The Journey - Chapter 3

Those fowl words almost escaped her lips. Rose hated that short walk from her small humble home to the store her parents once owned. Ever since they built the boarding home she had to endure the cat calls and the whistles from the windows above. “Boarding home, ha, she would say, more like a whore house. Rose wished they had never moved here.

A sweet longing of days running through fields full of scented wild flowers, watching butterflies fly together like sheets in the wind. Rolling down hills covered in buttercups tell your clothes became patched in yellow. That where she rather be. Ah but her fathers small store in a small country villa was no place for a girl to grow up. No culture he would say.

So they moved to Arenden, the city of sounds and scents. At first it was like a dream a wonderful new play ground and other children to play with. So many things to learn and to do lots of images to spark her imagination. But, after her parents died it was more of a place to life not to love. But at night there was always that peaceful place she could go. Nights drew her quietly to herself a pleasure she was learning to enjoy. Rose would open her bedroom window and sits silently a pond the edge. Close her eyes, lean back against the wood sill, left her head towards the heavens, letting her thoughts of the day just drift away. She could smell the sent of wildflowers in the wind as it whisped her long blonde hair around her neck and chin. How she wished she could go home.

Everyday Rose walked by the boarding home on her way to the store. Through the ruts and muck made by so many horse and cart. Every night she walked home the same way. With barely enough light from a pale moon. Yes there was days when she was asked to come to an evening social. But Rose never had a will for such things. Oh Rose knew why they would ask, they all believed she was too old to not be married and have children. She was going to be an old spinster if she didn’t marry soon. “So be it” was her thought. “I like being self taught, independent and owning my own store, which I do quite well she had added.”

What Rose really wanted was love, not just a man to say she is married, but love. Love like she seen when her parents looked at each other, when they had a big water fight near the pond on a hot summer day. This made her smile to remember her parents playing and laughing like children. Many sweet memories, she held safe and close to her heart. In a child like manor Rose still wonders if they are proud of her. “Wondering thought can get a young lady in trouble’, her mother would say.

No, Rose didn’t want just a man, just so she would be married like everyone else. Rose wanted love, love as safe caring and enduring, in the ways she seen while growing up. “Have to stop thinking” she says in a small trembling voice. “Only brings the tears”. Climbing the few steps to the store she fishes the key from her apron pocket. Turning the key in the door and bracing herself left shoulder up against it, as she did ever morning cause as she knew if she didn’t push hard on that first turn of the key when it rolled the latch inside she be fighting to get it open. Timing was everything as she pushed the door ajar and rubbed her tender shoulder. A smile comes across her lips. As she smirks at the door “I have won again”. Someday I’ll have to fix that door.

- Cashew