too. It was good that she remembered it, their house had been filled with so much love. It still was, their family was just smaller now. After taking a deep breath to compose herself the young woman quickly swept up and disposed of the glass before retreating to her room where she could remember her mother in private. It really had been a bittersweet memory.
