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Organised by
RogerDodger
Word limit
400–750
The Departure
When I asked my mother for my saddlebags, she didn't understand. So I got up from my cushion, the cushion that had always felt as though it was trying to suck me back down. I walked across the evenly tiled floor with its rigid rectangles and pulled my saddlebags off the shelf. The embroidery stared at me defiantly: The same, seemingly playful and lively crest that had adorned all of our saddlebags. My mother had stitched mine. As my grandmother had stitched hers. As I should have been stitching my daughter's someday.
I opened them, and with a soft draught a familiar mixture of the scents struck me across the face: Sweet flowers, ceremonially picked. Traditional spices. The sweat of many days I remembered as one. The abyss inside them tried to swallow me. I kicked them shut and left them.
I walked out the door and my mother followed me. She didn't understand. The sounds of the Equiopian jungle pressed down on me, but there was more: the sound of a distant horn breaks through the nightly noises. I turn around and ask my mother what it meant, but she knew nothing and had heart nothing.
My mother followed me past the row of painfully familiar houses as I walked. "Daughter of mine, where do you go? Look at the light, it's almost night!"
"I don't know where I'll go, away from here is all I know. That's where I'll find my goal."
“So a goal you have in mind. Please tell me, of what kind?” my mother asked.
“Yes, I do, did you not hear? Away-from-here!”
She shook her head, as though an insect had lodged itself in her ear. "Even if you leave our clan, you must not leave without a plan," my mother said. She didn't understand.
“Plans. You have them for everything in life. Be a daughter, build a home, be a wife? These plans, they're walls, they pen you in. Closer and closer they get, and your path turns thin.”
My words, it is as though she didn't even register them. “You don't even have supplies, you'll find nothing but demise!”
We arrived at the fence surrounding our village. I stopped walking and turned to her, smiling. “The path ahead of me is so long that all the food I could take today would be used up halfway. No supplies will safe me, but thankfully it will be a truly tremendous journey.”
I opened them, and with a soft draught a familiar mixture of the scents struck me across the face: Sweet flowers, ceremonially picked. Traditional spices. The sweat of many days I remembered as one. The abyss inside them tried to swallow me. I kicked them shut and left them.
I walked out the door and my mother followed me. She didn't understand. The sounds of the Equiopian jungle pressed down on me, but there was more: the sound of a distant horn breaks through the nightly noises. I turn around and ask my mother what it meant, but she knew nothing and had heart nothing.
My mother followed me past the row of painfully familiar houses as I walked. "Daughter of mine, where do you go? Look at the light, it's almost night!"
"I don't know where I'll go, away from here is all I know. That's where I'll find my goal."
“So a goal you have in mind. Please tell me, of what kind?” my mother asked.
“Yes, I do, did you not hear? Away-from-here!”
She shook her head, as though an insect had lodged itself in her ear. "Even if you leave our clan, you must not leave without a plan," my mother said. She didn't understand.
“Plans. You have them for everything in life. Be a daughter, build a home, be a wife? These plans, they're walls, they pen you in. Closer and closer they get, and your path turns thin.”
My words, it is as though she didn't even register them. “You don't even have supplies, you'll find nothing but demise!”
We arrived at the fence surrounding our village. I stopped walking and turned to her, smiling. “The path ahead of me is so long that all the food I could take today would be used up halfway. No supplies will safe me, but thankfully it will be a truly tremendous journey.”