Among dust bunnies collecting on the carpet of her bedroom are lullabies, matted into the seashell shaped ridges by eager toes.
Other mothers sing Rockabye Baby, but hers crooned the crash of ocean waves and the ballads of mermaids.
Memories like those sent shivers down her spine, cold fingered fairies dispatched to walk the tightrope of each nerve, triggering flashbacks of moment after moment.
Beneath a quilt of fallen oak leaves he found a baby hedgehog, infant bristles damp and lonely.
Some days, when it meandered curiously across half-written papers, its paws writing notes in a script he couldn't decipher, he regretted rescuing the handful of spines with the pale, inquisitive nose.
Leaves of muddied paper, though, became pages in a scrapbook, dedicated to moments more beautiful than he could fathom.
Following them were snapshots of sunsets over the lake, the first phrases from a concerto he adored, a polaroid of his fingers interlaced with hers.
Her palm met his without hesitancy, and the joy she felt reminded her of the mermaid's musings heard through the sleepy ears of a child.
On all sides it was warm and safe and fantastically real, simply because they decided it should be.
While she did say no the first time he asked her to marry him, it was only because to her marriage had grown stiff with age and its rusting hinges complained when she tried to add her own swing to its meaning.
He asked her again, of course, because she was the only person he'd ever met whose heart fit his jigsaw edges so perfectly, and this time she said yes.
Waits for the love, her mother told her; a fearless woman waits for love to ask twice.
On the winter solstice their son was born, whom they named Martin, because he thought it sounded courageous and she thought it sounded furry.
Distant waves tumbled as she sang her little one to sleep in the only way she knew how, and gave him hedgehog kisses with her eyelashes because butterflies are too delicate.
Dreams always came quickly and lingered in his mind, fantasies of whirling woodland dances and salty kisses from the wind.
They documented the unassuming; they tracked coincidence; they remembered the weight of every footstep and the cadence of every whispered "good night." They knew that even though they were obscured by the smoke of normality and stench of the future, every moment was unique. Among other things they found everything.
I needed to start writing again. I also needed a piece to submit to my school's lit magazine, themed "among other things." Last but not least, I had a looming death threat from I friend if I didn't write anything by the end of the week.
So, this happened. I'm a little confused by it. It has a mind of its own.
