rockinlibrarian: (beaker)
She scrubbed the dishes with the coarseness of her frustration, her mood as bitter as the ginger-venison aftertaste hanging out on her tongue. Why did her life still feel so completely out of her control? How could she be doing so much BETTER, and yet she hadn't really GOTTEN anywhere? And why wasn’t she eating something sweet right now? She could go for something sweet. Not dessert, just... a cookie, maybe.

Her eyes fell on a fortune cookie on the counter. She'd brought a couple of fortune cookies home as favors from a wedding last weekend. She'd thought she'd save them for a fun occasion, or a nice treat to share with her husband. But she didn't foresee any fun occasions anytime soon, and she was a little mad at her husband, and a fortune cookie was just the thing to have after stir-fry. Why waste it?

The thing about fortune cookies is, a person has to pick their own. That makes it more truly THEIR OWN fortune. Of course, with two cookies between two people, SOMETIMES each gets the one they would have picked anyway, but sometimes one person’s quicker and the other person just settles for what's left.

Here was just ONE fortune cookie, although the other one should have been around somewhere. This one had a hunk broken off inside its wrapper, and a bit of paper with blue lettering poked through (she averted her eyes. NO SPOILING. That was one of the rules, too). It seemed like SETTLING, just eating this one cookie because it happened to be there, when there WAS another cookie to choose from, somewhere. She really ought to see them both before she chose.

She found the other one, still whole, under a blue tea-towel. She set it beside the broken cookie and gazed at them together, trying to pick up a vibe. It felt snobbish to pick the whole one over the broken one. The broken one cried out, "Be kind! Pick me!" But that had been the one that was out there all along! The one she would have SETTLED for! After she'd gone to the trouble of finding the other one... obviously THAT one was the real choice, the PROACTIVE choice. And proactively, she grabbed it. She tore off the wrapper and neatly cracked the cookie in two. Cookie halves in one hand, she slid the slip of paper out with the other and opened it between her fingers.

Just one sentence, printed in blue, on one side of the slip.

"Thank you for coming to our wedding!"

She paused, then picked up the broken cookie. The blue words peeking though the crack appeared to say "Thank you for coming to our wedding!" too.

She shrugged.

And she ate both of them.


-----
PS-- Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] elouise82 for editing.

Date: 2012-07-19 02:02 pm (UTC)From: [personal profile] sal_amanda
sal_amanda: (Default)
Damn it, where's my "like" button?

Date: 2012-07-19 10:51 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com
This is better!

Though you could have Liked the link on Facebook, I suppose.

Date: 2012-07-20 01:23 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] sal_amanda
sal_amanda: (Default)
True, but I don't always catch your links there.

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