The Bright Colours of Misery [COMPLETED]

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝙵𝙾𝚁𝚃𝚈 𝙾𝙽𝙴 -homesick-

It was a long journey back to Apfelstraße, or at least to the one I knew so well, I must have passed hundreds of them on my journey after all. It was raining, a faint candlelight shimmered in the one small window at the very top of the house. I had missed Heidi, and I hoped she was still awake, although it obviously wouldn't have mattered all too much if she wasn't. I simply needed something to get my thoughts of what I had seen in Berlin with Wilma. What had that piece of 'information' been about? What on earth was Wilma doing with her two twin friends? I needed a distraction from all these questions or else they'd eat me alive.

I drifted up the stairs and through the wall of Heidi's bedroom, only to find my dear little human whispering with her sister by the candle on the windowsill.

"All right, your turn." Frieda said, patting her sister's shoulder.

"What's something a bit strange about you?" Heidi stayed quiet for a second, then she took a deep breath.

"I associate everything with different colours. Almost to the point where I refer to things as a nothing but a colour in my head " She admitted. "Places, people-"

"People? Really?" Frieda interrupted. "Which colour am I?"

"Red." She answered without hesitation. Frieda had always been red, for countless reasons and contrary to some other people red was her singular colour in Heidi's mind, like the colour belonged to her and no one else apart from maybe Trudy, who sometimes had a dark burgundy colour to her.

"Does Wilma have one?"

Heidi chuckled tiredly. "Of course, blue, clear blue."

"And Walter?" Frieda asked after taking a deep breath. Heidi turned to her slowly, seeing a familiar emotion through her eyes. She missed him so much.

"Dark green, because of those dirty boots he always dragged through the house."

That sentence made Frieda laugh a little.

"Mama hated when he did that." She half-whispered. Heidi nodded, biting the bottom of her lip. Her mother probably missed those trails nowadays.

"What colour is," Frieda hesitated before continuing. "Mama?"

"Purple, dark purple, like that one coat of hers." She answered, gazing out the window with her tired eyes.

"The one she almost never wears anymore?"

Heidi nodded slowly. "Precisely."

"Why do you think she doesn't wear it anymore?" Frieda then asked, and Heidi knew the answer, but didn't dare to say it out loud. 'Because Papa gave it to her.' I heard her think, as well as his colour was dark brown. I got a sense that he still hadn't come back, or apologised. I didn't exactly expect him to, a few years prior I would have, but not anymore.

Just as Frieda was about to leave and go back to bed, something else that I wouldn't have expected to see a few years back unfolded before my eyes as well.

Heidi rested her head on Frieda's shoulder and her sister wrapped her arms around her as they both looked out the window, shivering from the cold air. The silence that followed was comfortable, comforting even.

They had each other now, for the first time in fourteen years.

***

The next morning, Frieda woke Heidi up by shaking her violently.

"The post came! We got a letter!" She yelled at her, practically ecstatic.

"Mama got a letter from Walter! She got a letter from Walter!" She exclaimed, jumping up and down, practically waltzing around the room. Heidi slowly lifted her head up and rubbed her tired eyes.

"What does it say?" She asked, her voice all hoarse. She seemed to be developing a small cold.

Frieda grinned widely. "That he's fine and that he might be able to come over for a few days at christmas!"

Heidi smiled at her sister—that strange complete opposite yet simultaneously mirrored version of her. She would have reacted the same way, if it had been Wilma, once she realised this her mood dropped to the floor.

She missed her more than Walter, which she didn't necessarily try to hide, but that she worried for her more than Walter made her feel a sickening shame travelling throughout her entire body. Wilma was fine, Heidi was very ware of this, she was just in nursing training, her brother however, was out there fighting a war, risking his life on the daily, living in muddy and cold trenches, but despite this obvious contrast, The young girl couldn't help her feelings, and they might not have been fair to Walter, but they were real. Wilma had always been there for Heidi whereas Walter had not, and they were both just as absent, despite their different occupations. Heidi hated the way she hoped that letter had been from her older sister, especially while watching her twin's expression. She attempted to put herself in Frieda's shoes as she got up and slid into her homemade slippers, but her jealousy only grew as she walked down the stairs and saw her mother, holding that wrinkly piece of paper as if her life depended on it.

"Hallo, Heidi." She said softly, once she noticed the tired looking girl.

"I'm guessing Frieda told you." Trudy said with a slight chuckle, one that had become rare.

Heidi nodded and drifted into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. She frowned as it came out a sort of yellow colour, with a hint of brown, but she drank it anyway. Her house was old after all, and had never gotten the maintenance it required.

"Have Manfred and Gisela gone outside?" Heidi then asked as she noticed the absence of her siblings.

"Helga took them to the market with Johann, you and your sister were still sleeping so I figured I wouldn't wake you up."

Heidi nodded again, she wouldn't have minded going to the market, but it wasn't as special to her as it had been before, and sometimes served as a painful reminder of who was missing from it. That boy who gave Wilma bread for free everyday–Hans had joined the army and so had most of the young men who usually helped their mother's and father's on cold Saturday mornings. It couldn't feel the same without them, or without Wilma. It all boiled down to Wilma in the end. She'd always been the one holding Heidi's hand at the market and the one yelling at old grumpy men who charged too much for a single piece of bread, as well as the one who gave away some of her groceries to those she believed needed it more than her.

Heidi gulped her glass of water down, trying to get her mind off certain memories.

"Are you all right?" Frieda asked. Her sudden apparition startled my human so much it caused her to spill  the rest of her glass all over the kitchen floor.

"Oh! Sorry," Frieda quickly apologised, grabbing a towel and getting onto her hands and knees to clean it up. It took her no more than half a minute and once she got back up she gave her sister a hug.

"You don't quite look yourself," She commented gently. "Are you ill?"

Heidi didn't know how to answer, she looked around the room, her eyes blurred with tears of unclear roots. She didn't even know why she was crying now, why had she not cried yesterday? The pain was just the same as it had been yesterday and she longed for her old life just as much as she had two weeks ago, so why was she crying today?

She pulled her glasses off, and suddenly the illusion of a better time presented itself before her. The house was just a mix of colours, mostly different shades of brown, and the unclear shapes of the furniture almost made her believe she was five years old again, it almost made her believe Wilma would be there any minute, with her stained skirt and bluest of eyes. It almost tricked her into thinking her father was sitting on the sofa, reading his newspaper near the stack she stole from to draw. She might even have heard Walter's voice from outside, teaching Manfred to do something she had no clue about. Her tears multiplied and all of a sudden, she broke down sobbing. Frieda caught as she mumbled incomprehensible words. Trudy quickly ran to her daughter's side. She held my dear Heidi so close she probably could have suffocated, but despite both Frieda and Trudy's efforts nothing would calm her. Heidi was spiralling into a train of thought not even I could reason with. She wanted a certain perfect happiness back–one she never truly had, she wanted all her colours back, but blue and dark green and deep brown were missing and as a result she felt homesick and longed for a home that still stood, that she'd never even left.