Fawn Blue's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Fawn Blue wanted to be brave like her Mama, but the thunder cracked and her stomach turned inside out. She sat up in the dark of the cabin's upstairs room. Rain hammered the window. Her tummy had ached since dinner, the way it always did in a storm. She was one of four sisters, all born too early, all with bad stomachs, and everyone said Fawn's was the worst. She swallowed hard and prayed she could hold it. She wanted to prove she could handle a storm alone. She couldn't. She got sick all over the patchwork blanket, the one stitched from bright bandanas. The smell filled the room. Fawn started to cry, quiet at first, then loud. She had made a mess. She had failed at the one thing she wanted. Boots hit the stairs fast. Lucy Gray came through the door, dark hair loose, her tan dress thrown on crooked. Fawn's Mama did not flinch at the mess. She crossed the room in three steps and knelt. "I've got you," Lucy Gray said. Two words. She pulled the ruined blanket back and away. But the crying had carried. Down the hall, another door opened. Finnley Gray stood there in her nightgown, dark-haired and shy, one of Fawn's sisters. Finnley's stomach always warned her before a storm hit. She had thrown up her whole dinner hours ago and gone straight to bed. Now, woken and frightened, her stomach clenched again. Finnley got sick on the floor by the doorway. Fawn saw it and her own stomach flipped a second time. She bent over the edge of the bed and got sick again. Now there were two messes, two crying girls, and one Mama in the middle of a storm. Fawn reached for her mother's arm and held on tight. Lucy Gray did not pull away. She wrapped one arm around Fawn and looked back at Finnley in the doorway. "Finn. Come here." No extra words. She held out her other arm. Finnley crossed the floor and folded into her mother's side. Lucy Gray held both her sick daughters at once. She did not scold. She did not rush. She rubbed Fawn's back with slow, steady hands, the same way she rubbed Finnley's. "Storms end," Lucy Gray said. "Tummies settle. You're not in trouble." Fawn watched her Mama work in the dark. Lucy Gray was calm when everything was a mess. She was not sick. She was not scared. That was the thing Fawn wanted most, to be steady like that. The blanket was ruined and the floor needed cleaning. Fawn's stomach still churned. But she had stopped crying. She stayed pressed against her mother and studied how it was done. If she could not be brave in the storm alone, she would learn it from the one person who never fell apart.