notalwaysthesame
Looking at flickr's last 7 days, I fell upon this picture and, well, I got inspired to write.
Tom's fingers ran lightly over the raspy wood, feeling the splinters bite into his skin, but not really caring. Glass, plaster and brittle tiles crunched beneath his shoes and scrapped against the warn out floor boards, but that he didn’t notice either, a soft, lingering smile was wrapped around his mouth as he stood in front of the hearth, hand settled on the empty shelf.
He imagined the fire that once burned in the narrow space, golden flames blazing up the room, and could almost feel the heat when he closed his eyes, the fingers on his right hand splaying out, as if collecting the warmth that would’ve radiated from there.
A cold wind whipped through the room then, screeching through the cracks and whirling the dust furiously around, making a shudder wrack his body and he almost lost touch with the distant glimmer of what life once had been.
Biting into his lower lip and opening his eyes, Tom stared at the mess of black and grey stones inside the hearth, anything vaguely familiar and warm long since gone and lost among the ashes. He barely managed to strangle the sigh in the back of his throat.
“Tom? You in here?” Danny’s voice was muffled as he spoke from another room, words only possible to hear because of the busted walls.
A moment of silence went by, and then the door next to Tom (and the hearth) was pushed noisily open by Danny’s shoulder (as his arms were laden with supplies- blankets, sheets, canned food and something that looked like actual clothes), his eyes quickly sweeping the room, before zooming in on Tom.
“Found anything of use?” The question was almost tepid, Danny’s eyes flicking between the extinguished hearth and Tom’s face, as if trying to figure out a puzzle that didn’t quite make sense.
“I- no.” His finger tips were still pressed against the rough wood. “Just. Memories.”
Danny’s eyes clouded, a line appearing between his brows and Tom knew that look, knew it all too well, and his stomach curled together then, hard and clenching and he finally sighed.
“We need to move.”
“I know.”
Talking about the past, what they had had, only hurt too much, Tom knew that too.
He couldn’t help but stumble down a now unfamiliar path, though, when they found a place like this. A place that reminded him of home.