Orphan Story
Short Story Draft from December 2025
It had started with snow. Gentle, plump snowflakes fell through the night. The sky had never been so purple with heavy clouds. Orange light. Yellow. The storm stirred the thunder shaking her heart. She was tired. Tears wouldn't stop coming, freezing blisters on her cheeks. She was done. Cooked.
Drops of summer felt better. When the rose scented creek could trickle down the streaming mountain. When the skies were clear as crystal, and refracted too. She couldn’t stop thinking about the wonder, the absolute sheer wonder of a ripe and alive forest. This one was friendly. And the angels moving swiftly through the trees to greet her were of kind contentment and sweet transmission. They giggled and wove windsweeps through the branches as she danced through the scene.
Her soul love was made of adventure himself. He took care of her. Danced her gently through the cottage kitchen room. They had found each other so serendipitously that it was near impossible. When he held her close, when he descended with such grace and humility, when he kissed laughter into her eyes, when his grumble felt like a future fatherhood she wanted to witness, she wanted to marry him. She saw him with three faces. One past, present, and future. His greying hair would peek through to her glance at his young and adoring face. They never fought. He laughed with her, brightened at her, scowled with his tongue in his cheek. They were playmates, lovers, and companions of a lost trade.
“Can you listen to my heart for a moment?.” She asked. “I have some things to tell you that can’t wait any longer.”
“Are you scared?” He asked.
“Terrified.”
It turned out that she wanted to release the bonds of her past. And invite him into the sun that she held so preciously in her heart. She was scared that he couldn’t raze her demons. But that was never his burden to carry. He did say this, though, and it delivered her straight to the source of God’s breath.
“I want you to be you. Nothing else. I always and forever will want you to be you.”
“Name me.”
“Zawja.”
“What’s that?”
“Only the one word to behold every thing a person can be to another.”
“Tell me what that is?”
“It’s a story I’m living, so I don’t know everything yet, but I look at you and see ripples of futures and the biggest peace I’ve ever known. I want to walk this path with you. I want to hold your hand no matter if I know where I’m going or not. I want to take steady but sure enough steps with you all the way towards eighty. I see you. I see us flitting from companionship to love to honor to peace. I want to grow old with you. I want to see this world with you.”
“That’s beautiful and terrifying.”
“It’s life, no?”
“It’s the life I want with you.”
***
They didn’t look back. Not for a long while. They forgave so easily. Plants and gemini fruit became ripe, and they always had enough to share with each other. When winter came back she had to surrender to it. She noticed that every time she fought it she’d end up with scarred and rashy arms. She had to let heaves travel through her. And waves crash on the shores of her heart before she could even look towards dignity or self-righteousness. It was sacrifice that happened time and time again, as she traded her peace for certainty of her spirit. She didn’t want him to see someone who wouldn’t put up with heartache. It needed to flood her body rapidly so it could recede silently. Her weeping was frequent during this time, and yet, like the snow gently hitting the bank of the earth, he held her still. Even in the bravest of storms, she found his hand, grasping, grasping her own.
***
At first it was hard to speak up. Hard to tell her anything. He knew only the poetry that came from touch and plate to hand to mouth to heart as he fed her while she rocked in the seas. Feeding her was the purest gift a human being could give. It worked. Trust grew wide and bold as a sky. Less and less was she at the mercy of riptides she couldn’t track or feel.
But finally, one day, her curiosity started to hunger. The bowel and belly of the now lucid and healed book of her soul spoke:
“Darling, tell me something.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know how to ask… What’s going on in there? When you soothe me and feed me and hold me– it’s beautiful and it’s healing but I’m aching for words sometimes. For your thoughts on things.”
“It’s not much… I mean–”
“I know, you’re my sweet sweet man, but I’m yearning for answers because I cry all the time and you just hold me and I want to know more… I want to know you.”
***
When they chose to live together, they actually found relief. Their laughter multiplied and sharing their bed became a comfort and release at night. Warmth overflowed, and they felt happy again to be swirled in cottons and rayons and quilted coverlets of peace. She cooked. He vacuumed. They worked together.
He started venturing out, hunting, catching, snaring, working the town development. He earned enough for them. It freed him to think and stretch beyond those vast caverns inside her chest. Sometimes he just craved simplicity. Forge the day, venture further here, envision a better town, envision a better world, easy-on-mind, more easy-on-hand, and above all, bring home money. It added new parts to their relationship.
Money was lifeblood for them. Nothing lasted. Everything must be invested. He wanted to treasure her dreams and make every imagination a reality. But the sifting through exchanges on the golden currency was all too alive for him. He’d wake at night sometimes, worried about how to keep his promises to her. Everything seemed to be heavy, everything seemed to be important to her. How could this girl keep happy? He trusted her, of course, but trusting her happiness was harder. He felt like a Sisyphus to her wellbeing. Every time things seemed to be going well, she’d crash again. She seemed resilient, and certainly like she was growing stronger, but how could they keep this up? And without him, she’d have no home to care for, no food, no sustenance for this life.
Their growing pains flashed bright like a berry bursting on the tongue when he finally braved the first conversation. It exhausted him. She noticed immediately and started zipping up certain parts that were too hard to show. Always demanding yet ever acquiescing, she racked her brain constantly with how to get through to him in a way that made sense. It took time. Patience. By next spring. She’d say. And she’d believe it to be true. By fall he’ll feel more open. I’ll be more capable.
And there was the issue of a child. There was the hope of her wrapping her nurturance around a bundle of joy and cloaking a baby in the silver light of springtime optimism and brights. She loved a daughter she didn’t know yet. She had shared this dream with him yes, and like always he was able to hold it and love it, but the pulls of this world kept the dream at bay. How can we afford it? How could we feed her now? I’m not ready for kids, darling. And so she kept it in.
She began slipping out at night. When he was deep in sleep, blinking sweetly under heavy eyelids, she’d leap from their chambers and dress in her best faerie gown. Bejeweled and fresh with winter spirit in her lungs, she’d follow the voice in the woods. She didn’t know what she’d find, but she was certain something was out there for her to learn, for her to find. A question lingered in the mist, answers wispy and disappearing every chance she got to grasp them. Every time she’d shed her shoes and run barefoot in the muddy pathways and listen to the gleaming moon, she’d hear its voice: Keep me alive. Keep me alive in your bones. So she’d spread her wings out and take off into the air, galloping through the trees alongside eagle, hawk and crow.
***
“Rose.” He started to notice. “Rosie, darling.”
He almost never used her name like that. The countertops. The floors.
“I’m feeling alone here,” he’d say. Her sighs didn’t break her eye contact.
“Why is that, sweetheart? I don’t want you to feel that way,” she’d ponder.
“I just work and work so hard and so fast that I feel like I’m giving to you constantly… But the house is a mess and I feel like I have to support you in every corner of our lives. But I need the same from you.”
“The house… the house…
“Think about it for me.”
She’d breathe in. Of course she would.
***
One day he noticed a little girl wandering alone.
Was it?? He glimmered at the little delilah wandering stall to stall in the marketplace. She kept collecting the handicrafts and taking them to one spot by the pathway back to the woods. Toothy smile and curled hair wisping around her cheeks, her baby girl steps faltered as hurried shopkeepers giggled mindinglessly as they took back their totems from her grubby crumb hands. He tried to follow the pandering words of the men’s voices rolling over the blueprints for the town’s projects, but her little hands and tiny feet kept distracting him. So cute… Every stall she went to she left the keeper joyful and besides themselves.
She started pranking them too, and hidden trinkets started ending up in other strange places.
But quite unfortunately, her next target was the haggard woman of the silver stall. She came running out of the stall with a butterfly brooch in her pudgy fingers. Oh dear. Her laugh twinkled through the air, and the shopkeepers joined her delight. Mischievous and undoubtedly fast for a girl seeming to be three or shy of four, the old woman began to croak threats while no one jumped in to help. A race ensued between the young and the old, it was a sure fire fight to the top of the tug between tiny legs and arthritic knees. At the kurfuffle of the scene, the rumbly men began to bellow. A tiny sprite of a thing! What a funny little child! No one wanted the show to stop; but Mrs. Oxbowen was about to teeter onto the ground.
“Stay up, Mrs. Oxbowen! Don’t teeter now.” He leapt away from the men to her side. Where was this girl’s mother? Wasn’t there someone with her? Poor Mrs. Oxbowen was beginning to spaz in her back. Good God. The girl was still zipping around, now getting chased by Mr. Susan’s puppies. Their arf-ing and woof-ing tiny pup sings launched giggle attack after giggle bellow. He led the woman back to her stall and stool. “There, there, Mrs. Oxbowen, no need to shout. We’ll get that little trinket back for you.”
“Trinket! Thatta i’n’t a trinket is it?” She launched an escapade of miserable mutterings. “No one used to call my things trinkets here did theh– that’s silver! A priceless gem in the center– that little pumpkin mischief, little kitten plaything of a child has stolen……… my husband spends all day in that silversmith shop…….. thinking of doing a thing or two– darn toot thing of a thorn in my side that child–”
“Don’t trouble yourself! You’ll give yourself a heart attack, won’t you? I’m gonna catch her.”
She couldn’t seal her mumbling lips. The girl was beside herself now. A scream escaped her voice, and the square all covered their ears as she tumbled over puppy number two into a pile of hay and fruit slop. Even the donkey munching on it startled a moment. The puppies jumped onto her, yipping as she laughed and laughed.
He ran to the scene.
“Alright now, young lady, now what have you got yourself into??”
“A pile– a pile of–” it was too funny.
“A pile of piggy food, is it?”
“Yeahhh!!!” She crackled. A sigh. A fwip to the brow.
“Darling girl, stand up for me,” he saluted.
She snapped to playfully. Puppy one and two still hurdled her toes and jumped up her legs; it was more laughter. Mr. Susan ambled over. “Yee little Cookie and Sweets, whatcha doing over here?” They barked excitedly and rushed to his hands, filled with chicken biscuits. Unmissable for the puppydog palate, the treats led them off graciously.
“Where’s your mother?” He asked.
“I don’t have a mama,” she said, still wiggling in her place.
“No mama? Who was that lady with you then?” She cocked her head to one side. He must’ve imagined it. “What’s your name cela kutti?”
“Lina.” The melody of her baby voice twinkled over the quieting chaos of the rest of the square behind him.
“Well one thing for sure Lina, is you need some new clothes.”
“Haroun!” The men called his name across the square, pleasantly teasing his return. He faltered, unabashed in his clumsy management of this sweet child.
“Your name is Arrow??” She asked so innocently it cracked his cheeks so wide his inner sunshine streamed through. She watched, awestruck.
“Well that’s exactly right,” He lied. It would be fun to tease her about this later, he thought.
“That brooch has probably lost it’s near shine by now– covered in that slop! I’m waiting on its return,” hooted Oxbowen.
Okay. First the girl, then the lady, then the men. The donkey started licking her shoulder. It tickles, Arrow!!” She laughed. The donkeymaster murmured his apologies, and dragged the beast’s snoot away from the girl, but his sandpaper tongue kept reaching out.
Haroun looked around; everyone was paying him mind. He glanced back towards his house, but no way to go back home in the middle of the day. But in the swish of a skirt around the corner, his wife. Thank ya rabb; ya jami had gathered her to his side. He called her name. Time to scoop the child and bring her there. The baby flung her arms around his neck with a laugh and he carried her over. Mercifully she dropped the silver piece as she went airborne in his arms, but it clattered to the ground with a clang. The square was still bustling, but each and every eye was glancing to the side at this delight and a joy in his arms. “Rosalind, this is Lina. And we’re taking her home.”
“Taking her home?!”
“That’s right.”
“Arrow says I need new clothes!”
Oxbowen was ambling over to the silver brooch now broken on the pavement.
“I told ya now Mr. Busto that I knew that rascal would be paying me no good–now who’s gonna pay for this broken wing? That butterfly was my design wa’n’t it? Damn loosened up little piggie…”
“Wouldn’t it make sense for Mr. Oxbowen–” he started; surely the silversmith would be the logical answer.
“I’m not letting Mr. Oxbowen near that damn thing! He doe’n’t need to be the one to fix this mischief, though it seems like you have gotten yourself into this now, Busto, and that brooch needs compensation.” The village’s difficult woman gleamed over at him.
Better to pay her now. Sadaqah.
“Here darling,” Rose moved to her purse. He shooed her arm away. Focus on the little termite. Mrs. Oxbowen relented as the clattering chains of coins hitting her hand eased her tension easy. He turned back to his wife, who was wide-eyed and smile-y. What’s all this?, splayed across her face, she was swimming in happy confusion. Maybe he didn’t show this side too often. Children were a want of theirs but not a responsibility they felt ready for.
He hurriedly fluttered through a plan conjured on the spot. “Can you take her home? Um– take this,” the broken brooch, “–we paid for it right and– take this little gremlin,” he winked at her close; “and clean her off, maybe get her some new clothes?”
“We don’t have any children’s clothes, Haroun,” she smiled.
“Um– buy some. And give her a bath, she’s covered in–”
“Pear rinds is it?”
“Pear rinds. And maybe– sweetie are you hungry?” She nodded into Rosalind’s neck, seeming to begin feeling sleepy.
“Where’s her mother?” asked Rosie.
“I don’t have a mama,” Lina said, putting a sticky palm on Rosie’s face.
“A dada?” She shook her head.
How providence had found them was the incredible touch of a divine glee, and God had told them He would only ever bring them what they could endure. Rosie agreed to take her home for now with a laugh of bewilderment but joy as he apologized in an awkward scuff back to the men across the square. Thank God for my wife. She always seemed to make things better. The men laughed with him and excused his antics across the marketplace, which had luckily only cost them about a quarter of an hour.
-
She took her home. Pale light started to purple. Maybe it would rain soon. But this child seemed to carry muck from rains past and time over. Who was this child? Where had she come from?
The summer heat had her cheeks rosy as her name, her hands flush and warm with weathering. And now to clean the babe. Clean her well and thoroughly, and leave the laundry a while? Or do the washing now? It was time to cook dinner as well, but her shopping had been so completely interrupted. And it quickly became apparent how much a child preoccupied.
“Mama…” Lina glimmered repeatedly.
“Mama?? Baby don’t you have a mama already? Where is she?” She asked. “You can tell me.”
“But I don’t have a mama.” The child’s genuine confusion confounded her.
“You must, I’m sure you do. Did she leave you some place?”
“No, I don’t have one.” She was learning exasperation, though her sweet voice also caught with a twinge of fear. Perhaps she thought she was wrong to not have one.
“It’s okay darling. Don’t worry. InshaAllah we’ll find her.”
“Allah will help!!!” She exclaimed with hope.
“You know Allah?” Who taught her His name?
“Allah is God.”
“Well I suppose you don’t need to be taught. How old are you sweet pea?” She cocked her head to one side. More questions. Less answers. “Well, let’s just focus on the now. Come with me to the bath now.”
The trickle of the water was warm as the sunshine Rosie imbibed in the mornings and the porcelain tub began to fill with a mix of lavender, soap, and quite graciously, Lina’s filth. They laughed as the water turned lilac to grey to brown as the little orphan wriggled off her muck. And they did it again, just to fill the dimming sun into sweet memory and jasmine.
Every mother knows that a child fresh out of a bath has two options– play time or nap time. And this child chose the snug wrapping of Rose’s sweet smelling linens. The baby reached for her immediately after getting towelled down, tucking her head into the small of Rosie’s neck. Lina felt as if she could bury herself eternally in a gently glowing plush of pink. Everything smelled of flowers and the touch of soft skin and warm heartbeats felt so good.
And how delicate. Haroun hadn’t prepared anything of course, doing all of this on the whim of seeing a rambunctious little sprite, but something did feel right despite her not being their child. She went to pray. Sunset hit and the lilac time was starting. Rose took wudhu in the kitchen so as not to disturb her sleeping beauty and prayed outside on her yoga mat. Bliss. It was a gorgeous night. Dragonflies flitted by and the temperature was temperate and perfect. Clouds above rippled in different painted colors of violet, and the first stars began to appear. Maghreb was long too these days, so the evening seemed to stretch long before her. Mercifully the mutton from yesterday was still in the fridge and the washing could wait til morning. This seemed just right for her. She closed her eyes, seated with a hand on the heart and the wombspace. My daughter, is it? ……. unsure.