A Common Collective

wildislands:

Petrichor

1.

She awoke at four o’clock. It was a natural stirring; it was just such that her eyes opened and her mind started turning three hours before sunrise. She could see through the darkened haze that filled her room and had little trouble finding the door outside. Softly, she pushed through to the lawn, where there was the mellifluous mystery of waves she could hear but not see. Her lawn was damp with frost but her feet were not cold.

December 21^st; The first hours of winter and everything was new. She did not know the date, nor likely the month, but she knew the feeling. Something called her to the wet, soft folds of the sea, like Venus, returning year after year to be reborn.

On her wrist, she wore her Grandmother’s pearls. She knew that they were just small balls of calcium built up and up inside a soft pink body, hidden in a shell.  She knew that they were just round particles of time, but her grandmother had given them to her so she wore them all the same.

It was now five o’clock. Her mind was up with the constellations but as the rosy tones started to push ever so slightly through the navy satin sky, they drifted slowly back inside the atmosphere. She shivered in the pelagic air, and felt for the first time that she was cold.

Inside the door was a white bed with a white comforter under a big dark window. She sunk down inside the caves of the blankets and thought of the boy with the gossamer hair. She was but eleven yet she knew of the endless flapping of the feathered wings of uncertainty inside her chest.

She closed her eyes, but was not asleep. She was in between this world and the next.

Seven o’clock and the sun had risen. She sat in her bed staring at the door. Beyond its weathered wood lay the ocean and the sky. Beyond the wood, the world was blue.

High up in her closet, there was journal. Black leather and bond with rope. The words were smudged and stained with salt and time. She had put it there sometime in the summer, in fact the very first day she saw the boy with the gossamer hair. The sunshine in his eyes made her want to forget, so she climbed the shelves past books and winter coats to the top and left her memories there.

Eight o’clock and she pushed through the door again. The lawn was still white with frost and the sky grey with a false promise of snow. “It never snows,” she assured no one. She made her way to the salted sand of the beach and sat down. Her mother would not come looking for her.

Her soft, pink nightgown grew damp on the wet sand and something felt like home. She turned her back on her big, white cottage and wished she lived in a lighthouse. It seemed fitting, for all she ever did was watch the sea, waiting.

2.

Mother had invited the boy with the gossamer hair for tea. He sat across the table, and drank from the robin egg’s china. He wore a grey sweater and a white tee-shirt. She wore a lavender cotton dress and her feet were bare. Her eyes were grey, the last hints of the winter sky. She was seventeen but she wore no make-up at all. He didn’t seem to mind.

Mother filled the teacups and filled the space with talk of the coming summer. It was May 31^st and the air was sweet. The trees were green and dotted with the white promise of summer fruit. She used to braid the blossoms in her hair.

She took the boy to her room to show him the view out her window. They sat on her white bed with the white comforter and said nothing. She did not mention the black journal in the heights of her closet for she had forgotten. Nor did she mention the new one, bound with rope, and pushed under her bed.

She walked over to the radio and turned it on. The station was tuned to classical for that was what she had been raised on.  Soft piano eased out and filled their ears and everything seemed less awkward.

She was seventeen and the air was warm and nothing seemed new so she took his hand just to try it.

3.

Novembers 11^th. 11/11. 11, the age she had been when she had first seen the boy with the gossamer hair. The age she had been when her mother never went looking for her when she hid in the rocks. The age she had been when the world was blue and grey and terribly new.

On her finger she wore a diamond. She knew it was just coal that had been subject to heat and pressure and time. She knew it was just carbon all packed together and tight, but he had given it to her so she wore it anyways.

Five o’clock in the evening and she was still in bed. She couldn’t seem to get up. The room was filled with peonies, which deemed her as strange seeing as it was the height of autumn. But they were pink and yellow like the prints her mother brought home from France, so she liked to keep them near.

She picked up a black journal, bound it with rope, and pushed the covers off her legs. She pushed softly through the door and onto the beach. She walked away from the big grey house and towards the sea.

She was twenty one and her feet were bare. She sat down on the sand and dug a little. She put the journal inside because tomorrow was a beginning and he told her it was okay to forget.

She returned inside and felt ephemeral. There was a dress with a black velvet bodice on the love seat. She slipped it over her head and zipped the back herself. At the mirror, she painted her lips lavender-pink and her eyes black. Her grey eyes the color of the winter sky, and she remembered. Out the door, down the beach, past and away.

She did not stop at the shore. It all felt terribly new. The water lifted her skirt and hair and she opened her eyes as she went under. The world was blue.

(i wrote this story last week. just so you know, the word petrichor means the smell of earth after rain. please don’t steal with out crediting me. thank you very much.)

Story by Anne, her tumblr, and her flickr
Please please do not remove credit, this is one the most beautiful things i have read - and i think everyone deserves to know who it belongs to right? thanks!
: )