When Midnight Comes

Darkness is sometimes described as a blanket. Although the image is meant to be a symbol of comfort and reassurance, to Gabrielle it brought the image of restraint as it would weigh one down and smother you if not alert or strong enough. The darkness was never be a comfort, not as long as her household residents breathed the same air as her.

Fortunately - she had a fire going in the kitchen and was tucked within its warm glow as it contained the only hearth large enough to house her and the last remaining cat and a few mice brave enough to risk it. Between the cat and the monster dwelling in the darkness, it wasn’t as hard of a choice. Her clothes and skin showed signed of constant singes from stray embers as it wasn’t a large fire, so she had to sit quite close. This was not a high priority concern for her due to her never seeing many guests. Well not any who might tell the outside world of her appearance. She hadn’t owned a new dress in years, but simply patched them whenever she found some fabric to spare.

No, her greater concern was not her clothing or the fire’s destructive nature, but what lay outside of its warm glow. They were there, she was sure of it. As was tradition, on nights when the moonlight would fade and grow colder and longer, she recounted her tale. The series of events that lead her to this place, this night. It wasn’t a very happy story, but it was the only one she had and telling it over and over again gave her a power over her past.

The story was one of a girl and her mother and father. As loving a family could be, a single unit of happiness and joy. Their days filled with light and warmth and nights full of laughter and stories. Then a cold came - in the guise of a cough in the mother. The cough turned to a chill that spread slowly to her head and heart. Suddenly the windows that had once invited the outside air were always shut with the curtains drawn tightly closed. The sun and its warmth seemed to slowly fade from the house. And, try as the girl might, she could notice encourage any story from her mother. She tried to bring the outside inside, but was slowly told there wasn’t time for such things when the staff saw her with her chicken feathers and muddy boots.

The day her mother finally left her was hard to comprehend. The girl had not seen her mother for many days as she had fallen asleep and was unable to wake. Her passing was like, like- It was like-

Gabrielle paused. Some nights she felt nothing the entire recounter, other nights her emotions caught up with her all at once. The hole in her soul’s ragged edges were raw tonight. She blinked a few times and breathed in slowly as she always did to calm herself. Once the ache had faded, she continued.

Her mother’s passing was like hitting the bottom of a hole you didn’t know you were falling into. The sudden crash-land seemed to take all of her childhood joy with it. It seemed to rock her father in the same manner. He continued to keep the curtains closed, and very rarely ventured outside, preferring to spend days alone in his study. In retrospect, the day he wandered out the house claiming her could hear ‘the most wonderful music’ should have been the first warning sign. But the stories that warned them about such things were as forgotten as laughter.

When her father came home, two days later in a daze, she remembered that fear she felt. It was the one she feared would never leave her. He came home after sunset, walking arm in arm with a breath-takingly beautiful women and two younger beauties behind her. He woke the household and announced that they were to be wed the following evening. Thrilled that the master was out of his stupor, the staff got to work cleaning and cooking all night and day long. The ceremony was short and the party lasted all night long. The morning after was quiet as she was told her father was sleeping in, recovering from the night’s festivities.

CLANG! HISS!

A scuttle echoed from somewhere to her left. Iron pots were heavy, but they had their uses. Perhaps she didn’t need to recount he fathers quick fade from this world; the deep cuts that had started in his back and slowly grew down his arms. Nor the bites on his neck that refused to heal. How Gabrielle had only looked inside her mother’s Books of the Fae too late to save her father or most of the staff. To recount his final fragile embrace, or his screams that seemed to echo throughout the house that night and every night since.

She wiped her face with her one hand, and had the other clutching her chest. It was them, she was sure of it. They fed off emotions like people fed on nibbles before the main meal and they could intensify any and all of them. The pain encouraged her give up on fighting, to let go and fade. But Gabrielle refused to become like her father; her mother. Fading wasn’t an option in her mind, she refused to dishonour the parents of her childhood.

Another hiss caught her attention and she caught the brief hint of a moving shadow depart from the kitchen. The dawn was breaking, which meant she was safe to rest before the day demanded her attention. Her room being much to far away, Gabrielle collapsed onto the once-ordered cot that belonged to the long-gone kitchen boy who had managed the hearth. Now, just a mass of threadbare blankets and several pillows rescued from her parents room the night her father disappeared, she fell asleep and inhaled dreams of sunlight and laughter. For a few hours she seemed to let go of her anxieties. Which would make the upcoming days even harder as these memories tasted even more bittersweet as the days descended into chaos.