To celebrate the 1000 days of freewrites I partnered with @faith65 to do a we-write using the contest prompt: ten years of darkness.
@faith65 shared their part of the story with me on Discord and I wrote the ending below as a five minute-ish freewrite. Once they post it on hive I'll include the first part of the story here.
**The Ending:
**
He seemed to me to be a broken man. Despite her fear at seeing him drunk, my mom did her best to console him, share her love of him still. I offered encouraging words that tomorrow would be a different day. Things could always get better. He yelled and told us we were both fools. Nothing had changed in ten years and nothing ever would. I argued until my throat was too dry to speak. My mother wept, begging him to see things differently. His frustration finally flared and he pushed over our small kitchen table. Glasses shattered, the plates cracked.
I ran and hid then, afraid of what might happen, what I might hear. All was quiet for a time, then I heard soft whispers and weeping. Peaking out of my hiding place I saw my father kneeling in front of my mother, his head resting in her lap as he cried. Blood dripped down her leg, what looked like glass shards sticking out. She saw me then and motioned for me to come. She told me to be careful, not step on the glass. Following her instructions I started sweeping the floor. My father rubbed his eyes and picked my mother up, gently, like he used to be. He brought her to the bathroom. They stayed in there for hours. When they finally came out, the kitchen was clean and I'd stood the table back upright. A bandaged wrapped around my mother's left leg but she smiled at me and told me to go to bed.
The next day my father emerged from their room, freshly shaven, his hair combed to the side and wearing a clean button up shirt. He hugged me, something he hadn't done since I was young, before the darkness came. From that day on our lives were blessed. My father found a job, the best job he'd ever had. My mom soon could stay home if she wanted, but instead found a part-time job she loved too. I went off to school.
That night could have ended in so many different ways. My parents love was strong enough to carry them out of the darkest of place they'd ever been.
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