flavour of the day with whipped cream and fresh peaches
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Lost Time
Rating: G
Challenge: FOTD: elide
Toppings/Extras: whipped cream, fresh peaches
Wordcount: 898
Summary: Jacob Graham isn’t her boy any more.
Notes: Another FOTD about these two! Elide: To suppress; omit; ignore; pass over. Peaches: The New Moon is in “I need room to experiment, to breathe!” Aquarius.
Like a whirlwind he tripped down the gangplank of the vessel, barrelling into her and lifting her off of her feet, shaking her side-to-side like a rag doll in a crushing embrace. Siobhan could do nothing, say nothing, and simply stared once she was set back down onto the damp wood of the dock.
“Mam!” her son said brightly.
“Cobby,” she responded blankly, continuing to gaze at the strapping young man in front of her. “Yer taller than me.”
Before she knew it, she had burst into loud tears.
Her son’s large hands remained on her shoulders but the grip lost some of its assurance. Siobhan knew that Jacob had never seen her cry before-even when he’d first left to sail off with his father all of those years ago, she’d held the tears in until after the ship had vanished over the darkling curve of the horizon.
He’d been eleven then, and now he was sixteen. Nearly a man. Where had her little boy gone?
“Yes,” he said, sounding a little baffled. “I am.”
She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her coat and hiccupped, trying to quell the tears. Behind her, the Irish fishing village of Cleggan was rising to work in the watery morning light, and creaking boats were being sailed out into the bay. The air was brackish and there was an ocean fog about; despite the relatively early hour, fishermen were already returning with decks sprawled with gleaming, slithering mackerel.
The Drowning Bessie, Todd Graham’s vessel, was the largest ship in the dock by far and was receiving dubious looks already. Pirates were not respected in the area. Not waiting for the father of her child to arrive, Siobhan took her son by the arm and led him away, wanting to take him out of the village. She took the opportunity to pull herself together and pull out a handkerchief to blow her nose on.
“It’s been a long time,” she said eventually as they were strolling out towards the borders, voice just a little bit stuffy. It was raining softly, a thin and misty Irish rainfall that felt like walking through silk. “How have yer been, Cobby?”
“Great,” he said enthusiastically. “We’ve been everywhere, Mam, an’ we’re thinkin’ the New World next.”
Siobhan nearly fell over.
“The New World?” she asked, tongue flicking against her front teeth.
“Aye! Filled with all the treasures ‘ee could ever ask fer, all that Aztec gold!”
Shaking her head softly, Siobhan continued to lead him away from the village and across the springy moors-down towards a small beach just outside of the village. The beach was made up of large, mostly triangular grey rocks, and the moor littered with larger slabs of the same great grey rock, some arranged in moss-carpeted rings and a few standing upright; positioned there long ago. Nobody really knew what any of it meant but it was a good place to graze the horses and send the children out to play.
“Yer a silly dream-chaser,” she said, turning to face him, wind whipping the hair from her face. She always used to wear it down; now it was coiled back up against the back of her head, stray strands looping down past her ears and dangling on her narrow shoulders. “Always have been.”
“Yer should come with us!” Jacob said, filled with his usual boundless, clueless sanguinity. He clumped down the moor in oversized boots, loosening his grip on her arm and taking her by the hand, jumping and leaping and occasionally tripping. He hadn’t changed a lot.
“I can’t,” Siobhan said, words suddenly backed by a heaviness that clouded her expression sourly. “I’m married now, Cobby.”
“Ye what!”
He spun and gawped at her now. Idly, Siobhan registered that the bandana sweeping half of his hair back was absolutely filthy and that it had probably been over a year since he had last washed behind his ears. Then she forced herself to gaze back into his murky green eyes.
“I’m married,” she repeated. “I’m Mrs Conroy to the folks here now.”
“Why?” Jacob asked emphatically. Siobhan laughed. For someone so well-travelled, he really was naïve-but she had to remind herself he was a teenager.
“A woman can’t get by without a man and that’s the truth,” she said, sliding her hand out of his. Seeing her son so wiry, so grown up, so brimming with vitality made her feel hopelessly old. “I don’t have family to fall back on any more, you know that.”
“What’s he like?”
Siobhan could only shrug. She was ambivalent to her husband and not a lot else.
“Son,” she said seriously, “how long are you staying here?”
“As long as you want me to,” he responded instantly. Siobhan grinned. Still a mother’s boy, then. The wind whipped his too-long hair and he smiled back at her dazzlingly. When had he become so handsome? The youth from five years ago was only just traceable in the line of his jaw and the sparkle of his eyes. He was muscled, lanky, tall, and-
Siobhan shrieked.
“What in the world is that?” she demanded, grabbing her son by the wrist and dragging him closer, scrutinising the skin there. Jacob rolled his eyes and dragged his tattooed arm away from her. “Jesus, boy! Have yer lost yer mind? Yer look like a blitherin’ dolt!”
“Mam!”