Fact, Fiction and Fantasy – Min Min Weekly Prompt – January 2023

“They’re Geminoids”, he said, pointing at the silver striations in the clear December skies.

“They look like wishes,” I said. 

He frowned at me.  “Wishes?”

“Christmas wishes,” I declared, for at that stage of my life, and indeed at that time of year, there was really only one kind of wish.

My father looked briefly disappointed and, hand-in-hand, we scrunched across frosty tufts of grass back to the house.

“Well aren’t they?”  I was insistent, since in those days questions were my bread-and-butter in the absence of an ability to secure any other reciprocal form of dialogue with the adults in my life.

“You’ll learn in time that there are other things in life to yearn for.”

Tonight would not be a good time to ask what “yearn” meant.  I sensed it.  Just as I always sensed, at some level, that my father interacted on a plane so remote as to make any meaningful contact an infrequent occurrence.  Unlike my mother, who could descend into child-speak with consummate ease, my father had only one level of discourse available.

Another bright burst of light streaked above us. 

My mother was waiting at the kitchen door.

“Did you see the wishes, Mummy?”

She drew me indoors.

“I’ve told her what they are,” my father snapped, retiring to his study.

“They’re not wishes,” she said, unbuttoning my coat.  “They’re kisses.”

“Kisses from who?”

“Why from angels of course.”

I stared at her.

They weren’t.

Even I knew that. 

I would become my father’s child.

I’m always happy, subject to my ever elusive muse, to support new ‘writing co-operatives’ so this is submitted for the newly launched 250 word Min Min Weekly Prompt. This week’s prompt is ‘Lights in the Sky’. To read other stories, click on this link.