8 Things I Know About Her

An Odjaante exercise done in my creative writing class... I'm particularly fond of the character I created for this exercise, and how she emerged. I based my final on her.

Her Mother’s Scarves

Her mother was strange, and one of the ways this manifested itself was in the many scarves she owned. A scarf for almost every day, a scarf of every color, a scarf for every occasion. Beautiful silky scarves, thin scarves, gauzy and gaudy scarves. When her mother was put in an asylum, the scarves were given to her. She kept seven of them, one for each day of the week, the ones she couldn’t part with. The others, she burned in a bonfire out back along with the rest of her mothers’ clothes, as if the clothes contained her mothers’ disease. 

The Feathers

She never stayed in one place too long, but no matter where she went, she collected a feather from each town and city, carefully placing it inside a book with the name of the bird it belonged to, the date it was found, and the name of the city and state it was in. It became a diary of sorts, the feathers were the headings, and occasionally other items accompanied by pages of words made their way into the books. She carried these books around wherever she went, the only record of her having lived anywhere.

The Koi Pond

In one city she managed to find a small park with a Koi pond. Many people would flock there, families, couples, friends, and the random lone person. Every day for a month she visited that Koi Pond. It was said if you found the Silver Koi in the pond, your wish would come true. She faithfully visited that pond, and became a familiar sight, always staring at the orange and white fish, her reflection distorted in the water as she leaned against the sea foam green wooden bridge. On the last day, it was said she fell to her knees, reaching for something in the water. Whether she dropped something or found something no one knows, but she never went back to the pond again.

First Criticism

Her mother and father had gone to visit a family friend for lunch. They were all chatting as she gurgled in her seat, six months old. The lady put down her drink and stared, then said abruptly, “She has different colored eyes, how odd.”

Fantasies

Dreams of staying in one place haunted her sleep, as the wind chased her from place to place when awake. A small house with a pet, maybe a husband. Perhaps, if she escaped her mother’s fate, a child of her own to raise.

Listening In

“Where are you going?” He asked. She couldn’t look him in the eye, a sad smile on her face. “I wish I knew,” she whispered back, “Because it feels an awful lot like I’m just running away.”

Self-Criticism

“I forget people I meet so that it doesn’t hurt when I leave. If there is no bond to cut, there is no severed end flying in the wind that keeps blowing me around.”

Strangers Observations

She has one blue eye, one green. It’s as if the blue eye contained all her loneliness, and the green eye all of her longing. Weariness weighed down her every movement, a heaviness her shoulders bent beneath. She looked at the horizon the same way she had looked at the feathers, at the Koi pond, at the bonfire that greedily ate the scarves. I watch as she stares at the trains and times and places, drawn into her wake as she walks towards her next destination. I’m just waiting for her to turn around, and realize that she doesn’t have to keep running… from everything.

Reviews

[Daydreamer54]

Wowhis was deep an I'm wondering why she leaves town to town? i guess the self criticism part says it all... great wrote. ^^