# Goodbyes

Title: Goodbyes
Status: Complete
Characters: Anon, Amber
Rating: SFW
Classification: One Shot
Author: Anonymous
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Twenty-one years and from the day of her birth, the girl had been raised without her mother. It was in this particular world that the animator of evolution saw fit to preserve and in the fullness of time shape into fully rational creatures the primitive reptilian beasts that dominated the planet long before the emergence of their mammalian brethren. Side by side these two races had grown, fallen, suffered, been redeemed, and struggled for countless centuries, and it was this ceaseless companionship between evolutionary kin that had begotten her.
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Never had the girl been privileged to have the day of her birth recounted to her in any celebratory manner that was not an obvious mask for immeasurable sadness and regret. The luckier instances of its retelling were merely terse and dispassionate explanations, carefully framed as not to cause whoever had been selected as the unfortunate teller to fall prey to barely contained emotions that threatened at any moment to dissolve the natal narrative into an obituary. Less fortunate recollections invariably spiraled into episodes of weeping and a suffocating aura of despair that would linger about for hours, days, weeks at a time.
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Eventually, she had decided to stop asking about it.
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Her father had always assured her that her mother had held her, as a wailing long-snouted infant, in her rapidly weakening arms, and that she had looked upon her daughter with all the love in the world as she whispered her baby's name for the first time. For the only time.
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For the briefest instant, when their family was together and whole, when everything was okay, before the complications of childbirth tore everything apart and ensured that nothing would ever be okay again.
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While she had never known her mother, the girl knew almost as much about her as could be known. Photos, videos, memorabilia, and an enormous reserve of personal anecdotes from her loved ones had ensured that the exterior details of who Lucy Aaron had been were no mystery to her. The suburban house in the waterside city of Volcadera that her parents had purchased for a married life together that would unknowingly be cut short, and the houses of every relative or family friend that she had visited, were filled with framed pictures of her father's departed spouse - more than enough to make it clear that the girl had grown into what was practically a spitting image of the silver-haired, feathered pterodon woman whose piercing amber eyes had been inherited wholesale by her only child.
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In most of the photographs, the woman was smiling; an especially wide and goofily gleeful grin on her pronounced snout whenever she had been captured in the arms of her lover. A few others featured her giving the camera a playful scowl, usually in the context of some long-forgotten moment of levity that the girl had been told her parents would routinely engage in. Most of the pictures, if they happened to include anyone else, featured the girl's father, or else her mother's parents - the only set of grandparents that the girl had ever known, seeing as her father would for whatever reasons unknown to her never make reference to or take them to visit his own side of the family. Others included Uncle Naser, generally looking far more jovial and possessing an eclectic fashion sense almost totally unlike that of the conservatively dressed and solemn-faced pterodon man that the girl was familiar with. Still others were taken with the youthful past counterparts of Uncle Reed and Aunt Trish, even several with Uncle Moe.
Her mother and father posing with each other on the night of their high school prom, dressed to the nines and half-blinded from the searing camera flashes of her overzealous grandmother. Her mother strumming away at a guitar, clearly so lost in the music that she did not even think to look up when the photo had been taken. Her father taken in a playful headlock by the feathery arms of his beloved, both captured in the midst of giggling mirth. Her hulking, intimidating grandfather with a wide and genuine smile, his eyes carrying a hint of wateriness as he stood next to his daughter in full wedding gown. Her petite grandmother barely able to wipe away the flowing tears as she hugged her baby girl on the day of the wedding. Her father in a tuxedo, his bride in his arms and both of them absolutely elated, unable to even take their eyes off one another long enough to focus them towards the camera. The happiest day of their lives.
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Every single image was a gateway into an alien past that the girl was not and could never be truly privy to.
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The videos were the only possible way available to her of hearing her mother's voice, of seeing the woman in motion. The veritable library of footage that her father had kept preserved a whole host of moments from her mother's life, a very nearly obsessive archive of both digital and physical material that would forever replay the limited fragments of time that were able to be kept and clung to. Her mother's soft and playful voice, the elegant and unique way in which she carried herself, the many idiosyncratic quirks of her person that could only be seen in action - these videos were the sole bridge that the girl had to all of these things.
There were grainy tapes of her mother as a young child, almost inseparable from her little brother Naser and parading about her grandparents' house under the guise of a "pirate princess", all the way to recordings made mere weeks before the girl's birth, her mother's dulcet tones cooing gently to the infant incubating within her and her father speaking eager promises to the girl yet to emerge from the womb, both of them still without the knowledge that their progeny would carry the woman to her grave. At this point she had seen quite nearly all of them, save for the entirety of a specific clip wherein her mother was playing a certain unique song on a piano during a particularly striking sunset, and which in two decades her father had been unable to bring himself to watch from beginning to end.
It was this archive that also presented the girl with another man, one who she could recognize as her father but who simultaneously appeared to her an entirely different person. This window to the distant past preserved, along with her departed mother, the man who her father had once been, the man who carried a different face than the worn and weathered one she knew, who lacked the perpetual and deep bags below glassy and pained eyes, and who was almost entirely without the greyed stubble that the girl was accustomed to. Absent wholesale from any of the footage was the quiet and thin tone that he had spoken with as far back as she could remember, replaced with a jocular and youthful voice that had almost stricken the girl as uncanny when she had first heard in the recordings the lighthearted remarks that were so jarringly unlike father who had raised her.
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The girl's father was indeed a human, though if one were to describe him without mention of this fact or visual evidence, it would be a particularly difficult fact to ascertain. Her mother's traits had taken almost complete precedence over any simian ones that would have expressed themselves in their daughter's outside appearance, save for a small collection of nigh-imperceptible alterations to the usual upright bipedal form of a pterodactyl person that served little more than to give the girl's form a more vaguely anthropoidal bent.
Certainly, it would be unlikely to extrapolate her father's status as a human from mere inquiry to any inhabitants of Volcadera, for even the most bigoted and intolerant of its more cantankerous reptilian inhabitants had nothing but esteem held for the man; there were no locals who were unaware of "what had happened with Lucy". She knew too well by now the hushed and reverent mood that would wash over any mention of Mr. Mous or his wife, the barely concealed pity that most people would try - and fail - to not allow color all of their dealings with the girl and her family. The knowing looks of sympathy and the tentative questions about how her father had been doing lately were simply a staple of everyday life for her, and always had been.
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There was never a time that the girl could remember where her father had not gone out of his way to affirm that he loved her more than anything else in the world. Every single day, without exception, he made a point to say this to her, usually countless times. Still ingrained in both her heart and mind was his constant mantra, the words he recited with almost ritual significance and which he would repeat constantly to her: "I'm so lucky to have you". From her earliest memories of childhood, she could still hear him saying this, his most earnest - if unsuccessful - attempt at a smile not laden with sorrow, often accompanied with the most lavish gifts her young soul could imagine: the most elaborate dollhouse advertised on TV, the most expensive and prettiest dresses she could think to pick out, the most beautiful jewelry she could desire. Now as an adult, she had wondered in hindsight where he could have possibly gotten all of the money for the absurd amount of gifts that she had been spoiled with. She realized that he most likely did not ever have it.
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Always, her father had a near-desperate desire to communicate to his daughter how precious she was to him, and most importantly how much she was wanted here, how glad everyone - especially him - was that she had been given to them, how she would always be welcome, always a blessing. As she grew older, she began to understand exactly why he had gone to such lengths to emphasize this. He could never bear the thought of her believing that what had happened was her fault.
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When he had first had to sit her down and explain to her, once she was old enough to understand, how her mother had died, it was the first and only time she had ever seen her father cry. Always, his eyes were glassy, usually bloodshot as well, but for her the sight of tears streaming down his pale and sallow face was entirely unique to that moment and that moment alone. Time had dried away all of the other tears he had left to shed, spent during the years she had been too young to remember, when he had wept a lifetime's worth of agony into the abandoned clothing that Lucy would never wear again and the lonely sheets where Lucy would never lay again. Time had left only these scant few drops to fall here, in this room that they had been sat in, this room that he shared with his wife for the few short years they were afforded together with its photos of their brief shared happiness and the empty crib that she would never sing lullabies to her child in and the empty photo frame with the imprinted text of "I LOVE MOMMY" that would never be filled with any photos of the mother and her child and the guitar that sat in the corner of the room collecting dust that she would never play again.
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A monument to his grief that he had built, and that he slept in every night.
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Time had left his two eyes as dry, hollow deserts that reflected a void that could never be filled. No matter how many false smiles or forced laughs he put forth, it was impossible to conceal the pain that emanated constantly from his eyes. Eyes that he had always looked upon his daughter with kindness and love, but also with a profound and immeasurable sadness, a deep abyss of grief which could never hide the fact that every time he looked upon her, and her amber replicas of her mother's own eyes, he was reminded of that which he had lost. Eventually, she came to understand this, and she also came to understand that it was this fact that her father resented himself for more than anything else.
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Her father loved her more than life itself, but she knew, and everyone knew, that something in his soul had been completely shattered, and could never be repaired. It was immediately apparent to anyone who looked upon him, in every photograph that had been taken from him since the day when the life of one of his two great loves was traded for the other. Nothing but the sincerest compassion was shown by him to all of his neighbors, but even this failed to mask what had happened to him.
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Despite their repeated affirmations that they did not blame him for what had happened to their daughter, that they loved him, that they would be there for him like family, that they were family, he could rarely look Mr. and Mrs. Aaron in the eyes. Rarer still would he ever be able to bring himself to make anything besides the most surface level small talk with them, undoubtedly in fear of tearing open once more the scars of the soul that had hardened into vast callouses.
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His was a life of general austerity, subsisting something like a contemporary ascetic. He spent little on anything besides the most basic material accommodations for himself, though of course he would spare no expense for anything his daughter required. His diet was extraordinarily plain, fit only for the most essential sustenance, almost an intentional prohibition from any variety of exuberant flavor or delicacy. His usual attire was even plainer, and between his general unshavenness and lack of much grooming beyond the most basic necessities, one would perhaps be forgiven in mistaking him for a vagrant or addict who had wandered outside of Skin Row.
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When he wasn't at or working within the vicinity of the church, he was generally involved in volunteer work, and when there was no opportunity for work in that category he usually took up a variety of temp jobs. There was quite nearly no job that the girl's father was not willing to work, regardless of difficulty or pay. He seemed to be determined to contribute to the community of Volcadera in any way possible, and there were certainly few individuals in the city as well renowned for their conscientiousness among the locals as he.
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Despite his meager lifestyle and general lack of in-depth socialization, the man struggled to give back what he was able to those around him, to recognize that he was not the only person in the world. His daughter now quite clearly understood that this effort was equivalent to squeezing blood from a stone, and that he had always ultimately been trying to give more than what he had. It was this understanding that was the primary impetus of the decision she had now chosen.
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The girl's slow but purposeful gait continued up to the doorway of the house which had now finally begun to lose its identity as a home and erode into an elaborate mausoleum. One of her feathered hands knocked gently at the old ornate wooden door, the other still clutching the acceptance letter. Soon enough came the light footsteps and the creak of the the floorboards, and she was met with wrinkled and prematurely aged face of her father as the door opened.
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"Hello, darling," intoned the man's hoarse and empty voice.
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"Hi, dad," she replied gently, "May I come in?"
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They proceeded silently to the nearby coffee table, the girl failing to ignore despite her best efforts that her father's eyes still lingered on the photos of her mother that covered the house's interior.
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After their brief greetings, she explained to him in a concise but comprehensive manner that she had been accepted to her desired university, and that she was planning to enroll there. She would be moving out permanently, and leaving Volcadera. She had promised, of course, that she would still visit regularly and always keep in contact with everyone.
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She very clearly took notice of the energy quickly dissipating from his posture and demeanor, as if the meager amount of vitality that had until this point been sustaining him was suddenly siphoned in one quick motion. The girl was not surprised by this turn of events, and she strongly suspected that her father had not been either. There would be no shock or emotional whiplash to this meeting.
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He had, of course, attempted to dissuade her initially; it was his obligation as the parent to hold on, and she was grateful that he fulfilled that duty to the very end. Acceptance came quickly, however, for both of them, and he had hugged her with what little strength he had left for a long, long while, both remaining in silence, in that quiet and lonely house that had once the potential to be the home of a joyful and complete family, and would never actualize it.
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There were no tears or breakdowns, no emotional pleas or heartfelt, drawn out final goodbyes, no last dramatic expressions of sorrow before the girl fully left the fractured nest; all that was already over. Her father's only quiet last statement to her was phrased as a tacit apology:
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"I wish I could have done more for you."
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Wordlessly, the girl took the cold, rough skin of the man's cheek gently in her feathered palm and planted a small kiss on his forehead with her lengthy snout. He nodded silently to her, and she smiled sadly to him, the first small sting of wetness in her eyes beginning to manifest in spite of herself.
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She turned and walked out the doorway of that still and silent morituary to a happiness that never was, shutting the door gingerly behind her and slowly making her way back to where her car had been parked. The emotional weight of twenty-one long years began to trickle down from her brilliant amber eyes as she strode further and further away from the building, and took one final look behind her towards the front window where the living room couch and television set were visible.
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The girl saw there still as stone and sitting at at the center of the couch, his battered and crooked form only a silhouette against the lighting cast by the evening sky, staring at the recently activated television, her father. The video played before him, the one he could never finish, the moment over two decades ago where Lucy had played that peculiar song on the piano, in the yellow-orange glow of the waterside sunset much like the one that currently shone. She knew he would not move from the spot for long hours. Perhaps days.
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She turned back towards her car and attempted to quell the involuntary shaking of her limbs as bitter tears continued to flow, smearing her makeup against the edges of her snout and cheeks. She knew that this was not a moment of abandonment, that she would continue to keep touch, but she also knew that there was very little if anything left now to abandon.
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Most of her father had died when her mother had died. The tiny, fragile, ruined fragment that had been left was only a hollow shell, and it was that shell that dedicated all that was left of itself to her: his daughter, the daughter of his beloved Lucy, the child that they both had surrendered everything to beget. He could not save himself from his all-consuming grief, for there was nothing left to save, but he could devote what little remained of his meager being to her, to the only other love of his life, to the only living part of him that had been left by his wife's departure.
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Now, he simply had nothing left to give. Now, there was only grief and memory, a living and breathing grave, who remained only to replay long gone shadows of the past in an empty house.
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The girl slowly opened the door of her car and entered, closing the door as she sat into the driver's seat. Her eyes gradually dried, and she briefly activated her phone, scrolling to one of the saved images of her mother that she had always kept there. This one was a simple photograph of her mother alone, wearing a plain yellow sundress with a decorative red bow in her lustrous silver hair, with an amber necklace that perfectly matched her shining eyes. The girl truly was a mirror image of her mother.
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She opened another image, this one equally simple in its presentation but now featuring two subjects, her two parents, posing together for a photo taken on their honeymoon. Their smiles were simple, gentle, reassuring. Here was a moment of pure contentedness, a tranquil instant of pure and perfect love. Breathing deeply and slowly, the girl stared intently at the photograph, a short flurry of imagined memories dancing through her head of all the unsullied family moments that could have unfolded if things had gone differently, the long and happy lives that these two lovers could have had together under other circumstances, the unquantifiable amounts of lost and spoiled joy that would never be mended in this lifetime, and then closed her eyes, fighting back another round of tears that threatened to gush forth.
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When she had once more steadied her breathing, she reflected on what had in fact happened here, that her mother had loved her even in her dying breaths, that her father had dedicated every moment of his unliving life to ensure that she was loved and happy, that he had never for even the slightest instant failed to do so even as grief devoured him from the inside out over the years, that he had used what little he did not even have to raise her into the successful and fulfilled woman that she was today. She considered the love that was so unbreakable and so impossibly powerful that her father had been able to continue for two decades plus one year taking the best care possible of this girl, even when his own soul was torn asunder and ceased to animate his life with any true happiness. Her mother's love had given her father the strength he did not have, and for that the girl was immeasurably grateful. Lucy must have been proud of him.
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Out of the corner of her eye, the girl caught another miniscule glimpse of her father through the window of the house. He had not moved at all. The video he had begun to watch as she left was continuing on, evidently left to play on loop. She turned away and sighed, closing her eyes and taking a final deep breath, clutching at her golden cross necklace and offering a short prayer before opening her eyes to the sunsetting sky and switching on the ignition, and accelerating forward down the long suburban road, leaving the past receding behind her.