character study of anicients

Hello everyone, and happy holiday season! Here’s a little draft for you. I like to feel out characters with little short studies like the one below, and I thought you might like to see it. It’s about sisters, desires, and destinies (or at least it will be someday).

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Our mother always seemed distant to us. She’d slip between our fingers like soap on wet hands, something bright behind her eyes, and leave us wishing her cold hands could warm us. She would cloak us in shadow, shutting the door behind her, leave us to long dusty hallways, rooms filled with old cloth and spindles of string.

There were always three of us, but back then we didn’t think of it like that. There wasn’t a difference between our heads or hearts and when our hands were clasped together we didn’t feel as if there were nails and thumbs connecting us as much as we felt blood flowing, a heart-pumping, a quiet, contented sigh. Without each other, we itched. The feeling could grow unbearable. Some of us managed it, some of us couldn’t. Even then, living in the house of night, we knew there were differences between us. Lottie was always the most measured of us. She saw things as they were, choosing (mostly) to keep her feet firmly planted. Cleo was the most creative. She could build our mind into a castle of imagining where we became beasts, terrible hags, or witches. She did her part so well that we always believed her, at least until Anthèa would come to our senses and land us solidly back in the dusty house.

It was Cleo who first decided to weave. Then, we didn’t think of it as anything more than a game: Cleo would work her magic, creating characters out of thin air, making their lives into tapestries that were as thin as thread. Lottie would detangle as we went, so Cleo’s stories would always land in a straight line. Anthèa would end the stories as she always did, with surety and speed. Sometimes if she didn’t like the way that Cleo had started she would cut her off almost immediately and the room would fill with a nauseous silence. Cleo would cry, and leave the spinning wheel completely until we all felt the absence of one another so acutely that we were back together again, licking each other's wounds and playing again.

Sometimes we had visitors. Our mother would bring them home and they would look at us as we spun thread. The air would crackle with electricity or sometimes become damp with the smell of rotting. Our favorite, though, was when the man who smelled like sun would arrive. There were birds then, chirping full songs from trees that we couldn’t see. He was the only one who didn’t seem scared by us and spoke to us in silly rhymes and riddles, which Cleo then gave to people in our stories. She also copied his crooked grin which seemed to warm everything, even the perpetually cold hearth where a draft usually blew in.

Those beginning times held a deprivation and simplicity that we wished we had appreciated afterward. Although we knew that things would always return to the consistency of the three of us, there was always a threat that we would become unstable again.