Live, Love, and Hate – by Orpheus

Week 17 – Phoenix and Fennris

The muted green house surrounded by snow isn’t the largest home ever built, but it was large enough for the family living inside. There are no unused rooms, but no more are wanted. On the occasion that a guest feels the need to spend the night, the couch can fold out into a bed. At the moment, however, it hasn’t been folded out, and there are two people sitting on it, a man and a woman.

At the couple’s feet, two children, fraternal twins, sip hot cocoa smothered in brightly colored marshmallows. We don’t know their names, so we’ll call the girl Phoenix and the boy Fennris. Phoenix wraps herself in a teal blanket to keep away the chill of the early winter’s night. Fennris sits in front of the fire, playing with a toy car. He’s just as cold as his sister, but prefers the bracing heat of the fire to the soft comfort of a blanket.

The children both love that theirs is the last house on the lane before the woods begin. As he grows up, Fennris will often wonder if he wouldn’t rather run with the animals than walk with his fellow humans. For the moment and several years to come, however, he is content to sit by the fire and sip hot chocolate. Unlike her brother, who enjoys getting himself lost in the forest at night, Phoenix loves to stroll amidst the trees when the sun is high over her head and the flowers are beginning to push their way up between the toes of her bare feet.

The parents pull each other close, still hearing the wedding bells buried under several years of time. There is a blanket thrown around them, in much the same way as with Phoenix. As a matter of fact, the children much resemble their parents in many ways more than the blanket, though the couple is trying not to make the same mistakes their parents did. They know that the goal isn't very realistic, but they're going to give it their all. Each of them holds in their hands a mug of cocoa, staring at the fire with the same wide-eyed amazement as their children.

The man takes a sip of his cocoa and stirs the melting remains of his marshmallows into his steaming drink before he rests his head on his wife’s shoulder. She smiles a bit more than she already was and places her hand that isn’t holding her mug around him. She turns her eyes away from the fire to stare out the window and begins to count the stars, giving names to the particularly beautiful ones, names that she will have forgotten by the time she finishes her cocoa. That doesn’t stop her, of course, it just means that she’ll be able to do it again the next time that the family gathers around the fire.

No, I don’t understand why I did it either, but hey, I wouldn’t have to do these things if people would send me topics. So, in order not to have to see this sort of thing in the future, send rant-topics to [email protected]