– A Six Sentence Story –

The attic looked much the same as it always had, the cobwebs were bigger and the dust was thicker, but it remained, as it had in her mind, a mausoleum of forgotten things and fading memories.

Being there left her with a physical ache deep inside, but the movers were on the way and if she wanted to salvage something, anything her grandmothers hands once held, she had to keep the tears from clouding her eyes and find it.

Picking things up and putting them down, she sifted through the moth eaten past packed away in boxes and stacked in precarious piles, she nearly missed the faded green volume propped almost proudly amidst generations of detritus no one could bring themselves to throw out, but like a guide, a sliver of sunlight found its way into the attic from the small vent beneath the rafters and lighted softly upon the gilt lettering decorating its spine, making it dance just for her.

The dust plumed and swirled and waltzed in the air as she gently wiped the powdery remnants of time from a beautifully illustrated copy of The Children’s Longfellow, tears again filled her eyes when she looked beneath the cover, a faded ex-librīs revealed the books lineage, her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother’s names were all printed there on that bookplate.

She stood and tiptoed back through everything she was leaving behind, cradling the book close to her heart, she closed the door to the tomb at the top of the stairs for the last time.

Sitting at her grandfathers desk, she carefully added her name beneath those of the women who helped shape who she’d become, leaving room enough for her own daughters name to one day be written.

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My six, ever so slightly run-on sentences inspired by this weeks word from Uncharted, plate.