October 17, Continued

October 17, Continued (March 2020, Week 1 Day 7)

I’m not supposed to be here. My last day of life should have been October 17, 1983. 10-17-83, a collection of numbers that couldn’t organize itself into anything interesting. Maybe the sheer blandness of the date is what saved me, or maybe it was “fate.” Trust me, I’ve looked for “The Answer” every day since and am no closer to a eureka moment. That’s why I left home, how I ended up here.

Have you ever started over? Sure, you’ve probably gotten a new job or maybe a new husband. Or maybe you’ve even moved across the country to “start over.” But have you *really* started over? With a new name? A new personality? A new body? 

It’s been easier than I expected, to be honest. I had told myself story after story about why I couldn’t leave, why “home” was the only place for me. What a joke. And by joke I mean tragedy. And by tragedy I mean – I don’t really know what I mean. What I do know is that I’m never going back. Of course, that was part of the deal. The ultimate one-way ticket with my memories as my only carry-on item.

The me here gets much more attention. I went from being almost as bland as the date I should have died to being downright striking. That wasn’t a guarantee. I could have ended up some homely child with a limp and stubby thumbs, or an accountant. Old me blended into the background of most rooms. Old me had to get others to share my ideas if anyone was going to hear them. Old me knew that taking up space was all I had to offer. Old me – well, anything else needs to wait. What you need to know is that for once I pulled the right card and arrived in this body. This body topped with luscious hair, good fashion sense, and enough height to be intimidating without intent. This body with eyes you’re having a hard time avoiding, with skin you want to touch, and with a smile that rewards you. This body that is strong enough to do for itself and compelling enough to not have to. This body is all mine. No complaints.

Forgive me – I neglected an important something. You’ve come all this way and I owe you an introduction. 

My name is Melody and I am here to share my story. You could call it my job though I prefer calling. Whatever you label it, sharing my story is what I agreed to do so I could start over. Would you make the same choice? Or would you push forward, living on borrowed time, knowing you shouldn’t be there and that no one would have missed you if you *had* died on schedule? Perhaps hold that answer until after you hear my tale of woe? Ah, you’ve already decided. So be it. 

My first story ends quietly on October 17, 1983 – it’s not like there was a line of people concerned about my fate. That’s one thing most of us here have in common. Sure, there are a few who made the choice to leave because they’d done all they could, had all the impact they’d intended, and wanted to create a new life for themselves so they could be amazing all over again. That seems exhausting and selfish to me. But it’s not up to me to yuck someone else’s yum. I just distance myself from those ones. They’re easy to spot.

My second story starts on January 18, 1984. Why the gap? Well,  01-14-84 is a date with much more going for it and these things take time. How quickly do you think you’d work through the feelings of being alive the morning after you were supposed to have died? For me, waking up on October 18, 1983, sent me into a tailspin.

Back there you’re taught from the beginning about the order of things. About how its an honor and a responsibility to die on your day. How the death of some is important for the continuation of many. How questioning our place and time is akin to questioning the existence of God. I’d known my day since I could remember – it’s actually my first memory – and had expected to go as planned. I’d heard whispers about people who didn’t die. I’d heard the grumbles about the drain they placed on the community. It wasn’t something I wanted for myself and it’s not like the old me had anything in particular to live for.

If you’d asked me then I would have said waking up on the 19th was the worst thing in the world. I spent some time alone before outing myself. Agers – that’s the polite term for people like me who don’t die on schedule – aren’t exactly shunned but they’re not celebrated, either. Maybe if I’d been more liked or even noticed things would have been different. As it was, emerging back onto the streets three days after I was supposed to be good and dead didn’t win me any friends. No one wept with joy or threw a party. No one offered me a place to stay or a seat at their table. If I’d been bland before I was as good as invisible after. Well, not invisible – unwanted.

At first, I attempted to go back to business as usual. That only lasted a day. All of my things had been cleared from my workspace and, while they begrudgingly found somewhere for me to sit, it was clear they’d moved on and didn’t need or want me in the mix. I went through the motions of building components for the project I’d been working on but when I dropped off my completed set at the end of the day they didn’t even touch it. It sat, ignored, at the end of the line. It didn’t matter that it was perfectly constructed. Agers’ work wasn’t sellable.

It was on my way home that I saw the Change Stand. I’d passed it many times before but it was only on this day that it caught my eye. The stands were scattered around town, each the same in set up: A portable table weighted down with sandbags, a white tent with three walls and a roof, pamphlets and clipboards covering the table, and an ageless man or woman standing smiling at passerby under a large sign with “READY FOR A CHANGE?” in deep blue, red, or yellow lettering. It was rare to see anyone stop and talk to them, and they never called out or made a fuss. They had information to share only if you asked for it. That was the agreement they’d made with the officials and they stuck to it.

Since I’d never stopped to talk to them and had never gotten close enough to see what was on the pamphlets, all I had to go on was what the rumor mill could supply. Some said they were a cult, others that they were simply a religion. Some said they were charlatans looking to steal your resources. No one said you should talk to them.

I’ll be honest – I knew which routes to take to avoid the Change Stands. It wasn’t accidental that one “caught my eye.” That day, I aimed myself towards one. As I made my way down the block I watched the woman under the sign. She was wearing what I assumed was a uniform because it didn’t seem like something anyone would put together without direction or obligation. I’d come to associate the Change Stands with blue, red, and yellow because of the signs but the people in the stands were never dressed in those colors. This one was wearing a purple top with a plunging neckline made more obvious because of the shocking paleness of the woman’s skin. Since she was leaning on the table I could see that she had on a pair of green pants that left no mystery to her contours and a pair of tall, strappy boots in creamy brown leather. To top off this colorful ensemble she wore an orange beret. Taken together the effect was striking. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to her or keep going and find some rainbow sherbert. 

She didn’t make direct eye contact with me until I stopped just out of her reach. I don’t know if I thought she might reach out and grab me to spirit me off somewhere or make a grab for my wallet. The rumor mill hadn’t specified what might happen to you if you did stop to talk to one of them. I suppose I was hedging my bets while satisfying my curiosity. 

When I stopped walking she turned to me and shared a smile. I found myself smiling back, feeling warm just at her acknowledgment of me after days of silence.

“Hello!”

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked down before letting my “hello” escape. 

“Are you ready for a change?”

Simple Truths

Simple Truths (March 2020, Week 1 Day 5)

The sun is up, the earth is down, and towns stretch left and right. These simple truths are all you need to make it through the night.

The verse was the last thing Carla saw each night as she closed up the museum. It was etched into the wall just to the right of the alarm system’s keypad. The stark contrast between the ancient ornate stone wall and the modern plastic case had drawn her eye well before she noticed the words. 

Carla cared for the museum as if it were her own. She had taken notes about each room when they toured her around during her interview, impressing the board with her attention to detail. No one on the hiring committee had a negative thing to say about her and she rose to the top of the candidate pool. Her references were glowing and her salary request was reasonable. She started two weeks to the day after they’d made her an offer.

That was twenty-five years ago. For the last quarter of a century, Carla had worked six days a week following the same schedule. She liked routines and order. She liked to plan out her days and see them unfold just the way she’d anticipated. She liked being predictable. 

As she turned off the last of the lights and stood in front of the alarm system doing her nightly mental recap of the steps necessary to secure the building for the evening she let her hand rest on the verse. Not for the first time, Carla reflected on the words, who might have carved them, and why. She had solved all the other mysteries of the museum – only this one remained.

“It’s you or me, Verse. I’m not throwing in the towel til I figure you out.” 

Carla looked back at the dark museum, now lit only by the sparsely placed emergency lights hugging the floorboards, and called out “goodnight” to the security guard she knew was there even if she couldn’t see him. 

She set the alarm to “home” and, as always, chuckled. “It feels like home but I need to put my tired feet somewhere.”

Adjusting her purse on her shoulder, Carla pulled open the front door and stepped outside. 

Nothing was right. 

Beneath her feet was the sky, not the hand-carved concrete steps that lead down to the street. Pure sky – bright and blue and dotted by puffy white clouds. Carla blinked, shook her head, rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She was, however wrong and impossible, standing on the sky.

“Get it together, Carla,” she muttered to herself. “You have had a long day and your eyes are telling tales.” She took a deep breath and stepped forward as if the sky beneath her was the concrete she knew should have been waiting for her.

It wasn’t waiting for her. Instead of walking down the predictable flight of steps that had been there to receive her every day of her twenty-five years at the museum, Carla found herself floating. 

October 17

October 17 (March 2020, Week 1 Day 2)

I’m not supposed to be here. My last day of life should have been October 17, 1983. 10-17-83, a collection of numbers that couldn’t organize itself into anything interesting. Maybe the shear blandness of the date is what saved me, or maybe it was “fate.” Trust me, I’ve looked for “The Answer” every day since and am no closer to a eureka moment. That’s why I left home, how I ended up here.

Have you ever started over? Sure, you’ve probably gotten a new job or maybe a new husband. Or maybe you’ve even moved across the country to “start over.” But have you *really* started over? With a new name? A new body? A new personality?

It’s been easier than I expected, to be honest. I had told myself story after story about why I couldn’t leave, why “home” was the only place for me. What a joke. And by joke I mean tragedy. And by tragedy I mean – I don’t really know what I mean. What I do know is that I’m never going back. Of course that was part of the deal. The ultimate one-way ticket with my memories as my only carry-on item.

The me here gets much more attention. I went from being almost as bland as the date I should have died to being downright striking. That wasn’t a guarantee. I could have ended up some homely child with a limp and stubby thumbs, or an accountant. Old me blended into the background of most rooms. Old me had to get others to share my ideas if anyone was going to hear them. Old me knew that taking up space was all I had to offer. Old me – well, anything else needs to wait. What you need to know is that, for once I pulled the right card and arrived in this body. This body topped with luscious hair, good fashion sense, and enough height to be intimidating without intent. This body with eyes you’re having a hard time avoiding, with skin you want to touch, and with a smile that rewards you. This body that is strong enough to do for itself and compelling enough to not have to. This body is all mine. No complaints.

Forgive me – I neglected an important something. You’ve come all this way and I owe you an introduction. 

My name is Melody and I am here to share my story. You could call it my job though I prefer calling. Whatever you label it, sharing my story is what I agreed to do so I could start over. Would you make the same choice? Or would you push forward, living on borrowed time, knowing you shouldn’t be there and that no one would have missed you if you *had* died? Perhaps hold that answer until after you hear my tale of woe? Ah, you’ve already decided. So be it. 

My story ends quietly on October 17, 1983 – it’s not like there was a line of people concerned about my fate.

To Life

To Life (October 2019, Week 2, Day 4)

The brilliant orange moon softened the edges of everything before her, and for that Etta was grateful. Her bark of a laugh rang, bouncing off the sides of the pen and off into the night. There she was, trapped, and the lessons from the past still held on. 

“Yes!” She reveled in the reverberation of her voice. “I’m grateful! Did you hear that? Do you care?”

She knew they didn’t. No one could pick people to die like this and care about what they thought. Etta pulled her gaze away from the moon and looked down at her grimy feet and then at the etching on the East wall of her pen. 

No shoes, lest you run.

No belt, lest you hang.

No hat, lest you pray.

How many times had she read those words since they put her here? How many times would she read them before it was her turn? Etta shuddered and slapped both hands onto the wall, obscuring the words.

“Why do you care if I hang?” She waited as if there might be a response this time. “Don’t want me to take away all your fun? Or do you just get off on dictating how my life ends?” Once the echoes of her words died away there was nothing but the moon and silence to keep her company.

Etta had been collected at the new moon. Now, here she was, still out here sitting beneath a full moon. It hadn’t escaped her that she hadn’t bled since being penned, and she didn’t know that it would make any difference. These creatures weren’t going to get all warm and fuzzy just because she was pregnant. If that’s what it was – she knew enough to know that the stress of her situation could easily be enough to throw her off her cycle. Etta pulled her arms into the shift they’d put her in hoping to chase away the chill her thoughts had just triggered.

Three things happened then, each demanding Etta’s attention. One – a hand slid through the North wall of her pen. Two – the big orange moon disappeared from the sky. Three – a low thrumming filled the air around her.

“Shit! What the? Shit!” Etta had just started scrabbling away from the hand when the thrumming started to shake the ground and the loss of the moon plunged her into darkness. “Shit!” Etta tumbled back and, instead of bashing her head against the South wall of her pen, found herself rolling ass over teakettle down a hill.

“Oh, no,” something uttered in a deep, velvety voice that lacked any human qualities. “You weren’t supposed to roll.”

Etta got to her feet just as the moon returned to the sky and the thrumming dissipated. She was out. She was, after almost a month, out of the pen. She wrestled her arms out of her shift while running through her options. Home wasn’t safe – going back would just start the cycle over again. The mountains might work, at least for a while, though would be treacherous without shoes. She had just recided to run for the river when she felt a furry something grip her shoulder. 

Spontaneous Conception

Spontaneous Conception (October 2019, Week 2, day 1)

“Honey, you’re just going to need to give Mama a minute, maybe a lot of minutes.” Tanya held her head as she hoped the words she directed at the floor would reach her daughter the right way. The bathroom floor was cool, and the room was dark. If only she could have stayed there forever. The soft rumble from the other side of the door was all she needed to hear. Fifteen minutes wasn’t forever, but it would hopefully be enough time for her to get her shit together.

Getting pregnant again wasn’t supposed to have happened. Tanya was still sorting through the details. Sorting through them between trips to the bathroom and hiding her condition from everyone around her while she figured out what the hell she was going to do next. One child per person, as assigned – how long had she known that rule? The shift had started before she’d developed enough to be one of the breeders so it’s not like it was new. She’d done as she was told from the start, presenting herself to the clinic for testing and synching at sixteen. She’d interviewed the men who qualified to pair with her and had chosen wisely. That pregnancy had been sanctioned and monitored from the moment of conception. The birth had happened as scheduled. She had, or so she’d been told, been sterilized before leaving the hospital and shifted into the role of raising her daughter for the role they would choose for her. This? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. 

Getting her daughter to her assigned post was today’s priority, and for that to happen she’d have to let go of the basin. Tanya dragged herself up to standing and looked at her reflection. She prodded the flesh under her eyes and around her mouth until she was satisfied that nothing from the neck up would give her away. As long as no one got in her way she should be able to get back to the safety of home within thirty minutes. 

“Baby, let’s go. Mama’s ready.” Seeing the sun as she neared the front door, Tanya winced and smiled. “Perfect,” she muttered, grabbing the large sunglasses from the shelf next to her. “Hustle, baby. Being late isn’t an option.”

Getting her daughter this assignment hadn’t been easy. Tanya froze as she placed a hand on her belly. Was the pregnancy why she’d been successful? Did they know already? “Keep it together, T,” she said under her breath. Conspiracy theories were more than she had the stomach for at the moment.

Tanya watched as her daughter wheeled down the hallway towards her. There was a good chance that she wouldn’t see her first-born again, depending on how this assignment went. The same old feelings pulled at Tanya. It never got easier, and now would she have to go through them doubled? There were reasons people were only supposed to have one child.

“You look ready. More ready than I am. Let’s go.”

When?

“Lost.  I am completely and totally lost.  I don’t know what to do.  I don’t have anyone to call – hell, I don’t have any way to call even if there was someone, which there isn’t.  I am all alone.  Fuck.” She paced back and forth as she muttered to herself, not caring or noticing how she was being received by those around her.  She didn’t know anyone here, so the opinions of those of low-intelligence didn’t trigger her awareness.  All she was focused on was solving the puzzle of how to get back to her home, in her when, as soon as possible.

She stopped and took stock of her surroundings, focusing on the things more than the people.  Even the structures in this when were primitive.  She had a hard time even imagining that there could be something helpful or useful now. The height of the structures was overwhelmingly unnecessary.  It was clear that they were erected before Knowledge had been harnessed. The waste was offensive to her eye.  She had always thought the history texts were exaggerating for the impact of it all and had been surprised at how realistic those old images had been.

In her now, the most important structures were always the closest to the ground so as to absorb the energy provided by Mother Earth.  In this now, it appeared that height was linked to power, no matter how ridiculous that notion might have been.  If height = power, she needed to find her way to the tallest building if she was going to have any hope of returning to her when.

The pause had helped, and she had identified the highest of all the structures surrounding her.

She grabbed the backpack and, at the same time, opened the door.  The smell hit her first. “UGH!” escaped her lips before anything could happen with the backpack.  These people in this when – they liked their aromas.  She managed her reaction well enough.  Well enough for the job she’d come to do.

 

 

* All 30-minute musings are fiction.  Any resemblance to people or events is strictly coincidental. *

On or Off

Old memories are…tricky.  They sit there, quietly, taking up barely any space at all until they do.  They have to stay small, I suppose, so as to make room for all the new ones you create every day.  How many memories are there, floating around in the average brain?  They’re all in there, packed away, not really doing anything beyond not leaving space for where you put your keys, until something wakes them up.  Then?  Damn – then they expand, hard and fast.  They take up all the space you have in your head.  They push all that stuff you thought was important right out of the way.  The task you were in the middle of, the birthday present you meant to buy, the grocery list – all gone.  The only thing you can think about is the memory.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a good memory or a bad one, either.  Whatever memory is the one that’s triggered gets to take the main stage.  Lights, camera, past-horror-of-that-ex-boyfriend-you-shouldn’t-have-started-dating-in-the-first-place action! You can change the speed with which it replays.  You can adjust the volume.  Sometimes you can adjust the camera angle.  There’s no skipping it, though.  It pauses itself whenever something really immediate comes up.  You need to take a work call from someone important, for example.  The memory will pause just long enough for you to talk through the topic as long as nothing IN the conversation triggers it again.  The minute you hang up the phone it’s back.  Oh, and sometimes related memories come along for the ride, just to make things interesting.  You might not even have known they were related – have no fear, you brain knows.  It has master powerful cross-referencing skills in there.  If that ex-boyfriend bought you a dress that was the color blue, and you also once were brought to tears by a blue lollypop falling on the floor, your brain will kindly bring the second memory along with the first.  Or, better yet, if you have a memory of a friend being suddenly unavailable one weekend, the same weekend your then boyfriend got called out of town, your brain will helpfully put those puzzle pieces together to help you realize that the two of them were having an affair behind your back.  Thanks, brain.  Thanks a lot.  Now, not all memories are bad.  The good ones can get extra attention some days, too.  When you’re sitting at a wedding and start reminiscing in your head about the day you got married, that’s pretty nice.  You can even sometimes push the less-awesome memories back into storage by calling up the good ones.  That’s a high-level skill, though, and not everyone is fully equipped to make that switch happen.  We keep all these memories, the good and the bad, and hold onto them for as long as we can.  We often don’t even realize we’re doing it.  They’re just there, sitting in storage until we want them.

Until they’re not.  I took my memory and its storage for granted for a long, long time.  I remember (ha – see what I did there) sitting with friends digging deep to see how far back we could remember real things that had happened to us in our childhoods.  Just for fun, because we could and because there wasn’t really anything else to do in the tiny little town where we grew up.  Now?  I would give just about anything to go back to those days.  Back when I could take my memory, and the memories of the people I care about, for granted.  Back when remembering the name of that obscure television show that featured a plane and a resort was something that we could guarantee someone in the room would be able to do.  I know now that remembering isn’t a given.  I know what it looks like to not be able to access that brain storage.

It’s my job to take care of them.  To help them navigate their day to day life. I take it seriously. There’s only so much I can do for them, and that’s hard.  They need to be reminded of everything – big things like who they are and why they’re here, and little things like zipping their zipper after they go to the bathroom.  Their storage compartments empty out so quickly.  No, that’s not right.  Their storage is full, or full enough, they just don’t have the tools they need to find the files on their own.  And their brains are just as cruel as mine and yours.  They get big downloads stuck on replay, whether they want to watch or not.  They get fixated on their past transgressions and those they witnessed far more often than they get those pleasant memories of young love.  I have to believe they have all of the same kinds of memories tucked into storage in there.  I think the negative stuff is just bigger, or bumpier, or filed higher up in the alphabet.  They lived their lives in a normal way for their first 40 years, right?  So, there must be a combination of good and bad in there, somewhere.  If only they could grab it and set it on repeat.

We don’t know why some of them switch off this way at 40.  Or, at least, I don’t know why.  No one is saying what the cause is, anyway.  Since we don’t know the cause it’s extra hard to practice prevention.  I have my theories, though. I work hard on my memory every day, and I force my kids and husband to do the same.  The way I see it, this is our best chance at surviving.  Our best chance of staying out here.  I don’t mind going in for work – I don’t want to end up trapped in there, or see the people I love switch off.  Head down, memory flexed – that’s our motto.  For now.

 

* All 30-minute musings are fiction.  Any resemblance to people or events is strictly coincidental. *

Blurred

“I don’t WANT to!” The shrill cry from the toddler woke him with a start.  He knew it was his daughter making all the racket – he hadn’t met another little person capable of quite so much noise at such high pitches.  He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes and trying to orient himself to the moment.  What day was today, anyway?  What time was it?  What could she be so upset about and who was she yelling at?  In the jumbled way things fall into place right after you are startled awake, things started to come into focus.  She must be yelling at Susan, his wife.  And it must be Thursday since Susan was home.  And it must be morning?  Or afternoon? That last piece was stubbornly not fitting into place for him.  He groped around for his glasses, hoping they would bring clarity of mind the same way they helped him see.  They weren’t within reach and there was no way he could hope to find them without wearing them, which jumbled his thoughts that much more because his glasses were never out of reach.  When your eyesight is as bad as his you kept your glasses where you could find them.  Why couldn’t he find them?  As he searched he gradually became more aware of his surroundings, and more aware of how wrong they were.  Things didn’t smell right.  There was this sharpness to the scent that he was struggling to identify beyond the fact that it was wrong.  And the room was too bright.  It should have been darker, and warmer now that he was noticing – sort of yellow instead of this bright white.  His hands kept searching for the glasses until he noticed that his bed was wrong.  It was too small – really only large enough for him.  There should have been ample room for Susan even though she was only there to fill it some nights of the week.  His heart started racing – what was going on and where was he?  Where was his daughter?  What didn’t she want to do?

Even though he didn’t know how he’d find his way to her without his glasses, he went to swing his legs over the side of the bed as the first step in getting up.  They were too heavy – they wouldn’t move.  He felt the sweat break out across his forehead.  Something was wrong.  Very, very wrong.  He drew in a big breath and yelled, “SUSAN!”

The noise that responded to his yell was immediate and varied.  Alarms started ringing on all sides of him – several different things started beeping and buzzing, and there were footsteps coming his way.  Squeaky footsteps, none of them seeming right for Susan and all of them too fast and heavy for his daughter.  He couldn’t make out what was happening, but a lot of adult-sized shapes were coming his way.

“He’s awake!  Mr. Walsh, can you hear me?”

“Of course, I can hear you.  Where are my damn glasses?” He wanted to be able to see so he could figure out what the hell was going on.

A blurry hand proffered up his glasses and he grabbed them clumsily.  Once he had them on his face he was shocked to see how many people were in the room, none of them familiar to him.  He could, however, figure out where he was.  It was clearly a hospital of some sort, and, judging by all the coats he saw, he must be the patient.

“What the hell is going on? Where am I? What’s wrong with me? Why are my legs stuck? Where is my daughter? Where is my wife?”

All the questions came piling out of him without giving anyone a chance to answer.  They did quiet the room.  All of the coat-wearing doctors got very quiet and seemed to have things to look at other than him.  Only one maintained eye contact.  She was short and had an earnest look about her.  She stepped past another doctor to get closer to him before saying anything.

“Mr. Walsh, I’m Dr. Girard.  Melanie Girard.  Can you tell me what you remember?”

“What I remember?  How about you tell me what is going on, instead.”

“Well, Mr. Walsh, I’m going to need some help from you in order to do that.  You telling me what you remember last will help me answer your questions.  I need you to trust me on this one.”

He shook his head, trying to make things make sense.  What did he remember?

“Ok.  Wait.  I. Um… I thought it was Thursday because I heard my daughter with my wife.  I think that was just confusion, though.  The last thing I remember was leaving the house to go to work.  Yes – that’s it.  Was I in an accident or something?  Are Susan and Ali ok?”

The doctors all shifted about uncomfortably.  All except for Dr. Girard.  She kept her eyes on him and nodded.

“Yes, there was an accident.  Can you tell me today’s date?”

“Why the hell does the date matter?  I mean, it must be Wednesday the 12th.”

The room went silent – everyone froze.  Dr. Girard took a deep breath.

“Mr. Walsh, you were in an accident on Wednesday, July 12, 1992.  Today is Tuesday, October 15th…2032.”

He looked at her, his mouth hanging open.  She must have misspoken.

At that moment, all heads turned to the door.  A stately woman entered, holding a young boy’s hand and carrying a little girl.  Mr. Walsh blinked and blinked again.  “Ali?”

The stately woman replied, “Hi Dad.  You’re back.”

**All 30-minute musing posts are fiction**

Purposeful Travel

The blue sky stretched out from them, further than should have been possible.  It was like the someone had redrawn the horizon line a few miles back just for fun.  There wasn’t a cloud to be seen which made the blue seem that much bluer and the horizon that much further.  The little group of people were arranged haphazardly around the campground, all absorbed in their own tasks.  No one noticed the small child wander off.  She left the peopled area and headed west, following the creature that had also gone unnoticed by the others.  While the creature moved in a zig zagging, unpredictable manner, the child followed a straight line, due west.  They were clearly going the same way, headed for the same place, just with very different modes of travel.

It didn’t take long for them to leave the sounds of the populated campground behind, and soon they were alone.  The creature slowed down and settled down, matching its pace to that of the child’s.  They continued forward together and silent.  The trees and grasses began to give way to pavement and, as the scenery changed, so did the creature.  Where it had used all four legs in the woods, now it traveled upright on two legs.  Where it had been covered in thick, matted fur, now it had brown skin that glinted under a sheen of sweat and beneath a thick head of curls.  Now it had clothing, too, and shoes.  The child changed as well, stretching taller and getting thicker until it presented as an adult.  The two continued heading west, now holding hands, with eyes only for the horizon.

After about an hour of travel they came upon a small town that branched off on the north side of the road.  No conversation was needed for them to turn in that direction.  The first building they came to was something like a general store, and they entered together.  The shelves were filled with basic need type items, nothing fancy or ornate.  Toothpaste, notebooks, shaving tools, cereal, tampons, air freshener, and lots of junk food.  The creature-turned-man picked up a few things they’d need, and the child-turned-woman chose some food and drinks.  They approached the counter together and deposited their items while waiting for the cashier to take notice of them.  This took some moments – the cashier was an older woman, sitting because her weight was too much for standing, who was far more interested in the little television behind the counter than any aspect of her job.  When she did finally look up to see her waiting customers, she pulled back a bit, issuing a sharp and audible intake of breath at the sight of these non-regular customers before her.  Crescent didn’t get a lot of visitor traffic at any point and these two would have been shocking even if they did.  She gave her head a little shake and started ringing them up without her usual customer chatter.  Pulling her focus away from the register, she turned to the child-turned-woman and said “28.73, please.”

A slow smile appeared on both travelers’ faces.  The cashier had, just barely, passed.  The child-turned-woman placed a hand into the pocket on her skirt that had just materialized and paused, waiting for the needed bills to fill up her hand.  Once they did she pulled her hand out of the pocket and handed the correct amount to the cashier.  The rest of the transaction only took a moment, and then the two were on their way back to the main road, back towards their westward goal.

They visited three more towns without incident.  The sun was getting heavy in the sky and the blue was changing.  They found a new town to explore on the south side of the road and, after altering their presentation once more, wandered through the streets until they found their destination.  This town was different – tall buildings close together, people hurrying from point A to point B without interacting with each other.  When the creature-turned-white teen found the store they needed and turned to the child-turned-Asian woman, it was clear that they both noticed the difference.  Upon entering the store, they didn’t even have a chance to choose from the shelves before the clerk stopped them with a “and what are YOU doing here?”

Another glance passed between the travelers before the child-turned-Asian-woman raised her head and her hand to do what needed to be done.

**All 30-minute musing posts are fiction**