kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: [098] Mother
Title: Waiting
Word Count: 235
Characters: Kairi's mother
Note: Here's one from the newbie...A word in my defense...This is my first real drabble.

Tick-tock…

Five o’ clock.

Still waiting.

She always came home at four. Like clockwork; a ritual. But not today. Where was she?

Her mother clenched her fingers around the firm wood of her mixing spoon. She stirred three times. Counter-clockwise. As if trying to rewind time so that it was once again four o’ clock. So that she wouldn’t have to worry because any second now her daughter was going to walk right through that door.

Stir three times. Add water. Stir again.

Tick-tock…

The clock liked to mock.

It had happened to the others. She’d heard first from her daughter. The cheerful, bright-eyed young boy, and his friend with the silver hair. No one knew why. Not their parents. Not their friends. They were just gone. She knew, though. Somehow she knew why they were gone. Because she knew that they would come back. And she waited.

She’d told her mother she wouldn’t go. She would stay here until they came back. But her mother worried all the same. What if she left? What if one day she was gone? What if she never came back? She didn’t know what she would do. She’d seen the other parents mourning. Searching. Waiting. It could happen to her. She knew.

She believed it wouldn’t. Hoped that it couldn’t. Swore that it shouldn’t.

But she knew.

Stir three times.

Add water.

Tick-tock…

Six o’ clock.

Still waiting.