Have you ever felt like a mere speck before?

Like there's too much space in the world for you, or not enough you for all that space? Like you might just disappear, unnoticed, in the vast universe that's ever expanding? The distance so great and its depth immeasurable, that it makes you feel so minuscule and insignificant, a speck.

Slipping through the cracks with none the wiser, like sand slipping in between your fingers.

But if people are specks, and they are, they would specks of stardust, as that is what all creatures great and small are ultimately made of: leftover stardust. An atom exploded, and all the dust became all the planets and the stars and... us. That's all anything amounted to.

That's all Ingrid amounted to.

(ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We are all nothing but dust and to dust we shall return)

Hamlet was quite right when he postulated that the ashes of Alexander the Great might indeed be the dust that mixed in the groundwater, that fed the tree, that became the cork, that plugged up a hole in a beer keg somewhere out there. That, in the end, when you're dead, we're all equal. Equal in the fact that when our life leaves us and our body decays, we are all reduced to nothing. Our soul that had animated it, moved on and left it behind.

So, Ingrid had become dust in her old life. The speck of a speck. Stardust.

She had become the exploding atom, and life spawned anew, the cycle repeated.

(one is one is one is one equals all, all being the one which is all there is)

So, when influenza had swept through the country, thousands falling to its lethal clutching grasps. where so many fell ill, some dying and some not. Where all were miserable and afraid, their lives balancing on a knife's edge and if they drop their guard for one instant, it's all over. Where suffering and grief were common, whether by war or by sickness or by death; although, that isn't to say that they're mutually exclusive.

Where women who are pregnant and fall ill with flu in the year 1904 often find that they have complications; premature birth, miscarriage, preeclampsia, and health defects in child being numbered among them. Where the loss of the child was not unexpected, especially considering the mother's own life was already on the line. Where difficult birth while already weak from disease made childbirth potentially deadly...

Ingrid found her place, and returned as a speck of a speck... And she grew. Unexpected, but loved all the same.

A/N: So... Another fan fic;;; I can't seem to keep my attention on one thing;;;

I was trying to write the next chapter for Snowhite or start tackling chapter 7 for Lotus & Clover, bit this spawned instead;;;

It's actually a mixture of those aforementioned fics in tone, actually. Adorable family drama and slight-horror mixed with sleepy surrealism, lol It's gonna be a bit tragic in some parts too, actually. We'll see where I go with this.

I've been extremely inspired by colbub's FMA brotherhood fic "There was White". I've loved the pacing and tone, and especially adored the fact that the OC-insert wasn't the cliché huge mega-fan who knew everything and treated it all like a joyride... Sometimes there are difficult and sad discussions between characters, sometimes the situation is hard and awkward to write (I know, I've been there), and colbub doesn't flinch from it, and instead takes it as a challenge to tred into new territory and even worldbuild. Thanks for the fantastic read, bruh, I super enjoyed it.