Water Glass

“A spinster would always be scorned at the village”. The dark cloak hid the wrinkled face of her as she reached down to pick up the apples she dropped out of her baskets. The muscles had worn out from the birth of five stillborn children, all from five different men that left her five times. The images of their pale faces, so innocent, yet impure from the lack of warmth from their skin. No pink cheeks or cries to the heavens to fill the birthing chamber. A frown faded into the aged features, her ghastly nose scrunched, her dull brown eyes faded over into a glassy texture, shattered but still in the sunlight seeping through the clouds. Her daily walks were accompanied by loneliness. The solitude in which she grew accustomed to. No one to acknowledge her. Occasionally she wasn’t forsaken. Sometimes depending on the day there would be grimace of disgust, or scorn when her hood falls down from the wind. Youth had the town in it’s grasp for value. Nothing else seemed to matter to the heads of the townsfolk.

Youth was always needed for ladies to gain success in their life. Youth means beauty, fair skin, smooth to the touch, joyful eyes, thick, colored hair. Youth meant marriage, men loved beauty. Youth meant children, healthy able bodies capable of producing sons to fill a happy home. While she was young many years prior, her ambitions kept her from what mattered most. Her father was at fault for that. He was scorned too for the way he raised her. It wasn’t until it was too late that she discovered just how wrong he did her. Young ladies don’t need alchemy lessons. Young ladies don’t need tutors for seven different languages. Young ladies don’t need to be adverse in politics and law. She had no teachers for what she really needed; keeping a balanced home, singing, sewing, being what she was supposed to be. When she was young and foolish, she threw her future to the dogs for an impossible and ridiculous dream. A young lady could never be a doctor. She was lucky to have been able to attend medical school for a singular year.

It took her father’s death benefits to afford that useless year. Now she had no life, all that waited for her was the rivers of the Underworld. By the time she got around to the duties and wants of what she acquired at birth, she was old. A woman in her thirties could surely not produce a child. Her hair started to gain paleness. Her skin, no longer unblemished but now filled with scars and other ghastly features. Her nails broken, her teeth starting to rot away; just like her life. It was by some miracle that she found men who considered wanting to be with her. Reasons she never knew why of course. They all left though for some pretty thing with a full bosom and broad hips for birthing. A stillborn child cannot please a father. A stillborn child can’t do anything but exist in his mother’s guilty and shameful heart. To be young again, to have a chance to make things right would be like finding a tall glass of water in a horrible drought. One can only hope

Comments

kt6550

Commented Nov 26, 2020, 7:48:34 PM

"The solitude in which she grew accustomed to." - This is an incomplete sentence. You have a few of these in here.

Now, you capture the loneliness and tragedy of this life. And you capture it well. You could easily expand this, putting more detail and more of a timeline into it.

Via-Anghel Magahum

Commented Nov 30, 2020, 4:24:23 PM

@kt6550 thanks for the comment. Are there any more grammatical errors? For some strange reason I'm good with grammar when critiquing others work, but not with my own. How do you suggest I expand it? Should I delve more into her childhood? Any ideas?

A general fiction story by

Via-Anghel Magahum

Water Glass

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kt6550

Via-Anghel Magahum

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