Walking down the solemn road to her old house, Ella could taste the bitter winter chill coming to rest upon the old dead trees. Pulling out a hard pink lemonade and orange candy from her pocket she savored the sweet flavor thinking of ways to make the one sweet thing in her life last longer. She could see the yellow houses with white trim, clean cut lawns and happy children in the backyard.


“Mama?” the voice, of a child filled with fear cut across the silence making Ella look over to the lost little one. Was he like her, looking for a lost mother whom would never return? Ella thought. She started to walk across the old gravel road as small, jagged pieces cut across my skin.
“Mike, oh there you are!” a women in her early thirties with dirty blond hair and a distinguished look in her eye rushed towards the little boy, pulling him into her arms lovingly. A pang of jealousy rang through my heart.
“Ella...EEELLLLAAA….” the leaves called my name, comforting me, but I ran. The blue, brown, yellow and white houses rushed by in a swirl of color and happiness. Fresh cut grass and baking cookies invaded Ella’s nose, inviting her, no, forcing her to remember a time that seemed like eons ago, in the room warmed by a large fireplace, on a fluffy pale green carpet, in the white pristine house. Her mother in the kitchen, looking for the last of the eggs in the fridge filled with food.


“Ella, I’m running to the store to get more eggs, I’ll be home soon.” She called out opening the door.
No! Don’t go, mama, you won’t come back! Please mommy, don’t leave me!! Ella wanted to scream, but the memory couldn't be altered. Her mother, her beautiful mother with the forever smiling face, long ebony hair and body so tall that she could reach the top shelf without thinking about it, war buried in the cemetery at the Dagwood church, with the fifteen other people.
Back in the present the houses with white trim and clean lawns were gone, and Ella looked up at the yellow paint, spotted with dirt peeling off the old house. The lawn covered in liquor bottles and trash from the few times her father came home from the Johnson Pub down the block. The cracked, white and brown door swung in the light breeze that also made Ella’s long ebony hair fly into her thin, high cheeked face. Her father was home, and Ella knew what was coming as soon as she went into the moldy, trash filled rooms of her home.
“Eeelllllaaaa...” cried a voice sweet, yet eerily familiar. The scent she had longed so long to smell in her home was there, was she imagining it, or did her father spill her mother’s perfume on the carpet? She followed the scent of lavender, freesia and roses mixed with baking apples to her room. The pale rose walls had become her prison, her lavender comforter with matching lace pillows stained with tears from sleepless nights when the nightmare of her mother’s final words haunted her, "I'll be home soon...I'll be home soon.." The words filled her room, making her fall down onto the shaggy pink carpet, sobbing, as despair filled her heart, for her mother's words could not come true, but it didn't stop her from wishing every moment, from sitting at her smooth wooden school desk listening to the teacher explain how exponents multiply to sobbing into her lavender lace pillow, that her mother would walk through her door saying "I'm sorry it took so long, now, what would you like for dinner."
As she sobbed a light filled Ella's room, so bright it could not be real. It illuminated everything until it was as white as the clouds that float over heaven. Wings the color of falling snow spread as wide as the room, as light glistened on the interwoven gold vines the continued to grow over them. It's like looking into the sun thought Ella. Suddenly the light reformed itself in to a human figure that Ella recognized suddenly. No matter how much her eyes seared Ella knew that even if she would go bind Ella had to see her, the figure with Ebony hair, much like Ella's, and smiling face, Ella's mother.
"Shhh, Shhh, there, there it's okay," comforted her mother as Ella sobbed in her arms,” I said I would see you soon, and I don't break promises." Ella took her mother’s hair, ready to leave this body and world behind if it meant that she could be with her mother. It was not unpleasant, but like a great weight had been lifted as Ella's now lifeless body slumped to the floor if an audible thump. Her ebony hair spread out and a smile on her face, while tears of happiness fell down her cold face. Her soul grew wing white as her mothers, feeling of the finest silk; she spread them and flew, hand in hand with her mother, to heaven.
Her body was discovered the next day by her father, wondering why she wasn't at school. Doctors said it was a heart attack, but it was heaven calling her. Two weeks later a small funeral was held, everyone in black, morning for the lost little one. None noticed the girl with ebony hair, high cheek bones and white silk wings sitting in the back with her mother.
"Why do they morn for me?" she asked, “Do they not realize how happy I am now?" She frowned slightly remembering that she did also morn for the dead, thinking it would for them, only now did she realize that humans did it for themselves, seeking attention, as they always do. “The living do not realize how happy death is until they experience it, but by then it is too late, and they leave for heaven," her mother told her. Turning they spread their wing and flew up to heaven having none notice them, forever they would be together.