Marigold Sky - Entry into GMuxx Art Prompt #5 contest

-Marigold Sky-

The coffee smelled of chlorine, which was odd, but also made her feel safer about drinking the gray liquid.

The girl who poured it stared at her. “You don’t look lost, but yet, you kinda do.”

“I’m not really. Just passing through.” Amber nodded her head for the check. If she didn’t go now, she’d chicken out after all. The GPS put her destination at just over nine miles from the diner.

The stool’s legs scraped the tiles in that screechy way cheap furniture had. She flushed, suddenly uncomfortable in her city clothes. She should have looked the damn place up. Should have known better than to show up all urban chic to a place with a population of maybe a few hundred souls, but she didn’t want to do anything that would make her not want to come here. So she stuffed the letter into her bag, grabbed enough clothes for a week and started driving.

Three days and one over-night stay at a horrifyingly dirty motel later, here she was. Scolville, MO. The place she was apparently born in.

She flicked the window switches to let in the air and threw the car into gear. The road, Miller Drive per the scratched sign, was just winding enough for her to go slowly. She squeezed her hands tighter around the sticky plastic of the steering wheel and thought for the millionth time about what she’d say to whoever opened the door. “Hi. I’m…I’m Amber. I was born in this house twenty two years ago. Nice to meet you, you piece of shit.”

She had always felt that something was off about her. Her eyes were too far apart for one thing, and they were dark. And her skin was always a shade darker than Erik’s, even when he spent an entire summer surfing. She spent her first paycheck on dyeing her hair straw blonde, to match her mother’s, only on her, it looked wrong. There were no gold streaks in it, and the new hair coming in so much darker made her look like a cheap hooker.

Amber ran her fingers over the thick, long braid. She’d seen a photo once in an old album at grandma’s with a girl who looked like her and it had calmed her. Genetics could work like that. Hold certain traits dormant and then gift them to someone way down the line. She never asked who the girl in the photo was, wanting to believe her own story. A great great great grandmother. An elder of some native tribe. An Apache, maybe. She’d have been beautiful and strong, fighting as well as any of the men.

She asked for a bow and arrows that Christmas, her mother’s pretty face paling, eyes narrowing at her. “What on earth would you want that for, Am?”

They got her a puppy, a great dane she named Tiny, and she’d loved her well enough until Tiny’s heart gave out her first year of high school. She’d even taught her to surf at that deserted beach by the Inlet that allowed dogs. Tiny looked comical on the longboard, her legs wobbling, as if she was drunk.

Amber shook her head, eyes on the dot that was just around the bend now. She’d somehow missed the moment the pavement ended, the road just a trail of dusty dirt and pebbles. Naked beige and blue hills dotted the landscape in the distance. A spot of dark brown caught her eye as she made the very last turn and the cabin or whatever this was came into full view just a dozen yards away.

She stopped the car and stared at the tiny house. Dark planks, two rectangular windows, and a porch with a wood table and a pair of old metal chairs. That’s it. The whole place looked about the size of her bedroom at home. And it seemed abandoned, the sort of place one left and never looked back on.

She sat in her car for a long time, eyes darting between the overgrown yard and the porch with its empty chairs. Maybe her mother was a drunk or had cancer. Maybe she died giving birth to her. It had to be something for her to end up at the door of a St Louis Hospital in the middle of the night. It took nearly two years to track down the address after she got that strange letter. A pair of newspaper clippings about a newborn baby. A birth certificate copy with a Jane Doe for her and Jane and John Doe for her parents….

“Here goes nothing.” Amber slammed the door to the car, and trudged up to the porch. The air felt stuffy, unclean. The door didn’t have a buzzer or a knocker on it. Amber took a deep breath and pounded on it, her knuckles burning from the friction with the old wood. She stood still listening to the silence on the other side, then footsteps. The door flung open, a young woman with too wide-set dark eyes and jet black hair standing in the flood of light, her face tense.

“Skylar,” the woman whispered, voice thick. Amber froze, all the words she had in her head dying in her throat. She was staring at the woman in that old photo in the flesh. The woman who had just called her ‘Skylar’. So she had been given a name after all. A name that suddenly felt right.

“I’m Marigold. I’m so sorry.” The woman reached for her, her hand shaking. “I was twelve when….” The woman shook her head, and took a deep breath. And she let the woman pull her into a hug. Let her cry into her chest, her hands winding around the woman’s back, then pressing her close. A cool breeze brushed against the wetness on her cheek, and it smelled strangely clean. Like mountains. And trout streams. And Spring. It smelled like home.

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This is an entry into Art Prompt #5 contest hosted by the awesome @GMuxx
_{img. via @lymmerik}

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