Another story!? Music has escaped me recently. I've been dusting off my literary skills and I discovered a quaint little group of writers. I was having a sleepless night and stumbled upon their Thursday Prompts.

Give it a look-see here: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/ its got one-word prompts to full images for inspiration.

Prompt: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/31602255/ by  flash_lioness


I’d always seen her. Me, I mean. She was always in my reflection, even as a child. My mother ignored me when I described my reflection to her.
My father forbid me to tell any of my friends or neighbors. So, I didn’t.

She didn’t look like me, but I knew she was. She had the similar hair, the same body shape, the same colored eyes.
She never smiled when I did, though. When it wasn’t a stoic gaze, it was a look of boredom, other times outright anger.
I’d taken to giving her a personality dictated by a list of what made her look a certain way.

When Mother chastised me for wearing certain things, she scowled. When my father forbid me from talking to the boys at school, she looked annoyed.
When they found out I had a crush on a boy, they hit me. She looked furious.
When my mother made me get on my knees and pray for forgiveness, she was trembling with anger.

She didn’t like my family. In dreams I thought I heard her shouting at me to run away, to hide and never come back.
Highschool came. That’s when her hair started falling out. Her eyes went dull through the years, form thinning and figure sagging.
It made me queasy to look in a mirror after my graduation.

My family had a fight. More-so, I had a fight with my family. College came around, after my associate degree, I met a boy.

I didn’t want to have the baby.

One remark led to an insult, then to yelling, then to objects being thrown. That night was the first night I spent outside my house.

I was lost, under a tarp I had affixed to the side of a dumpster. I was soaked, my vision swam, it was the worst I’d ever felt.
I remember dry heaving over a puddle, then I saw her. She looked desperate, a pleading gaze in her eyes, even when I felt my own relax into confusion.
Her hair had gained some of its color back.

I knew I had to get out. This town, this city, it was tainted by my past. They’d never be able to see me as their pure daughter ever again.
So, I hitchhiked, working seasonal jobs to travel farther and farther. I checked in rest-stop bathrooms, stagnant puddles and stranger’s side-view mirrors on her progress.
Every mile her posture straightened, her figure growing youthful again, no longer a constant scowl, but her familiar stoic gaze.

Halfway across the Long 88, I met them. Hippies, Beatniks, refuse, whatever conservatives call them, a troupe of them took me in after I’d been dumped in the middle of that desert road.
They took me in their convoy, fed me, clothed me, they even read me bedtime stories. (I’ll never admit it outloud, but it helped me sleep better.)

After a few weeks I opened up. I was a sobbing mess, just now coming to terms with abandoning my family,
leaving everything I knew behind on a split decision. They hugged me, stayed with me through my episode, said the nicest things to calm my sobs.

They said that they could be my new family. That morning, I was combing down my matted fur. I saw her smile for the first time.