The Short Tale of the Windflower; Part 2: Cradle

A clear, cloudless day in October. The sky was luminous and the sun was young. Chiquita sat on her motionless bed, not even sheer breathing was sensed, as if frozen in time. On her side, the baroque window let the mournful light in. Its weak and pale radiant betrayed the innocent beauty of the coming winter. It silenced winds, wilted the air. No playful chills that blew over the rooftop. Only the scent of the decaying season that came. The blazing usher of autumn was now devoid of passion. Except there was a tiny spark. It was a tree. A lanky barren white birch among the decaying deciduous garden. Atop of its crest, a tiny waving red leaf stood high. Sere and fragile, waiting for the tiniest gust to shake it off. Nonetheless, it stood in defiance to the pale sky. An unshackled resolution in the face of nature.

To that isolated beauty, Chiquita’s eyes murmured. 

Perhaps, they found that solitude courage bewitching. An allure to be made immortal in the canvas of her and the two babies. Her lips widened, revealed a dry and barren skin. Ever banal, it was an oppressed smile. As if a sinister thought had snatched it and hid it in the pale radiant that creeped in. Hidden from the stroking brush on the canvas. Then she switched her gaze to her cradle.

A pair of satisfied dimple adorned Chiquita's warm smile. Aria and Alyssa. They stared at their mom in a curious manner. Their breaths were soft and soothing, rhymed with her own. She would caress their curling tiny fingers, protect them. Their eyes were round, crystal blue, clear and solid. Flickering like a pair of stars in the winter night. The only resemblance of her husband in them. But then again, the only thing in Lynn's figure she loved the most. Mild, yet firmed and resolved. A reason for her blooming smile.

Her feeble fingers tread those thin hair, cuddled them, reached their eyes. Palpated every inch, searched for something to no avail. Vacantly sought after their warm and tender skin. A hollow sensation had touched her hand. No warmth, nor the tenderness of her babies. Nothing.

That brief subtle tormented moment could not escape the canvas. It stopped the brush from ever-stroking and froze it. Elsa Blanca watched that ephemeral sight in silence. Her eyes depicted the fervor of a green lass, yet they observed. They shone, and was made clear and sharp by her ebony hair and skin. Pure, straightforward and deep. The splitting image of Chiquita. However, if her sister was winter, she was the summer. The summer that was observing the winter in utmost admiration.

Had she ever seen her sister blooming with so much color, in a way that her canvas was unable to capture? She was always translucent blue. Her eyes were always open, full of emotions. She would always love to etch those ebony eyes in canvas.

But what she was seeing was delicate as it was magical. Agonizing as it was jubilant. Myriad of colors had enveloped her sister. Freed her, and imprisoned her. A fair brunette that flowed down from her hair at the first glimpse. She then saw a bright orange with a fading gleam of white. Quiet. A solemn beauty dyed her being. A living color that resisted the waning blue sun as it dyed the room pale. At times it was strong and forceful, a dashing red, as it surrendered in those cradles. Then it turned orange as it warmed up, a twilight. A rather grassy green, but with dots of pale white, in those scanty fingers as they moved. Until she spotted the glassy blue on Chiquita's opaque look; a vacant woe.

That one color that had imprisoned her. A faint dye of pale blue, like that of the sun, but much deeper, on her sister's smile. A glimpse of abyss and covet; sparkling, yet dark. A color that was masqueraded with another colors. Imbued with deceit and hypocrisy. It wasn't the first time, yet still as daunting as it was before. In that instant, she had thought for the title of the painting. Disdainful of the thought, she frowned and gripped her canvas frame.

"Oh, my. I am sorry for moving, dear." Her awkward smile. Elsa knew her sister had realized her own concern.

Elsa tilted her head higher above the canvas. "No, no. Don't be," she rested her brush on the color palette, "I see more colors this way so ..." Her sentences stopped at the sight of her sister's scanty, lifeless fingers. It was engulfing, offered her no escape.

"Is that so?" her sister's coarse voice masqueraded into those gentle eyes as they flowed down. "Then, I'll take up to your offer."

They were pale and trembling. Their gentle movements clogged at times, stopped where they were, before caressing again. Gently, purely, wavered as might be. For every tremble that wounded her soul, each caress mended it. That was the sight of Chiquita's blithe love.

When she tried to look into Chiquita's eyes, their gaze met. A sere smile etched Chiquita's face. Short and sweet, weak and sincere. It tried to its avail to answer the unspoken question. Although, Elsa took it more as a plea.

Elsa's eyes left it unsaid, as it always was. Her hand raised once again, and stroke the canvas. She tried to detail those colors into the canvas. Each stroke of brush pained her. Delved her into her sister's agony. Every sad shiver. Each wobbled movements. Those lonely knuckles. Grayish brown with a light tint and a deep shade.

The emotions she had never felt before, and she knew she never would. For she never desired to paint her life; it was her painting. To animate her paintings, to breathe life in them, was her ardor. Thus in this painting, she dedicated her sister's life into it. Her answer to her sister's plea. She wouldn't intrude, but let her captured those sorrows and joys.

Chiquita's eyes left her babies and stared out of the window. They stayed at the birch tree once more. "Do you think a spruce might be good? Or could a fir be?"

Her eyes didn't as much stray from the canvas. "Good for what, exactly?"

"For ... commemoration, I guess."

"You guess?"

Chiquita let it slide. Elsa peaked at her sister's dry silent lips. Chiquita instead looked at Aria and Alyssa. Her hands stopped caressing them, and she let them rest on the side. As she went quiet, Elsa continued painting.

"I want to have a tree for my daughters. A one-year old tree for their first birthday. A family tree for them, if you will." A weak moan left her mouth as she paused. Her hands seemed to be wrinkled when they wrap the twin inside a blanket. The wind began whistling. Elsa watched in deep dismay at that excruciating trivial movement occurred.

She watched Chiquita's eyes went distant, lost in reverie. They went into the future. Everyone in the mansion, under the canopy of the clear starry winter sky.

"I want an ever-green tree. When it stays green on their birthday. Each year ..." Her muse was halted. At those eyes that went into her scanty fingers of her and at her gasp, Elsa etched their color into the canvas.

She felt the reality that assailed her sister. To that, she recited, "Out in the woods stood a nice little Fir Tree." Her deep, sunken voice surprised Chiquita.

Without so much as slowing her stroke, she continued, "The place he had was a very good one: the sun shone on him: as to fresh air, there was enough of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as first. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree."

That poetic stanza put a smile on Chiquita's face. "The Fir Tree by Hans Andersen. A poem about a little fir tree tried to grow." Her hand swiped around her babies' cheeks.

Elsa peaked in relieve. "Undoubtedly a perfect match, no?" For she knew that among the hobbies her sister had given up, she never gave up on reading.

A quite lovely and lively giggle attended Chiquita's smile. "A fir tree it is." That, for a brief moment, put a sunshine into the pale creeping light.

At that, Elsa was back at her canvas, tracing her brush once again into those fingers. She tapped the brush into the shade emanating in the painting. The grace of her hand was unassailable, even though the color of sorrow gripped her. At her sister's inevitable fate, at her own regret.

Her health was waning. Her sister might even be dying. She should had told Lynn of Chiquita's condition. She should had forced her sister to take into the hospital. She should had done all that. She would had done all that. But every single time, those glassy motherly eyes stopped her. As it was now.

Tender. Loving. Proud. Without shame caring for the little twin, understood them. Smiled for them at any time. She was indeed a mother.

"Is it done yet?"

At her sister's suave pondering, she looked up from behind the canvas. She could see her sister's drained expression, so said, "Quite shortly. Almost done." Still some details left, but they could do without having her sister to pose.

Chiquita moved the twin further down from her chest. "To be honest, dear," panted her breath, "I am quite exhausted."

She was quite frank today, to Elsa's surprised. They never put facade when around each other, but never did they say it outright. That put her in anxiety.

"You know," she didn't mean to pry, yet, "the father could have held them, were he here. Yet you insisted today. It's your first family portrait and all. Couldn't it have waited? At least until tomorrow. He'd be home soon enough I trust."

A tiny giggle crisped the moment. It laughed at the incomprehensible thing only it could see. Kept that morning company as Chiquita went quiet. She looked afar at the window, at the melancholy in the distance.

"Yes, but he is not here now, is he? He could do it once he got home."

A swirling sensation hurled Elsa like a pang, munched her chest.

"I just want something for Aria and Alyssa to remember me with." At the small gripping of the little hands, she then turned and grabbed them. By both her eyes and her hands, firmly, eternally. "Mommy's giving you a memento."

That maiden smile defeated her. A final pound to her spirit. It defeated every agony and sorrow hid behind her smile and her words. The myriad color merged into one incomprehensible, terrifying void. Empty. Dark. Soothingly peaceful. A dark beauty of candor and surrender in front of fate.

Her painting could not shove away that alien. Alas, her hand could not stop. For she knew too well, her embrace would not soothe her sister. Nor would Lynn's. Only those tiny hands that could. An immense strength she would feel, were she a mother.

In the distant melancholy that Chiquita was looking, a pattering sound echoed. A clip clopping horse carriage was becoming clearer. To avail Chiquita lifted the twin. "Look, daddy is home," said she whilst waved the twin's hands.

Elsa watched outside. Indeed, a black carriage was approaching the mansion. It was her brother-in-law. He was early.

"Elsa, dear, would you be so kind to greet him?"

She did not budge. She refused to move from her canvas, from the room, from her sister.

"I want to be alone with my babies for a moment. Please, would you?"

The void whiffed at her. Whispered that plea, whistled it in a rhyme. How could such emptiness be so kind and gentle? The harder she refused, the more she understood. She was her sister after all. Years of living together, fighting the disease. One thing she knew better was to respect and understand her sister's wishes.

She turned her incomplete painting so that the mother could see it. Then down she went. She left the mother and her daughters. Silent of words, letting their glances spoke instead.

In the room, protected by their mother's smile, Aria and Alyssa fell asleep. Indeed their mother's smile protected them from the concluding curtain. Her hands held the twin's palm. Closely, tightly. A kiss from the dry lips would ruin that moment, she thought to herself. Gazed at those sleeping faces. Took a brief peak at her husband down the garden. Thus, she waited. And waited. Until the curtain fell down.

The painting, incomplete, was the witness of the ensuing moment. The last clap and adulation. The mirror of that very moment. It was to be a "Lacrimosa", as the painter had intended it. But that was not a weeping mother. As the curtain fell, the main actor ascended beyond adulation.

A disdainful name, for it was as beautiful as it was eerie. But it was the name Elsa had depicted when she saw that scenic beauty. Something that she and her sister want Alyssa and Aria to remember with. Truly, a heavenly ascendance. A “Stairway to Heaven”.

*Link to Part 1: Ephemeral

**Disclaimer: the picture is credited to "A Woman at a Sunny Window" by Carl Holsoe (wikimedia commons)