Post by Brenna Gordon on Aug 25, 2019 14:24:24 GMT -5
~♫~
It looked smaller than she remembered, Brenna Gordon couldn't help but think.
Through the lens of memory--a lens she was more than willing to admit was warped by childlike worship that had soured into something best described as fear bordering on terror--the cottage she had shared with Moira before the night her mother's spell was broken had seemed a church to a secret religion, with inner sanctums that glowed with sunlight during the day and stretched into the deepest dark once night came. And during that magic hour when the former melted into the latter, if she laid in the right place, the little girl that would eventually grow into she who was Born of Myth swore that some sort of portal opened up, surrounding her in the warmth and ethereal brilliance of her mother's love and favor. After all, wasn't that the phrase she had heard in that one movie where the actor died during filming back in the nineties--that 'mother was the word for god on the lips and hearts of all children? Hers just happened to take that concept a little too literally.
As a woman in her mid-twenties, though, the imaginative innocence that was likely the only reason she had survived to adulthood was nowhere to be found. The cracks in the ceiling, the subtle lean to the walls that could only come with foundation issues, the smell of mildew that thrived in the overly moist air... this was no temple, no place of worship. It was nothing more but a crumbling idol to a woman who was as flawed as she was lovely once upon a time and, while the idea of time being kind to anyone was a laughable one in Brenna's opinion, it had been especially cruel to her mother. The malaise that twisted Moira's mind had eventually been reflected by what must have been the ultimate insult to a woman that had sworn, up and down and in any other direction one could imagine, that she had magic in her veins that would one day lead the Gordon family to their rightful place as deities over the mortals that surrounded them.
After all, no god or goddess in any of the stories Moira told Brenna fell ill...but yet there it was, disproving Moira's claims of immortal might in six little letters.
Cancer.
By the time Brenna had been found by her mother's lawyer, the disease that had started in some unknown location within Moira's torso had spread--metastasized, the word was--along her spinal column and into her brain. Gone were the ebon waves and the alabaster glow of her skin that had lured more than a few men into her clutches to be sucked dry, the dangerous curves that even more had crashed and burned after being unable to handle them. All that remained was bone structure and eyes that were as dark and almost too large as ever, and even those had lost their luster. Amidst the antiseptic tang and the fluorescent lights of that hospital room, it was hard to believe that she had once feared her mother, loathed her as much as she now loathed the open waves that had been her second home before.
Even with that change of perspective, though, the sudden grip of nigh-skeletal fingers upon her arm had earned a startled jerk--Moira's words coming out in a murmur that sounded strange to Brenna's ears before her eyes closed forever.
"My journal, mo cheann beag. Read it and you will understand."
And so there Brenna stood, surrounded by memories that burned like salt in long-open wounds as she cast her gaze about the living room. Considering how her mother had been fastidious about keeping her 'work' as a poet separate from more... personal matters, she knew that the tome in question was most likely to be amidst the tools of Moira's ill-fated trade. Pallid hands only hesitated a moment before they set about the task of going through the writing desk that still sat where it always had, motes of dust floating up to tickle Brenna's nose as papers and pens and other things were disturbed in the hunt for what she sought. Stack after jumbled stack, drawer after cluttered drawer--as her searching continued to be fruitless, she began to wonder if once again, the words of her mother had been as empty as all the rest. Shoving her hands into one of the last piles, the moment her fingers touched ebon spine obscured by half-finished sonnets and past due notices... all she could hear was the roar of the ocean in her ears, the world fading away in favor of waves that wanted nothing but to claim her once and for all.
Cac!
Hurriedly hauling it out into the open, Brenna found herself scrambling for the safety of a cast-off bag from a local grocery store before she shoved the book into the sack. The cheap plastic was just enough of a barrier to keep whatever those pages contained at bay, the pounding of the waves retreating to the dull roar that had underscored her childhood. Glancing out the window to ensure that the coast was as far away as it had been before she found the journal, she let out a huff of an exhale that was too harsh to be a sigh... but was relieved all the same. Such wasn't going to last, though.
Not when she'd have to hold her breath and go under if she wanted the answers Moira's journal held.
