Anonymous asked: for the random fic titles: "spring will be here soon"
Since you didn’t specify a fandom….this is the story of the girl Jaylah.
Her people are from a high tundra part of their world–even after she forgets the name of her planet, the name of her people, the name of her family, she will remember this. The shimmer of the sun at midnight, the dance of stars at pitch-black noon, and the song of the wind over the snow-layered ground will stay in her dreams all her life, a tiny scrap of peace. Winter on the high tundra is dangerous, even in the cities-and-starships age, and Jaylah’s people never quite managed to forget their heritage of cold nights and terror. The promise of new life, of melted snow and living things, is the hope their people holds up to get through the days of unbroken night, the vow they make in the darkest moments of their life to fight on.
As a little girl wondering if the sun will ever come back, Jaylah’s mother strokes her hair back from her face and whisper that spring would come soon, so soon that Jaylah wouldn’t even believe it.
In Krall’s dungeons, as Jaylah sobs silently, hands pressed to her mouth so hard that her teeth draw blue bruises on the white skin, her father hugs her to his side. “Spring will be here soon, you’ll see, precious girl,” he whispers–a lie, but the familiar words soothe her tears and make her mother, bleeding out slowly from a gash to the leg, and her mama, pressing her hands to her wife’s skin, smile faintly.
When her mama is taken, still smudged blue with her mother’s blood, she kisses Jaylah forehead and her cheeks and promises, “Spring will be here soon, little snowflake, little darling.” A lie, but a warm and gentle one, bittersweet.
When her father dies, and she runs until she can’t breathe for tears, she curls up in a mountain cave, far too close to the search parties scouring for her, and she lies to herself, “Spring will be here soon, Jaylah. You just have to stand up.” And she scrubs her face with her palms and pulls herself upright.
She tells the lie a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, every time a new circuit breaks or she hasn’t eaten in twelve days or she is run off from a precious salvage or she can’t stand the loneliness any longer. Spring will be here soon, Jaylah. Get up and meet it on your feet.
Years from now, she’ll be an ensign sitting cross-legged on a chair in the Enterprise mess hall, surrounded by the bridge crew and Montgomery Scotty and Doctor Bones, her red Operations uniform a bright contrast to her white hair and a glass of scotch from Montgomery Scotty’s illicit still in her hand. (She will know, by then, what a nickname is, but she will insist on her old names for them, at times like this, when they are together and laughing.) Captain James T will smile at her, and Montgomery Scotty will clap her on the back as he tells them about how she repaired the replicators and stopped them from turning all the food purple, and she will think that perhaps she was not lying to herself all along after all.
