The wind outside blows the lines strung between the telephone poles back and forth, the rubbber noise of their in-air dance unheard inside the closed and warm home. Within the brown walls a family sits, a holiday meal spread before them, a conversation readily rolling from their shared pleasantries.
Smells of the roasted cornish hen and stuffing permeates the household; the scratching of knife and fork between punctuated laughter and chatter supplying a background din of inaudible comfort. Each member of the meal sits happily. Warm food within their belly, and a sense of familial comradery seemingly binding them into the spirit of the holiday they celebrate.
Once the meal is done, the words begin to drop. The heads of the house beginning their dispute. Those belonging to the up and coming generation simply sigh internally, their ears having grown numb to the arguments that work themselves into seemingly any situation. What seems like trivial matters are quickly expanded into larger issues. Decades of mistrust and stagnating thoughts exhume themselves from the recesses. Like a horde of ghouls summoned for some singular purpose, each insult and recountance bearing the grudges of troubles thought dead.
Like a siege against a medieval castle, one party slings and catapults insults and words. Throwing festering and diseased cattle inside in attempts to poison and rot the castle from the inside. Shuns, misgivings, doubt, and grudges are all left fermenting within the internals of the walls erected to protect. There is no response from within to the threat, there is nothing to be gained by offering a counter-offensive. Only more pain will follow. Instead, the walls remain up, the glove lying on the ground remains, and the abstinence of what once may have been love continues.