posted to house_wilson

Title: After the Fire
Author: Dee Laundry
Rating: PG
Words: 468
Summary: After the fire, there are ashes.
Notes: Thanks to Early Readers for suggestions.

Ashes to ashes, they say, dust to dust.

What’s the difference? he wonders, as he tilts his hand and lets the particles slide across his skin, watches them conform so naturally to his lifeline, or loveline, or somesuch palm-reading jargon. He’s had his fortune told but never bothered to learn the details, instead let his mind throw color into the gypsy’s tale of long life, fortune, and three bright children who would bear his name.

It clicks then, some memory of an old language arts lesson, or maybe an afternoon alone with a book that held no lies, and he knows.

Dust is left behind by living things, by things that endure elsewhere. Ashes are the residue of things gone, things consumed.

Like ashes in my mouth. He’s never tasted ashes but he can feel them there, water sucked clean away, parching him. They’d be heavy.

Dust floats but ashes sink.

The grains still tickle his hand as they slide and fall away – so many, so many – and he closes his eyes. Every decision he’s made has been the wrong one. Time slavishly squandered and every moment of joy unearned. He can’t claim them as his due, can’t rest; there’s more to be done, all those things unaccomplished from years past.

What a relief it would be if he could lay those down and leave them by the side of the road. Maybe unencumbered he could make a right decision, take a right step. He could find a reference point on the horizon, somewhere beautiful and clean, and aim so truly towards it that even cliffs and valleys would be part of the journey instead of obstacles. Detours. Distractions.

There’s a light coating left on his hand, and he should wipe it away but he doesn’t think he can. He thinks it’ll sink in, settle, make him itchy at odd moments for the rest of his life.

An unexpected nudge to his hip throws his balance off and he teeters in his squatting position and then cants to the left. His knee hits the ground, sinking. He throws his hands out instinctively and his left palm falls squarely into a pile of soot and char. He can’t even choose what residue to keep; the particles he’d decided to pick up are mixed in with those he’d left behind, and when he washes his hand, who’s to say what will remain?

He looks up, up, up from his awkward position. The midday sun can’t penetrate that thick cap brim, and there are shadows where a face ought to be.

“What do you care that it burned?” House says. “It wasn’t like it was a home; you can get bland anonymity just as easily at the Holiday Inn down the street.”

He closes his eyes again and lets himself sit.