Chapter Text
Unseen Letters
Chapter One: Mama's Promise
By: AlienSnowflake
“I love you…” A deep sigh, “just the way you are…” A woman said with a soft voice, through the darkness. “Always.” A book was placed by the night light on top of a table and with a click, the night light turned off. Sounds of footsteps could be heard as the door closed gently.
A small child, no older than four years old, abruptly sat up from her bed a moment after. She was pretending to be asleep the whole time the woman was reading a story. She rubbed her eyes awake and looked around. “Mama?” she asked. No-one answered. Mama wasn’t found anywhere in the room. She usually slept with her child during the night after reading her bedtime stories.
She turned to her right side in the darkness. “Yang? Sis?” she asked, but this time she was looking over to her older sister’s bed. Light snores were heard. The moon shone over from the window and showed her older sister’s face and she was fast asleep. The smaller child groaned and quietly hopped out of her bed and out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind her.
“Where you goin’, mama?” asked the small child. Her red cape moved behind her as she hurriedly followed her Mama towards the doorway in the dark. Clearly it was before sunrise. She looked up to her Mama and tilted her head. Her short hair was black with red tips, just like her Mama.
“Ruby,” Mama said, fixing her own bangs and combing it behind her ear. She squatted down to Ruby’s height. She looked like a replica of Ruby, except she wore a white hooded cape, “Mama has to go away on a mission for a while.”
“But… you promised the other day that you’ll make breakfast… and dinner, too…” Ruby sulked. She pouted and turned the other way, rather cutely.
Mama smiled at her. “Well, you can always ask your big sister to cook something for you. Whatever you’d like.”
The little girl groaned and shrugged her shoulders low, “but… big sis ain’t even good at cooking anything! Everything goes black! Everything smells burnt! Everything tastes yucky!” she waved her arms.
Mama gave out a giggle and spread her arms for Ruby to hold. She wrapped her big arms around her and cradled her. “You have your daddy too, you know. The two of them will be here with you, like all the time.”
Ruby crossed her arms and pouted, “mmkay… if you say so...” she murmured, “but the sun hasn’t even appeared yet!” she pointed out the window. “Isn’t it too early to go out? … Can’t the mission wait until we all have breakfast?”
“I’m afraid not, Ruby,” Mama sighed. “This mission is very important to me, so I need to go bright and early.”
Ruby went quiet and sighed in defeat, knowing she couldn’t win over this no matter how much she tried. “...‘kay…”
“That’s my girl.” Mama placed Ruby back down on the floor and turned away from her, walking out of the house.
It went quiet for a while. The eerie feeling of the wind blowing the leaves outside the house in the dark made Ruby feel uncomfortable. And worse… lonely . She hesitated for a moment, but then she took a small step forward, “Mama, wait,” she said rather quietly, that for a second she was scared her Mama wouldn’t be able to hear her.
Mama stopped walking. “Yes, Ruby?” she looked at her again.
“You gonna come back, right?”
“I promise you, I’ll be back once this is all over, Ruby,” she gently patted Ruby’s head for comfort. ”Cross my heart.” She made a cross gesture with her hand on top of the rose emblem she had across her chest.
“All right. You promise…” Ruby smiled back as she held the emblem with her smaller hand.
Her Mama pecked her forehead then set off to leave for the last time as Ruby watched her walk out of the house in the darkness. She didn’t move from her spot until she was out of view. Ruby then turned towards the living room and cuddled up on the green coloured sofa and ended up falling asleep there until morning.
To be continued...
