Nature - A short story
The world was too small, and her dreams were too big for her. She found a medium to bridge these two, but not without a price. The road was long and hard, filled with trials and failures, tears stained sands traced her foot steeps but she kept on moving...eager than ever to have the last laugh. If she wasn't going to have everything she wanted, she at least was going to have something.
Those were the thoughts she had went she went out that night, building a camp fire in the long deserted buildings. She wasn't scared of the dark, no, she was wary of it because it mirrored something in her she didn't want to acknowledge, the darkness plagued her, teased her, it spoke to her. She never thought it strange that inanimate entities like that called more to her than any human figure ever did, not even her mother who bore her, the woman who also hated her. Her life was myriad of unturned circumstances but still she felt free when she was away from all of that, so much so she could fly in its embrace.
Life held little meaning for her, death, however, was what appealed to her.
Death wasn't the absence of life she figured, it was the aftermath of life. What did it feel like, hopefully not as choking as life, Maybe with more darkness to cloud her vision, no trailing lights to keep it at bay. What's it like to be non-existent? With the mind bereave of its burden- the body
Piling the little figs she gathered from the roadsides, she began building a fire, watching it catch, and blowing at it to keep it burning. It stung her eyes but they didn’t water, the wetness formed a film until the breeze dried them. None fell.
The breeze caressed her skin, the smoke assailed her nostrils and the darkness spoke to her.
She watched as the flames rose, licking the blackened sticks, the orange light a blinding contrast to the growing darkness that she so strangely was drawn to. The smoke stung her eyes, but she willed them open, it was a battle she fought, no longer would she be bowed by forces within her control.
All around her the trees sang, dancing subtly to the music of the gentle breeze, she didn't have to look to see, this was a scene she was used to. A scene she had become too comfortable in, she wanted more than to remain enclosed in the weakness of her failing flash. Pain was a feeling of the mind
Unsatisfactory was a pang of uncalled guilt,
She picked up a loose wood and thrust it into the open flames, watching as they wrapped around it, enticingly, until like the pot in the local kitchen, it began to turn black and then crack, getting leaner until it was undistinguishable from the gathering ash.
She wondered if it felt pain too. Imagined what it would feel like to reach out with a numbed mind, stroke the flames. It wasn't their fault there were what they were, it was their nature.
It wasn't her fault she was who she was, it was nature.
Born to die her name said, bet she had seen hundred moons and the name still eluded her.
Born a curse, to be avoided and feared by all, she felt a similarity to the fire.
I know what it feels like. She whispered.
And as if in response, the fires leaped.
She smiled weakly, certain the fire were communicating with her. But she didn't want to let it at that, not anymore by the way.
She reached out a finger, and placed it on the steaming pot, felt the pain that left a ringing in her brain, but she didn't take her finger off. Her fingers trailed south.
Her bare feet dug deep into the soil, she closed her eyes and began to do the only thing her inadequacies could allow her, she began to dream.
This was an art she had mastered, closing her eyes and traveling into world made up or existing only in her head.
A world where she smiled at people and they smiled back without seeing the ugly birthmark she carried on her face. The bane of her existence she had so come to love, it was her identity. It was her curse.
Her mom had refused to feed her when she was born, she has been cursed first by her birth and then her mother. And soon after, people followed. She had been weaned on goat’s milk, because her mom was too disgusted by her to put her nipples in her mouth
She was rejected by her people, until nature adopted her.
Nature had a heart, nature was her real mother, nature was her curse.
She opened her eyes, annoyed she has drifted in the wrong direction. Sometimes it happened, but most times she had control over it.
An unusual thought filled her head. She got up, and one by one, peeled the clothing items off her body. Slowly, with fascinated awe, she kept tossing them into the fire, and until it grew hotter and fierce. The heat incensed her, and like a woman possessed by demons, she jumped into the fire, screaming as the flames leapt at her.
The fire accepted her. And together they became one, expulsion of blue orange flames filled the night, and when morning came, not even a bone was found. She had become smoke and disintegrated into the thin air, back to the only thing who ever loved her...Nature.
