InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Laconic ❯ Enumerate ( Chapter 5 )

Enumerate

Word Count: 424

 

And another year rolls around, and she finds herself in front of the mirror this time, just like the last.

 

She takes stock, counting down one side and up the other, the numbers calculated inside her head, compared and added to those of last year, forming the new annual tally of the year's worries and wishes and wonders.

 

She counts them, bringing them before her mirror eyes to squint and appraise them, holding each one between her fingers.

 

For each strand that curls round her finger she recounts a worry, a fear, a stress - a reason, because inside each one is a hidden something of herself, pieces that are now scattered upon her head in an unseen pattern that only time can see.

 

One, and she relates a part of herself that fell down a well, a part that fell and came back as a broken piece that still does not fill the former - a smile that does not stretch far enough to reach the corners. It is the same part of herself that does not live here anymore, but so many miles away, although sometimes returning to her world through a receiver that carries her voice.

 

Two, and that is the man that sits in a chair downstairs, a man who does not remember the broken piece but only the whole, a man who does not remember yesterday but remembers ten years ago, and a cat that is buried in the yard for whom he still buys food - cans that she empties into the garbage each night.

 

Three, and that is someone from long, long ago, whom she misses most at night. He is someone that left too many years ago and could not come back, for all that little eyes had shed tears upon her lap to make it not so.

 

Four, and that is a boy who became a man too fast, who didn't wait for her to catch up and be ready to let him go. But sometimes, he also lets himself back in with the spare key or through the receiver that carries his voice.

 

Five, and that is where she stops this year, letting her counting fingers fall from her curls.

 

And for every grey hair on her head there lies another piece of herself that she has lost, but now she tucks those away for next year, when she'll remember and count and tally again.

 

In the mirror, she smiles, and in her head begins to count and tally the wrinkles on her face.

 

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