Ne Me Quitte Pas

[Sansa]

The day she found her daughter had been taken for ‘Survival of the Fittest', Avis Strong allowed herself a solitary moment to grieve.

She pried open the door to a bedroom kept closed for her daughter's return, not wanting to disturb any of her belongings for when she was found and was in her mother's arms once again; she traced fingertips over the photo frames dotted about, willing herself to believe they'd some day recapture those images; she took the closest photo - an image of herself and her darling the night before Prom, she'd looked so beautiful and perfect - and hurled it across the room, stared blankly as shards of glass exploded across wallpaper and landed at her feet; she pleaded, gazed to the heavens and begged for something, something to drown out the unfamiliar emotions that boiled within her; and she did something she hadn't done in a long while: she cried; and then she would've completed the cycle, would've accepted what'd happened, if life were ever truly so accommodating.

And so Avis Strong let the firm perfection of her life be shattered into countless shards.

One solitary moment.

The day after she found her daughter had been taken for ‘Survival of the Fittest', for Avis Strong it was business as usual.

She awoke at 6:30am, as usual; performed her morning exercises - she hadn't done them in years, having always found an excuse around it, but something urged her to do so that morning; made breakfast for her husband - it was pancakes with plenty of strawberries and a generous dosage of maple syrup, his favourite; she performed her chores - took stock of the fine china, cleaned the windows and finally removed that stubborn spot she'd been waging war with for weeks, and baked a boysenberry pie for Sebastian's work-do that took far too many tries to perfect; she ran her errands - retrieved her wardrobe from the laundromat, purchased a few groceries to restock their slightly diminished pantry, and splurged on three bottles of vintage Chardonnay.

And so Avis Strong polished the thin veneer of her life until it gleamed with perfection.

Business as usual.