and after the storm I run and run as the rains come

She hums as the brush moves over the canvas, but she hardly realizes she's doing it. The colors she's using are dark and they swirl together and crawl all over the blank space. What she's creating goes against the light, airy tune that she hums. It's one of the songs her mother used to sing her to sleep with, the same one she sang to her mother as she died.

She never realizes it when she's humming it, and usually stops before recognition. It's a good thing, because she tries to push that moment from her mind as much as she possibly can.

Painting helps. She's always able to go somewhere else while she's painting, finding meditation in the wisps of the brush. She goes into a state where the rest of the world melts away, and she isn't a part of it. She isn't Sophia Murphy.

Eventually she stops and steps back to take a look at her work. Splashed in with the darkness are patches of bright red, but there's no real object there. Just a feel. Everything that she feels. Dark, messy, red. Red is death and she is death. She doesn't think there is anything angelic about death at all.


"Silly girl, what are those?"

A little girl of five spins around, her blond hair billowing out around the paper hanging off her back. "My wings, Mama!"

"They're beautiful honey, but you should take them off before your Daddy sees them."

"But won't he love them? Now I'm just like you. And I'm just like him."

"Oh Fi."

The woman wraps the little girl up in her arms and holds her close. The girl leans into her mother and breathes in her lovely scent...

A ripple of pain stems down her back, and Sophia closes her eyes. They want to come out, but she doesn't want to let them. Daddy isn't there to see, but he wouldn't like it either way. And Mama will never see again.

It's been three years, but it's still not long enough.

She lets the gravity pull her to the floor slowly, and she drops the paintbrush. Her arms wrap around her knees and she hugs tightly to them as she silently begins to cry. She still feel the dull ache of holding her wings in, but she isn't going to release them. Through her tears the humming starts again.