REPLICATION

The pale gold walls of Georgiana's sewing room blanched in the arc of lamplight above the wooden trestle table, its once squared edges blunted by years of use. She'd always been attracted to objects with a history--something she'd been denied as an abandoned child..

The quilt before her was composed of a hand-appliquéd central medallion and three pieced borders. She'd haunted garage sales and thrift shops for vintage-looking fabrics and threads, not overlooking pieces with light stains.

The hand quilting process she labored over now was the most tedious--tiny stitches that left her fingers aching after the perfectionist in her worried at the threads and fabrics as she went along, gently abrading them with white paper sacks to obtain a genuine, timeworn look.

This quilt design, chosen from photos of post Civil War period pieces, had resulted from an afternoon of research at the library. She expected it to bring twenty thousand dollars with a carefully worded ad on eBay that would artlessly reveal it's supposed age.

She wasn't driven by the money so much as having her work accepted as something legitimate. It nearly took away the sting of her own uncertain lineage, the obstacles that had been placed before her at birth.

She looked up briefly and massaged the kinks in her neck, wondering for the thousandth time if somewhere in the universe, someone was watching, cheering her on.

Sue Elliis lives and writes near Spokane, Washington. Her short stories and poetry have appeared at such places as Sniplits, Flash Me Magazine, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and Wild Violet. She is a member of The Internet Writers Workshop. Look for her book reviews at The Internet Review of Books.